Solaredge - Waste of Money

[Darkwood]

Lol its always a nice twist when the company at the focus of the thread comes in to bat for their corner.... its not my field but i like a good bit of banter from both parties

Popcorn ready :bucktooth:

 

[wersolaruk]

Here we go guys I am going to throw my hat in the ring and hear the bell ting,

So here is my opinion of the sittuation

Micro-inverters, to me must contain all the components you would normally find in side a typical string inverter, the position of the micro inverter concerns me, sitting behind a panel which in peak sunlight will be in 50+ degrees surely must reduce the life span with no heat sink or fan, in my humble electrical experience, electronics and heat don't mix so surely a system with less electronics at this point will be more reliable and surely give better performance which the solar edge optimisers do. I personally don't like the trunk cable and accessories that come with the enphase kit, it has not been tested as much as the MC4 connector which has been in use to good effect for a long time. As for warranty the Solar edge inverter extension to 20 years is £150 plus vat which still brings it below a enphase kit. Finally imagine the ac trunk cable getting water ingress and tripping out rcd if not on a designated 1 way unit this can be costly, also fault finding will be more difficult in the fact you will have 3 cores going round each panel instead of the traditional single core dc cable. A lot of this relies on the installer and may be not the enphase product, but for me i prefer the solar edge setup for price, and the fact less can go wrong behind the panels due to less internal components.

Also my last tip is to check the financial background of both companies, i know solar edges fills me with more confidence than the later

 

[Trader9]

Hi All,

I had a SolarEdge SE4000 system with 16 x 235W panels and 250W optimisers commissioned 1st December 2011.

The system failed 15th May 2012 when two optimisers failed and £850 of scaffolding was required to get access. The two faulty 250W optimisers were replaced with 400W optimisers.

The system has failed again 7th June 2014. With only 9V dc being displayed on the LCD I guess more optimisers have failed and another £850 required for scaffolding.

An initial attempt to re-pair the optimisers worked for one day, but now won't work any more.

I did notice the installers had left a large coil of wire at each end of the string and was wondering if this would act as an inductor causing power spikes, as I live under the flight path at Gatwick and at this time of year landing flights can pass between the sun and my panels. Unlike a slow moving cloud the shade is instant and short lived. 360V 10A DC on-off-on every time a plane pass over.

This failure is only 3 weeks different from the last one????

Any thoughts?

Regards, Trader9.

 

[Gavin A]

That's one of the reasons we've mostly stuck to string inverters.

I'm not that up on these systems, but I thought if one failed it would just bypass that one and the rest would continue to work. If that is right, then it'd look to me more like one of the DC connectors on one end or t'other of the string had failed, which has been happening a bit with installers who've not been fully tightening the waterproofing gland on the dc connectors, allowing water to get in and end up with a high resistance joint followed by the connector burning out in a period of prolonged peak output. If it is this, then it'd have been a problem even with a string inverter.

 

[whinmoor]

If you've set up the online monitoring, it should be pretty easy to see the relative performance of each panel. This should help you to identify which optimiser to investigate.

If you tried re-pairing and it doesn't work, you might consider the SD card. Ask your installer to contact the UK Support Team with the serial number of your inverter and ask for an updated activation code which they will email to you in a day or two. You then need to remove the cover from the inverter, extract the SD card (located near the screen), delete the original file and replace it with the new one. Here are the step-by-step instructions they sent us when we had a similar issue a few months ago. Following these instructions resolved our problem and the system has worked fine ever since:

***********************

"Following our phone conversation I am sending you the required file and procedure you should follow.

I have attached a file, please follow the next few steps:

1. Put the file on a SD card.
2. Turn off the inverter DC.
3. Wait 5 minutes
4. Turn off the inverter’s AC
5. Put the SD card in
6. Turn on the inverter’s AC
7. Using the configuration buttons- go into “maintenance” menu and choose “factory reset”.
8. Turn on the inverter’s DC

This should take care of the issue."

 

[MCS Renewables]

Not surprised to see people on here starting to moan about Solar edge failures.

There is a company is Wales, we know, who have had over 120 optimiser units fail so far. (Out of 2000 or so installed)

Most are green on the inside when you take them apart which suggests some form of water ingress. They are only IP65.

We have over 110 Enphase microinverter systems and have had only ONE inverter issue and that`s because a squirrel ate through the cable, which is hardly the manufacturers fault. Thats 110 systems say 10 micros on average so 1100, issue free.

No news here .............You get what you pay for

 

[wersolaruk]

We have installed over 250 solar edge installations, had 2 failures on the optimizer front and 1 duff inverter both replaced within a week. The support and back up along with the training side of solar edge is in my opinion the very best. I called the service engineer on a sunday and he even had a look into a high grid voltage issue we had and fixed it via the internet connection. A lot of installers will not be connecting these systems to the internet, we have all of ours connected up and it enables us to see what fault codes are present if any and if optimizers or panels are having issues. To be honest anyone can slag a product its very easy and all products will have faults and issues. Everyone has there chosen products.

SO NO NEWS HERE EITHER, YOU DO GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR.

 

[Trader9]

Hi All,

Thanks for all your remarks. I have contacted the installers this morning and they are going to contact SolarEdge so they can do a remote investigation first.

Before any scaffolding goes up etc. Last time it was thought the inverter was at fault and it was swapped out to no avail.

With only 9V DC showing on the LCD panel my money is on a faulty optimiser or two. When I re-paired the optimisers on Saturday all panels worked and generation was the same from every one. So there was no clue there. But on Sunday the re-pair trick failed and I have had no generation since. Most panels show about 5W, but panels 2, 9, 10 and 13 show 0W but I am not sure this means a lot.

Lets see what SolarEdge can find with their remote investigation. I have a Cat5E network around the house and had installed a socket in the loft prior to the install so the inverter has always been connected so a full history should be available.

Regards, Trader9.

 

[wersolaruk]

This sounds like a possible optimizer issue, also could be the communication board inside the inverter, The only faulty inverter we have had out of 250 was the communication board which was replaced.

I am sure the guys at solar edge will assist you, is your installer not available to assist you on this?