Enphase field MTBF: M190: ~36 Years M215: ~316 Years M250: >357 Years

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SageBrush said:
Reg,
Do you know details about the 1500 watt supply from the PV when the grid-tie is down ?

I'm wondering what extra needs to be bought/installed to have the feature,
and whether the power can be sent into the home automagically.

Addendum:
One SE csr told me this feature is unheard of;
The second one said it has been delayed.
We discussed this feature briefly over on the SolarEdge HDWave thread. I would love to have something like that, even if it was just a plug on the front of the unit.
 
RegGuheert said:
Yeah, it looks like it may have been shipped using FedEx "SmartPost". FedEx always pads their estimate by a day to cover for the U.S. Postal Service. Since the package is now in the local area, I expect it will be delivered tomorrow instead of Thursday. We'll see.
Well, it DIDN'T go FedEx "SmartPost", but FedEx still managed to hold the package for an additional day. Here is the last bit of the package's travel history:
Code:
20170209 - Thursday
- 7:03 AM: On FedEx vehicle for delivery       Winchester, VA
- 6:08 AM: At local FedEx facility             Winchester, VA
- 6:08 AM: At local FedEx facility             Winchester, VA
20170208 - Wednesday
- 8:52 PM: Departed FedEx location             Hagerstown, MD
- 2:53 PM: Arrived FedEx location              Hagerstown, MD
- 9:51 AM: In transit                          Hagerstown, MD
20170207 - Tuesday
- 9:50 PM: In transit                          Hagerstown, MD
- 6:36 AM: In transit                          Hagerstown, MD
20170206 - Monday
- 6:29 PM: In transit                          Cambridge, OH
- 5:24 AM: In transit                          Waynesville, MO
...
Note that it sat in Hagerstown, MD, from AT LEAST 6:36 AM Tuesday until 8:52 PM Wednesday. It certainly could have been sent down to Winchester, VA, on Tuesday night instead of Wednesday night. I had always thought that holding packages was one of the cardinal sins of logistics since it meant having additional warehouse space. Perhaps I misunderstood.

It's no big deal since I really only need it here for the cardboard box for shipping the broken unit out. The new M215IG will go directly into storage as a cold spare.

Again, I am happy to have the spare because it is cold and windy outside today so it was nice to have installed the spare when the air was still and pleasant. If you did your own Enphase install, then my recommendation is to pick up a single spare from eBay to have on hand. You can get a NEW fourth-generation inverter (M215IG or M250) shipped for right around $100 today, if not less.
 
RegGuheert said:
Well, it DIDN'T go FedEx "SmartPost", but FedEx still managed to hold the package for an additional day.
I've seen similar, that the last leg to the destination can take days. I agree with you that it feels like a bug in the system. That, or FedEx is playing games to encourage use of more expensive options.
 
FedEx delivered the inverter to the wrong house. :evil: I wonder which of my neighbors' houses received my M215IG. Hopefully it is "at front door" with a covering overhead. Otherwise it is getting buried in snow as I type.
 
RegGuheert said:
FedEx delivered the inverter to the wrong house. :evil: I wonder which of my neighbors' houses received my M215IG. Hopefully it is "at front door" with a covering overhead. Otherwise it is getting buried in snow as I type.
My neighbor across the street brought it over right after I called FedEx.

Anyway, the unit was manufactured in week 50 of 2016, which was a bit of a surprise to me. Perhaps Enphase has not commenced manufacture of the S230s yet? This unit came in a different box than all previous inverters, even though it is physically the same as the last two M190IGs which I received in 2016. The only differences are that it does not have the extra cable included (which would easily fit in this box) and it does not need to hold an old-style M190 for the return trip.

This unit is a replacement for an M215IG which was manufactured in week 45 of 2015, so it is just over one year newer. That said, the assembly part number has changed between the two:

1215450XXXXX: 880-00100-r15
1216500XXXXX: 880-00179-r11

The only difference I can notice is that the peelable label containing the serial number is rotated 90 degrees from the older unit.
 
TickTock said:
You can add the following to your dBase:\

location: AZ, Queen Creek
PV Module Power: 260
# inverters: 42
Type: M250
Activation date: 1/18/2017
Thanks! That looks like a nice system! I added it to my spreadsheet in row 164.

Your system has put the MTBF of the M250s just over 300 years. Given the number of M250s we are currently tracking, we should have a pretty good number for the M250s in the next couple of years.
 
I installed 24 - M190-72-240-S12 with 230w panels on my roof in 2012. Had 11 - M190-72-240-S12 die in 2016. Enphase replaced them with 11 -M190240-M190IG-R & M190-R-1
3 of the replacements M190240-M190IG-R died also in 2016. Enphase replaced them with 3 - M190240-M190IG-R.
That made a total of 14 - replacements in 2016.
I hoped 2017 would be better, but had 2 - M190-72-240-S12 die in 2 months & Enphase replaced them with 2 - M190240-M190IG-R.
I've had no problems with Enphase replacing them! Just the trouble of climbing on roof to replace the dead ones.
I live in Fl and wonder if the heat is a problem?
 
amperedave said:
I installed 24 - M190-72-240-S12 with 230w panels on my roof in 2012. Had 11 - M190-72-240-S12 die in 2016. Enphase replaced them with 11 -M190240-M190IG-R & M190-R-1
3 of the replacements M190240-M190IG-R died also in 2016. Enphase replaced them with 3 - M190240-M190IG-R.
That made a total of 14 - replacements in 2016.
I hoped 2017 would be better, but had 2 - M190-72-240-S12 die in 2 months & Enphase replaced them with 2 - M190240-M190IG-R.
I've had no problems with Enphase replacing them! Just the trouble of climbing on roof to replace the dead ones.
I live in Fl and wonder if the heat is a problem?
I'm sorry to hear about all the failures with your M190s. Your MTBF during 2016 is only 1.7 years, which is, by far, the worst MTBF I have recorded for Enphase microinverters.

I have just recently experienced the very first failure of any fourth-generation Enphase microinverter that I know of in January. (The three in my spreadsheet from North Syracuse, NY, were early-build M215s, which I believe contain third-generation electronics similar to the original M190s.) But you had 3 M190IG-Rs die in 2016. Those are fourth-generation inverters. As such, I have to believe that one of three things is occurring:
1) You get hit by lightning frequently (or perhaps you have nearby lightning strikes).
2) There are some issues with grounding in your system. (Even if your system does not have a problem in this regard, the Engage adapter which comes with the M190IG-R inverters does NOT have a way to carry the internal ground into the module AND there is no grounding lug on the inverter case, so I have wondered how these units manage to get grounded in most systems.)
3) Your PV modules have 72 cells instead of 60.

FWIW, another poster here from FL (Weatherman) has most of his M190s replaced a couple of years ago (2014?). Based on his experiences, I had predicted that I would have a spate of M190 failures in 2015. Fortunately, I was incorrect. Only one M190 failed in my system that year. I only had two M190s fail in 2016, but that is partially due to the fact that I replaced most of them with newer inverters in the middle of the year.

Can you please provide a link to your system so that I can add it to my spreadsheet (linked in my signature)?
 
location: FL
PV Module Power: 20-230 60cells / 4-240 60cells
# inverters: 25 24 & 1 spare
Type: M190
Activation date: 12/28/11

I'm electrician, inverters are grounded properly. I have a hospital grade surge suppressor on my electrical panel. We have many lightning strikes in this area, but haven't had any direct hits. The surge suppressor should take care of voltage spikes on my grid. All my panels or 60 cell.
In January 2016 I have been noticing an output drop in kilowatts over the last six months. I was using a TED 5000 that gave me a kilowatt output for my total system. I got on the roof and started checking the M1 90s and Saw that many of them had died. So I bought an envoy to check each M190. I replaced eight in January 2016. And you know my history from my last post.
 
amperedave said:
location: FL
PV Module Power: 20-230 60cells / 4-240 60cells
# inverters: 25 24 & 1 spare
Type: M190
Activation date: 12/28/11
Thanks. Can you please provide a link to your system's webpage? I do not add any systems for which I cannot see the website (mainly because when I come back to them later I want to be able to see which system it is).
amperedave said:
I'm electrician, inverters are grounded properly.
O.K. That convinces me that your original M190s were grounded correctly. But I'm also convinced that you CANNOT properly ground the M190IGs using the adapter cable which has M190 connectors on the ends and an Engage connector in the middle. Simply put, if your PV mounting rail is properly grounded with a Grounding Electrode Conductor, you can use a WEEB to provide the GEC to the metal plate on the new M190IGs. But there is NO WAY to connect the Equipment Grounding Conductor (EGC) to the new module. The reason is that the M190 cabling only carries Neutral, L1 and L2. The only way I know to properly provide the EGC to the fourth-generation modules is to replace the cabling with actual Engage cables (which include Neutral, L1, L2 and Gnd). I doubt this is a safety issue, but what I don't know is whether the inverter can be vulnerable to damage from nearby lightning if this wire is not connected to an EGC. (And I have a bit of trouble believing that it has NO function. If that were the case, it wouldn't be there at all.)

The real question is why three of your new, fourth-generation inverters have already failed. I wonder if the lack of an EGC might be related, but I certainly don't know.
amperedave said:
I have a hospital grade surge suppressor on my electrical panel. We have many lightning strikes in this area, but haven't had any direct hits. The surge suppressor should take care of voltage spikes on my grid. All my panels or 60 cell.
Sounds good.
amperedave said:
In January 2016 I have been noticing an output drop in kilowatts over the last six months. I was using a TED 5000 that gave me a kilowatt output for my total system. I got on the roof and started checking the M1 90s and Saw that many of them had died. So I bought an envoy to check each M190. I replaced eight in January 2016. And you know my history from my last post.
O.K. That explains a lot. Without an Envoy, it's pretty difficult to detect failures and very difficult to know which inverters are misbehaving unless you can easily see the light. So it appears that the first eight M190s had failed prior to 2016. Unfortunately, the number of the original M190s that you have had fail so far is not outside of normal, as you can clearly see by reviewing my spreadsheet. (Note that MOST of the M190 rows are no longer updated. You have to look at the "Date Analyzed" column to see which ones I can still update.)
 
Based on the recent reports of M190IG failures by amperedave, I finally broke down and added a section to my MTBF spreadsheet to track failures of the M190IG microinverters. Please have a look. If you have M190IGs or M19072IGs INSTALLED in your array that I did not list in the spreadsheet, please let me know about them, including when each was installed, if you know it.

Some notes about the spreadsheet and the results:

- We are currently tracking 29 M190IGs. I expect this number to grow with time as more M190s get replaced by M190IGs.
- The M190IGs have by far the lowest overall MTBF of ALL inverter types: only NINE YEARS. This is particularly concerning since they are being provided as replacements for the M190s which suffered from a too-low MTBF. OTOH, the three known failures were all in the same system, which brings up the possibility that those failures may not have been random. Perhaps those failures had a common cause such as lightning.
- The changes to the M190 section of the spreadsheet should improve the accuracy of the overall M190 inverter MTBF calculation, but they make it harder to figure out the MTBF for a given system. If you want to know the MTBF of ALL inverters in your system, you need to add all "Device Years" for both the M190s AND the M190IGs in the system and divide by the total number of "Failures" of all of those same rows.
- Another drawback of this change is that it reduces the accuracy of the MTBF calculation of the Envoys in M190 systems. I have not yet figured out a simple way to improve this.
- I did NOT include M190IGs that are currently used as spares. That includes two M19072IGs that I have and all M190IGs that belong to pclifton.

This might be a good time to update data for all inverter types. Please let me know the status of all rows you are tracking, along with the row numbers for each. TIA.
 
RegGuheert said:
but what I don't know is whether the inverter can be vulnerable to damage from nearby lightning if this wire is not connected to an EGC. (And I have a bit of trouble believing that it has NO function. If that were the case, it wouldn't be there at all.)
snip...
I wonder if the lack of an EGC might be related, but I certainly don't know.
Hey RegGuheert:

Have you read of the sixth generation Enphase IQ inverters with the two-wire cabling system? I suppose a WEEB grounding washer might be involved there, but then again, not sure about the case material on the fifth generation inverters... Thoughts?

Ken Clifton

Edit: Apparently not, just watched their video, it looks like the grounding is happening in their junction boxes.
 
Ken Clifton has reported another failed M190 as well as the failure of his first M190IG that was installed just over two years ago. That brings the MTBF of M190IGs down to only 7 years! That's a pretty miserable result.

My last failure was in late January when I had the only failure of an M215IG that I know about. I have not had any failures of an M190 since last August. Of course I only have 12 M190s operating now.

The original M215s (non-IG) are doing very well so far, at over 450 years MTBF with 5 failures. (As an aside, I just got an email from a vendor indicating you can purchase cases of 12 of these inverters new for $59 per inverter.) The M250s are up to over 330 years MTBF with NO failures.

Please post and let me know how many new and total failures you have seen on all the systems you are monitoring. If you can reference row numbers in the spreadsheet, that will make it easier to find your system(s). Thanks!
 
Just tried to leave it in the "chat" on the spreadsheet, I am the system on Line 202 in Santa Barbara and we have not had any problems with our S280s since installing on 11/28/16.
 
Line 195, no failures on any of my M250s. Haven't noticed any further issues with the Envoy-S CT-based metering. Seems to have stabilized.
 
SurfHawk said:
Just tried to leave it in the "chat" on the spreadsheet, I am the system on Line 202 in Santa Barbara and we have not had any problems with our S280s since installing on 11/28/16.
Thanks! Updated. I see it in chat, but I prefer it here so that there is a record.
ltbighorn said:
Line 195, no failures on any of my M250s. Haven't noticed any further issues with the Envoy-S CT-based metering. Seems to have stabilized.
Thanks! Updated.
 
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