Solar PV "Power failure"? Technicians in North East? Help!

Telegraph_Sam

Yes that looks as promising as anything so far many thanks.
I see that the source is susenergy. I came across them whilst pursuing one of my other avenues. I think their approach is to charge £120  for call out to locations covering quite a large geog area. 
If I could attach pics to these posts I would show people the "mini consumer unit" that my installer put up next to the Aurora. It has 2 MCB's  one of which after 13 years has suddenly started tripping - no obvious reason or pattern. Just "resetting" manually seems to bring about a (temporary) cure.
The problem is to decide if the fault is something that my local electrician can fix at a much lower cost, or if the nature of the thing warrants a full-scale blitz repair.
All suggestions gratefully received, many tks

QrizB

I'm assuming there's no RCD protection on these circuits?

There's three likely causes:

1. The MCB is old and knackered. My house was rewired 20 years ago and this decade I've had to replace 2 or 3 MCBs that decided they'd had enough.

2. A rodent has been chewing your wiring and there's an intermittent short.

3. Your Aurora inverter is in the process of shuffling off its mortal coil.

A friendly local sparky can deal with 1 or 2, but 3 will need a MCS certified solar installer as it's a modification to your FIT generating plant. (In principle your sparky can replace an inverter too, all the info is in the Wiring Regs, but you risk losing your FIT payments if your energy co or Ofgem find out).

Whether you try a sparky first is up to you.

Telegraph_Sam

I had hoped to attach pics of my RCD alongside the Aurora inverter from which the two individual MCBs' labels are visible. It's only one that trips. But it looks like attaching pics is pushing MSE technology too far (?). The RCD unit was fitted by the installer at the time of commissioning 13 years ago. Rather than call out a dedicated SV technician from afar at this stage, I'm speculating that a local sparky could test and fix cause 1. And cause 2 with or without the help of the vermin people. I hope such speculation is realistic. Tackling cause 3, (= the inverter is at fault??) sounds rather drastic when it appears that the inverter performs OK as long as it is being fed with a reliable power supply.

Telegraph_Sam

You are about to alert me to option 4:  Forget   ***ing around with tracer tests, just replace the dodgy MCB with a new one to the same spec. I'm guessing that there is more than "rating". And that they must be produced by the shed load in the FE. To different quality standards?

QrizB

Your option 4 is essentially my option 1

Unless you're comfortable taking the cover off your consumer unit and doing the necessary wiring, you're still going to need an electrician.

MCBs come in various varieties and you need to make sure you buy the right one. They're not universal. You might even want to switch to an RCBO (which also comes in numerous types).

Telegraph_Sam

Is there a way in which I could send / circulate a pic? From this you would see that the 2 MCB's are quite exposed not buried in the consumer unit. But even if it is a case of replacing like for like I would look for an electrician.
What is / what is he case for a "RCBO"?

QrizB

Telegraph_Sam said:

Is there a way in which I could send / circulate a pic?

Every time you reply, at the top of the "comment" box there's an icon that looks verso slightly like a landscape picture. That's how you add a photo to your comment.

Like this (I'm on mobile, it looks a little bit different on desktop):

Telegraph_Sam

"Body is 8 characters too short" and the system locks up. I've had this hassle before  ..

QrizB

You need to add some text with your photo.

Telegraph_Sam

This shows the MCB's next to the inverter