Re: [pvusers] PV inverter reliability

[Ron Byrd <byrdelc@directcon.net>]

subu.muthu@philips.com wrote:
>  
> I heard that PV inverter reliability
> is not good. i.e they fail within  five years.
> Is it true?. Is so, PV will not
> be a successful one considering the high investment cost.
>  
We have had to replace several inverters manufactured by different USA
manufactures. In some cases we have a 25% failure rate. They are fast to
replace the equipment however we eat the labor cost and in some cases the
shipping fees too. We can push this cost off to the customer however we
do not operate that way. From a business perspective too many trips out
to replace a failed inverter time after time will eventually out pace our
ability to recover our cost. Sooner or later we will have to charge someone
for unnecessary warranty service.

The SMA Sunny Boy is the latest rage of the industry. It is very efficient and seems to be a reliable product. I say seems to be because it has not been proven on our grounded power grid. However I suspect it is well engineered and there should be few failures. We have installed several units this year and we are very pleased with the inverters performance and ease of installation. Our production levels are up to 20- 40% more than other systems we have installed in the past.

The peak operating voltage of the Sunny Boy is 600 VDC with a 240VAC output. This is a component that needs to be installed by a professional. With DC voltages that high you need to have some insurance that all the equipment is properly installed. It is not the kind of thing that a beginner should experiment with.  

 
Does anybody - any PV owner have experience with PV inverter failure? What is
the actual failed component? Inverter or the PV module? What is the issue?

Please share your experience (anything you know). It will be very valuable to the PV community.
 

Subu./

--
Ron Byrd
Vice President
Sunstar Precision Energy Corporation
http://www.specenergy.com
" We turn SUNLIGHT into ELECTRICITY "