Any reports of Solar PV failure or required maintenance?

celerity

Many PV owners have had their systems for a year or more now, and I'm interested to know if there have been any failures or costly maintenance so far?

We've had ours for 18 months and so far everything is fine. The only maintenance I've done was to hose off some bird muck once, but I doubt I needed to do that.

The spectre of inverter failure is always looming though...!

It's probably a bit too early for most people to have any meaningful data for panel degradation, especially as 2011 was so much sunnier than 2012, but if anyone has any thoughts on that please share.

/\dam

rogerblack

Inverter prices are dropping, and are likely to continue doing so.
Without going into the details fully, a 1000W PC power supply contains many comparable components and circuits.
Four times this price is about 600.
This is not an unreasonable medium term price.

jimjames

We had an error crop up on our inverter when we were on holiday so lost nearly 2 weeks peak summer generation. In the end the error was fixed with a reboot of the inverter and has been fine since.

Cavemanu

Have had our PV system almost one year now. Last week, I noticed the generation meter was not displaying the screen readings and the red lights were not working during daylight hours.

I put this down to some EON workmen doing some remedial work on the streetlights in our street that day (thought PV array had been switched off remotely by the DNO to prevent reverse solar PV related current affecting workmen)

Later on when they finished work and had left, the generation meter still didn't display any readings. I checked the fuseboard / RCD box and found that the PV switch had tripped. I flicked it back on and hey presto, generation meter LED display was restored.

It had been raining, not sure if maybe there had been an increase in voltage or something otherwise electrical that caused PV to trip but it was OK. Just glad we check our pv generation regularly, it was a cloudy rainy november day so I doubt we lost much generation over the 5 hours the system was unavailable.

Otherwise, so far, <touch wood!> everything seems to be working fine.

Kernel_Sanders

rogerblack wrote: »

Inverter prices are dropping, and are likely to continue doing so.
Without going into the details fully, a 1000W PC power supply contains many comparable components and circuits.
Four times this price is about 600.
This is not an unreasonable medium term price.

Sorry Roger, I do not see how this info about the cost of inverters in any way addresses the concerns of the OP (who I suspect has thanked you only out of courtesy for the time you have expended )

Martyn1981

Kernel_Sanders wrote: »

Sorry Roger, I do not see how this info about the cost of inverters in any way addresses the concerns of the OP (who I suspect has thanked you only out of courtesy for the time you have expended )

KS whilst we hope that our inverters will last forever, it's a pretty sure bet that they'll fail somewhere in their second decade. So inverter cost and reliability do sort of (well, at least in my mind) come under maintenance - especially considering that there is almost no other anticipated wear and tear on a PV system.

I think!

Mart.

celerity

It was relevant to me - Roger was saying not to worry too much about inverter failure as the replacement cost will be way less than the original purchase price .

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Kernel_Sanders

celerity wrote: »

It was relevant to me - Roger was saying not to worry too much about inverter failure as the replacement cost will be way less than the original purchase price .

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That explains Roger's point. Of course, the cost of getting an electrician with Part P (or whatever level will be required then) to do the replacement will be a good deal higher.
Are there moving parts in the inverter, or is it just a case of components burning out? Mine's a Sunny Boy.

celerity

I don't think there are any moving parts but I'm no expert.
It was made very clear to me prior to investing in PV that inverters are only guaranteed for 10 years though, which is pretty telling. At some point there is going to be a flurry of posts on this forums from people with dead inverters!

Assuming there are no blown components elsewhere in the system, I can't imagine fitting a replacement inverter is a big job? I'd personally get someone who was familiar with the new model so any setup time after the physical wiring should be minimal.

/\dam

bengalknights

SMA and Schueco tend to have the most reliable inverters

rogerblack

bengalknights wrote: »

SMA and Schueco tend to have the most reliable inverters

It's extremely questionable if there are any meaningful statistics in this area at all.

Early failure rate is not always diagnostic of long term reliability.

Variation between models and batches will be significant.

If an inverter had lots of failures a couple of years in, the maker is extremely likely to check over the design in detail, and make upgrades, without changing the model number.