Solar reliability

Soldato
Joined
14 Dec 2004
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Thought I'd ask others as we've had a few issues.

System installed in Nov 2017, Tigo optimisers and Solax inverter.
I noticed around 2022 that the system wasn't producing max power, looking into it a bit more, a few years before I noticed, a Tigo box had blown, then a couple more a bit later.
I think it was 3 or 4 in total. Loosing out on a few years of generation.

With our installer, after the first year install you have to pay for them to come out. But I had a lot of arguments with them first, was also in my pack that it's £250 a call out, but years on it was £325.

I paid, they turned up, the guys agreed it was faulty, albeit the office didn't believe me.

The whole system was replaced with solar edge, as they no longer dealt with Tigo. Bargain I thought....

Roll onto now, just under 2 years on, bang, inverter blown.

2nd failure in around 7 years!

Solar edge have confirmed the inverter is faulty and sending me a replacement, then the installer can come out and swap it, for a charge! They said £325, but agreed to a discount, so it will be £150, as we've had previous issues.

Still not great, around £500 spent on repairs in 7 years. And how long will the next inverter last!?

What other issues have you lot had?
 
I think for the SE inverter to blow you've just been really unlucky. Have you got the one with the 10 year warranty?
Yeah it's covered, parts are free, but have to pay some labour.

We've had a few SE inverters have issues at work, not 100% sure what though. Don't think any have been fully replaced.
 
I was looking into this sort of thing at the start before I got as far as engaging with quotes as I wanted to understand it all before salesmen entered the chat.

The info and data is a little sketchy but the decision I came to was that almost all solar issues were inverter based.
It was something like a 2.5% per year chance of failure, compounding year on year from what I could dig up.
Importantly that was consistent across single/hybrid and individual panel (optimisers whatever) and as such I quickly decided against any local panel stuff as the risk over say 10 years was so high.
Since then I have seen a few installers will slide them up under the felt and make them accessible from inside. So I would do this and make it a requirement if I was going that way.

You seem unlucky with the SE one. Thats from what I can tell good kit generally.
I would however be starting to wonder about the competency of the installer, electric and water don't play nicely together and the most common cause of electrics failing outside is water ingress.
Whilst that should be basically impossible for a well installed solar, if they are not paying proper attention to the connectors they could be allowing long term risk to increase.

There is an electrics company on youtube I watch and he has mentioned before not all solar connectors are the same. They tend to quote a connector, but that is actually a branded one, the rest are copies in effect.
Mixing them is a very bad idea. Fine if its bot parts from the same manufacturer, but dont mix manufacturers directly together eh if one part fails of a two part connector.
If they've messed anything up on the roof and that caused the inverter to go, they'll have to go up and sort that too.
I'm not sure how to check a SE string, with optimisers? I didn't think they gave out a variable DC voltage based on sun light? The other day it was only putting down 12v, but it was poor light levels.
Though I'll leave it to them to sort.
 
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