Friend is buying a house with SMA solar inverters. What should I look for?

[ericy]

We have a friend who is buying a house - it already has solar with about 32 panels, and apparently two SMA inverters installed in the garage. It was installed in the 2013/2014 time frame. Beyond that, I know nothing. I don' know who did the install, I don't know the SREC status, I don't know the inverter model numbers or anything. Settlement is on Friday - I might get a look at the thing at that point.

Since we alreday have solar (also installed in the 2014 time frame, and also installed by the previous owner). But our own system is SolarEdge, so some of the direct experience I have isn't directly applicable, but there is still a lot that I can help with.

I believe it is owned and not leased. I did look up the building permit, and while I did find one, there was no indication of who might have done the work as only the homeowner's name was on the permit. Since I don't know who did the install, I don't have any idea who one might call if one even needed service.

The previous owners are elderly and I believe suffering from dementia, so we may not be able to get any useful information from them other than any paperwork they might leave behind. The sale is being arranged by one of the kids.

I am assuming(hoping) that there is some sort of display panel on the inverter(s) that might give me some idea of the current status of the system.

Is there an online portal of some sort where one can go to get more detailed information? How would she gain access to the thing - tech support at SMA?? Is this something that would have been optional back in the day (with an upcharge or some such), or is it likely that all installs back then would have this capability? How did it connect to the network? Ethernet? Z-wave/Zigbee?

Something else? Is there likely to be some sort of comms interface that a homeowner can directly use (USB?) to see the status?

Any other words of wisdom? On Friday I should get some model numbers and have a *whole* lot more informatio.

[organic farmer]

2014 would have been early to expect any USB connection.

Use an amp meter in early afternoon to take a reading to see how much power it is producing.

[ericy]

For what it is worth, I got a chance to take a look for myself. What she has is a pair of SB4000TL-US-22, and from the front panel, it looks like both are operating normally. The total production that is shown on the panel, is roughly the same as what I have on the system at our house that is roughly the same size and was installed at roughly the same time.

This is what one of them was showing (on a fairly cloudy day - the previous day had not been cloudy). There was a green light that was on adjacent to the display.

solar.jpg

No sign of any monitoring on those things that I could see, but at this point she has a ton of other things on her plate to deal with, and anything she finds that seems to be operating correctly is something that can be set aside so she can focus on some of the other things with the house.

And there was a plate on each inverter with the name and phone number of the company that installed it - it looks like they are still in business, so should there ever be a need, she has someone to call.

The only open question I have is related to whether there is an SREC contract or not. I guess my advice to her is to check with the company that installed it to see if one exists, and if so whether they can handle the paperwork to transfer it to her name. I had to go through that process with our system, and the people that installed our system knew what they needed to do.