Stay away from SolarEdge inverter

[boxgranch]

Well, yeah… That would have been a better idea.

Although in my case, the Tesla guy pointing out that I could charge the panels with solar is what set the lightbulb off for me that I could completely go off grid until I got PTO. So lucky mistake.

You can turn the Powerwalls off, but all batteries have a discharge rate when they are just sitting around. Turning them off might reduce some of the overhead, but they will still self-discharge.

With a lot of effort, I managed to browbeat the Tesla solar person into connecting me with a Powerwall person who enabled grid charging to protect my Powerwalls when they went below 25%. I am still getting nothing from Tesla but finger pointing at SE and platitudes and have been down since 13 JUNE on my 3rd outage in 20 months of operation. Unhappy here. I was trying to get through to SE and have not yet succeeded.

 

[reddy]

Unhappy here. I was trying to get through to SE and have not yet succeeded.

That's really odd, because I've found Solar Edge to be easy to contact and work with. My hold time is usually 1 - 2 minutes, once it was 10 minutes. The amazing part is when I replaced the inverter (due to known issue with bad capacitors in 2017 era units) , they connected to them remotely and did all the configuration for me in a matter of minutes. Waiting the 5 minutes for them to reboot, sync up, and start producing was the longest wait of the whole affair.

 

[boxgranch]

That's really odd, because I've found Solar Edge to be easy to contact and work with. My hold time is usually 1 - 2 minutes, once it was 10 minutes. The amazing part is when I replaced the inverter (due to known issue with bad capacitors in 2017 era units) , they connected to them remotely and did all the configuration for me in a matter of minutes. Waiting the 5 minutes for them to reboot, sync up, and start producing was the longest wait of the whole affair.

My problem seems to be Tesla. They won't give me the information I need to setup a SolarEdge account and without that, you can't get through. I have tried multiple times. If you have an email address or phone number, please share!

 

[chudiddy]

My 3rd replacement failed again today! I'm sick of this stupid system and wish i never got it. Beyond frustrated and would rather Tesla rip the entire system out.

 

[reddy]

My 3rd replacement failed again today! I'm sick of this stupid system and wish i never got it. Beyond frustrated and would rather Tesla rip the entire system out.

Which model inverter do you have ?

 

[chudiddy]

Which model inverter do you have ?

SE11400H

 

[holeydonut]

My 3rd replacement failed again today! I'm sick of this stupid system and wish i never got it. Beyond frustrated and would rather Tesla rip the entire system out.

FWIW, I know someone who had a Tesla Energy (Solar City) system installed, and hated SolarEdge as well. So he had an installer put in Enphase Micros on everything instead. Yeah, he had to pay for the new inverters and the Enphase battery gateway for his new ESS, but he kept the old panels and racking.

Assuming your panels are still good, it's worth a consideration if you really want to move on.

If you have a PPA or lease, then I guess you're SOL.

 

[h2ofun]

FWIW, I know someone who had a Tesla Energy (Solar City) system installed, and hated SolarEdge as well. So he had an installer put in Enphase Micros on everything instead. Yeah, he had to pay for the new inverters and the Enphase battery gateway for his new ESS, but he kept the old panels and racking.

Assuming your panels are still good, it's worth a consideration if you really want to move on.

If you have a PPA or lease, then I guess you're SOL.

I have two and working great. I have had one fail, but quick replacement, NOT TESLA!!

 

[chudiddy]

FWIW, I know someone who had a Tesla Energy (Solar City) system installed, and hated SolarEdge as well. So he had an installer put in Enphase Micros on everything instead. Yeah, he had to pay for the new inverters and the Enphase battery gateway for his new ESS, but he kept the old panels and racking.

Assuming your panels are still good, it's worth a consideration if you really want to move on.

If you have a PPA or lease, then I guess you're SOL.

If I really wanted to, could I integrate a different inverter like the Enphase and pay out of pocket even if I have a PPA?

 

[holeydonut]

If I really wanted to, could I integrate a different inverter like the Enphase and pay out of pocket even if I have a PPA?

If you buy out your PPA first, then you can do whatever you want. While the PPA is active, it's likely that you cannot mess with the hardware without violating the terms of the lease.

The PPA is technically the property of Tesla or whoever owns the lease (Tesla could have sold or securitized the PPA and I have no clue who technically owns the collateral and income stream).

Almost every PPA I've seen is structured to the extent the homeowner has granted rights to use their roof to hold the solar assets; and the homeowner has to pay a certain amount for the privilege. In return, the homeowner gets to use the energy from the array and participate in the existing NEM agreements. There may or may not be a minimum production guarantee.

That's why the lease owner (not the home owner) gets the federal ITC and any other solar credits (SREC or others).

 

[jjrandorin]

If I really wanted to, could I integrate a different inverter like the Enphase and pay out of pocket even if I have a PPA?

There is virtually zero chance that purchasing that PPA out will make any financial sense. I have one as well, and have looked into it a few times. You dont own the system, so you wont be able to do anything like that either, without the owners permission, unless you buy it (just like a leased car, or leasing an apartment).

 

[JPP]

FWIW I have a 16kW 64 panel SolarCity (now Tesla Energy) PV system under a PPA from 2013. 4 SolarEdge inverters and Canadian Solar panels. A few years ago one of the SolarEdge inverters failed--Tesla replaced it no problem. A couple of months ago I was seeing isolation faults on one of my inverters. Tesla Energy came out. Turns out that several panels had water intrusion, due to bad adhesive sealant employed by Canadian Solar when making the panels. Tesla had some kind of backcharge agreement, and thus came out and replaced ALL of my panels with new Trina panels (better production), but used the old optimizer modules on the back of each panel (necessary with the SolarEdge inverters). A few weeks ago one of my SolarEdge inverters would not go out of Night Mode and thus no production. Tesla Energy came out again and determined that the optimizers were failing. Last week Tesla Energy sent out a crew of 6. They deinstalled my 10 year old SolarEdge inverters and installed 4 new Tesla liquid cooled inverters (white glass front), and then went up onto my roof to deinstall all 64 optimizer modules from the back of the panels (not needed with Tesla inverters). So I basically have a brand new system and still 10 years on my PPA. No $$ to me. All good.

 

[abp5070]

Tesla installed solaredge 7.6kw (SE7600H) yesterday on a 10.4kWH system. Is this ok or they should have installed one smaller inverter along with a bigger one? I don't know how the calucation works. I bought extended warranty from Solaredge's website for $233

 

[mongo]

Tesla installed solaredge 7.6kw (SE7600H) yesterday on a 10.4kWH system. Is this ok or they should have installed one smaller inverter along with a bigger one? I don't know how the calucation works. I bought extended warranty from Solaredge's website for $233

That seems par for the course. Sizing the inverter based on peak solar ouput may not be cost effective.
10.4kW (not kWh) of panels will rarely produce that much power.

 

[Yonki]

That seems par for the course. Sizing the inverter based on peak solar ouput may not be cost effective.
10.4kW (not kWh) of panels will rarely produce that much power.

Agree you’ll never see peak, but couldn’t a 10.4kW system could produce more than 7.6kW on a clear, sunny day? Guess It depends on panel orientation.

It wouldn’t be a large loss, probably less than 1 kWh on only those very sunny days (clipping the peak of the normal curve of solar distribution), but it is lost power.

 

[mongo]

Agree you’ll never see peak, but couldn’t a 10.4kW system could produce more than 7.6kW on a clear, sunny day? Guess It depends on panel orientation.

It wouldn’t be a large loss, probably less than 1 kWh on only those very sunny days (clipping the peak of the normal curve of solar distribution), but it is lost power.

Oh definitely it could produce more, but then you are carrying the extra cost of the inverter and potentially a loss of efficiency due to operating as less of capacity the rest of the time (especially if it's a second inverter).
So the typicall approach is to put a little more money into panels to widen the energy curve vs a higher $ amount into inverters to heighten the curve by removing clipping at peak solar production.