'no production' - solaredge inverter is down

[paris401]

here we are in the mist of the best production of the year to bank some excess, n on friday i check production on line at noon, n it says 'zero'- lucky i was at the house, check the inverter, n the 'fault' lite is lit- i call the installer, n he has me shut down n reboot the system n still zero - he says he will check with solaredge n they tell him they will do an update... no luck... now they say they will attempt again this morning... any clue what could be going on?? the system is 9.3, with i think a 10k inverter and the system is 5yrs old... the installer made an appt in case the update does not work, but its for may 3rd, so i'm losing 11days of production - not a happy camper...

[solarix]

Half the SolarEdge inverters I installed 8 years ago have failed. One of them just last week. Spent two hours waiting for SolarEdge tech support to call back. They have a call waiting system that is supposed to return your calls. I'm still waiting. Are you listening SolarEdge? You have a weak product and your tech support is overloaded. I'm sorry Paris401, this company is doing a disservice to the solar industry. I'm sorry I ever installed any of their stuff and certainty don't see any reason to try them again with their black-box, no-display philosophy.....

[RichardCullip]

Half the SolarEdge inverters I installed 8 years ago have failed. One of them just last week. ..... I'm sorry I ever installed any of their stuff and certainty don't see any reason to try them again with their black-box, no-display philosophy.....

I'm now starting my 3rd year with a small SolarEdge system (4kW w/SE3800H inverter) and, so far, knock on wood, it's been running with no problems. I would like to be informed about options when the time comes for my SolarEdge inverter to die. I'm curious about which inverters you are replacing those failed SolarEdge inverters with?

[solarix]

The thing with Solar Edge is they have a unique architecture that is incompatible with any other inverter system. You pretty much need to stick with that equipment until you can't take it anymore. it can be replaced with a standard string type inverters system (like SMA SunnyBoy) but the array has to be reworked and everything....
These optimizer systems really took off and gained market share a few years ago when the California market adopted the 2017 NEC - requiring "module level shutdown". Because this capability was inherent in Enphase and SolarEdge systems, they had a hand in pushing this negligibly safer requirement into the code and help these companies to become dominant in the industry. I fear a huge problem down the road as all these hard to service electronic modules located under hot solar arrays fail....

[paris401]

wow, thanks great news ... i have '2' systems installed sunpower 327's and 335's , and was told solaredge is the caddy of inverters... seems like they are turning into yugo's... when i called my installer on friday, he did call me back within 30mins to update me after talking to solaredge.... just checked the production for today... it is around 60F, a cool breeze, and online it says i generated 2.65kwh today, current power a big fat ZERO... presuming their software update does not work, i have to wait till may 3rd for the installers to come out - since the weather other then yesterday has been perfect, i'm prob going to lose 11 days of banking around 40 per day.... this sucks...

[solardreamer]

Half the SolarEdge inverters I installed 8 years ago have failed. One of them just last week. Spent two hours waiting for SolarEdge tech support to call back. They have a call waiting system that is supposed to return your calls. I'm still waiting. Are you listening SolarEdge? You have a weak product and your tech support is overloaded. I'm sorry Paris401, this company is doing a disservice to the solar industry. I'm sorry I ever installed any of their stuff and certainty don't see any reason to try them again with their black-box, no-display philosophy.....

Half!? Out of how many? Anecdotally it seems SE inverters don't seem to have good cooling.

[solarix]

Ok, went back through our records of the 2010-2011 time frame. 20 SolarEdge systems installed. 8 failures to date. These are the early generation one units so I imagine (hope) that the newer product is more reliable. But judging by the nature of the failure we've seen - I don't trust their engineering anymore. Definitely not the "caddy" of inverters...

[paris401]

well at least some 'good news'.... maybe... the installers are coming out today , to work out the problem - and i was told just in case, they are bringing another inverter- i didn't ask, but i will... if they replace my inverter, is the replacement new, used, or refurb....

[J.P.M.]

Seems to me I've been reading about SolarEdge problems from unhappy users who drank the kool-aid for several years now.

My bet is the bad product/service/ and the taste SolarEdge will leave and it seems continues to leave will put another nail in the coffin of residential PV next to the ones being put in by the POCOS that are realigning net metering.

[paris401]

Seems to me I've been reading about SolarEdge problems from unhappy users who drank the kool-aid for several years now.

My bet is the bad product/service/ and the taste SolarEdge will leave and it seems continues to leave will put another nail in the coffin of residential PV next to the ones being put in by the POCOS that are realigning net metering.

here on long island, if u have a system put in in 2019 or newer, u can bank all excess power made - unfort if u installed b4 2019, u have an anniversary date at which time anything u have banked , u get paid ... 2cents... when u buy its 23cents- my date was march, and last month they paid me for 780kwh that was in my bank... pity cause in the summer i could def use those hrs.... i will change my date to sept , as after the summer i always have zero in the bank...

[J.P.M.]

here on long island, if u have a system put in in 2019 or newer, u can bank all excess power made - unfort if u installed b4 2019, u have an anniversary date at which time anything u have banked , u get paid ... 2cents... when u buy its 23cents- my date was march, and last month they paid me for 780kwh that was in my bank... pity cause in the summer i could def use those hrs.... i will change my date to sept , as after the summer i always have zero in the bank...

Rant mode on.

Not ragging on you, and away from the SolarEdge discussion, but it seems to me - as it has from the beginning - that if a system were designed/sized so that there is a minimum of trueup excess - or better yet - sized with the goal of a reasonable probability of least overall life cycle cost to provide electrical service to a residence over a PV system's life considering life minimum cycle costs for PV and POCO power mix, all this hoopla and bitching about lousy reimbursement rates for excess generation would be less common.

Seems ironic to me that many folks go for system oversizing and then bitch about lousy reimbursements rates.
A front end easily avoided or at least easily minimized problem that was self inflicted.

Oversize all you want, just know the consequences and look in the mirror for who to blame when you find yourself behind the 8 ball.

Rant mode off.

Changing trueup dates won't change your annual excess/deficit. Annual weather and gross usage variations will.
What you gain/lose at the front end by changing a trueup date you'll lose/gain at the back end.

BTW, make sure you can change your trueup date. More & more POCOs are not allowing that any more.

[paris401]

Rant mode on.

Not ragging on you, and away from the SolarEdge discussion, but it seems to me - as it has from the beginning - that if a system were designed/sized so that there is a minimum of trueup excess - or better yet - sized with the goal of a reasonable probability of least overall life cycle cost to provide electrical service to a residence over a PV system's life considering life minimum cycle costs for PV and POCO power mix, all this hoopla and bitching about lousy reimbursement rates for excess generation would be less common.
Seems ironic to me that many folks go for system oversizing and then bitch about lousy reimbursements rates.
A front end easily avoided or at least easily minimized problem that was self inflicted.
Oversize all you want, just know the consequences and look in the mirror for who to blame when you find yourself behind the 8 ball.
Rant mode off.
Changing trueup dates won't change your annual excess/deficit. Annual weather and gross usage variations will.
What you gain/lose at the front end by changing a trueup date you'll lose/gain at the back end.
BTW, make sure you can change your trueup date. More & more POCOs are not allowing that any more.

thanks... when i was contemplating solar 5yrs ago, i spent a lot of time on this site, and remember you preaching 'solar for dummies' - which i bought and read- and accordingly tried to spec out the system to have no overage- since its a summer home, it gets little use after oct into march - the installer told me to have an ann. date of march , which i did- problem is all winter i am generating more kwh then i'm using so i get their $hitty payback - i called pseg a few weeks ago, and the nice lady looked at my usage, and advised me to change the date to sept as after aug, sometime in july we have zero in the bank, and actually most yrs have a elect bill - having 14tons of a/c eats up the bank real quick...
i remember you saying and the book saying get your usage down as far as u can with appliances/led's etc, n then spec out accordingly...

[paris401]

as to the solar edge discussion, the installers just left after 4hrs- they said the inverter was fine, but the 'area-code' was changed - i asked how could this be as of last wed it was producing like a champ, and since thursday....nothing... he said it mite have been a bad update from solar edge, but he was not sure... he said all panels r up n running... i would like to get to the bottom of what happened

[oregon_phil]

arf88 in post dated 4-13-2021,Titled "Solarege firmware update with SetApp are Settings retained?" confirmed with SolarEdge that parameters are retained during firmware update.

I don't know about you, but I have had devices perform incomplete firmware updates and become stuck in an unknown state.

[arf88]

I can't speak to how the software stack was written for SolarEdge inverters since I don't have the source code. But there is a very real possibility if there is no provisions or watchdog it could brick the device completely. Really only way to know is to ensure the system comes back online and produces on the spot after the FW upgrade.

If it is bricked bad enough you might need to send it back to any MFG where they use special tools to recover the system. At the end of the day it just comes down to how well the software was written and how the system overall was architected and designed. I know more and more as the industry has grown fonder of IoT in order to save themselves the bad PR and overhead for support have fail safes in place and design to ensure one the firmware is completely downloaded with some CRC check, followed by an update in a different memory sector to ensure if there is a failure during the update it will revert to existing firmware. Of course there is a million scenarios where things can fail even with the fail safe in place. The key is to make sure you don't have your end users being your active beta tester on released production products which in many cases companies opt to do just as such and start to lose customers due to their frustration. ie Netgear and their routers, Tesla FSD ...