I got a tracking number from Enphase for the replacement inverter indicating it should arrive next Monday (July 28). Interestingly, this one is shipping from Milpitas. I am relatively sure that the previous one (in early 2012) was shipped from HQ up in Petaluma.RegGuheert said:I guess I'm wondering if an RMA request triggers this firmware update *first* and if things "work", then they deny the RMA. Time will tell.ecoobsessive said:Almost three weeks after "we'll send those inverters right out" I still have not received them. "Time to contact Enphase for me, too
You may want to log into your Envoy locally and look at the inventory. For me, the good M190s have this firmware:
520-00008-r01-v01.04.04
The two "failed" inverters which are currently producing have this:
520-00008-r01-v01.08.00
Thanks! One more question: I've looked at the data for your array and it appears that you chose PV panels which do not ever cause the microinverters to limit at their full output power level. In fact, the highest ever average output I could find from the microinverters in your array was about 155W each. Perhaps they are connected to 190W or 200W PV panels, then? If so, perhaps the thermal cycling stresses are lower in your inverters, which could explain the fact that you have no failures on one of the oldest M190 arrays around.drees said:I have not noticed any changes in behavior with the last firmware update.
An earlier firmware update did fix an occasional ground fault false alarm that started affecting one inverter fall of last year.
I'd bet that it's getting drop-shipped directly from Flextronics, the company Enphase outsources all their manufacturing to - they have a manufacturing facility there.RegGuheert said:I got a tracking number from Enphase for the replacement inverter indicating it should arrive next Monday (July 28). Interestingly, this one is shipping from Milpitas. I am relatively sure that the previous one (in early 2012) was shipped from HQ up in Petaluma.
Yes, I'm using 180W ET-M572 panels. The highest 5 minute power production was around 180W, but that doesn't happen often and usually happens on a mostly clear, cool day between May-June after cumulus clouds pass by.RegGuheert said:In fact, the highest ever average output I could find from the microinverters in your array was about 155W each. Perhaps they are connected to 190W or 200W PV panels, then? If so, perhaps the thermal cycling stresses are lower in your inverters, which could explain the fact that you have no failures on one of the oldest M190 arrays around.
Hah! I'm not personally worried all that much about it as I'm already about half-way to break-even on the system. If I start seeing any significant failure rates I'll probably take the time to upgrade a string of the inverters to M215-IG or M250 inverters and install some bigger panels.RegGuheert said:(Hopefully I won't jinx you by talking about this! I wrote this post in a whisper in hopes your M190s won't hear it! :lol: )
One option is to change your main breaker to 90A to allow 30A of solar back feed into the 100A paneldrees said:can backfeed 20A worth of inverters into the 100A panel
Not going to happen - already have 40A EVSE, 30A A/C heat-pump, 30A dryer, 50A range. Running load calcs puts me right up at 100A.wwhitney said:One option is to change your main breaker to 90A to allow 30A of solar back feed into the 100A paneldrees said:can backfeed 20A worth of inverters into the 100A panel
With the 2011 LEAF, you can replace the 40A breaker for the EVSE with a 20A breaker. I'm not sure how much that buys you, though. Of course, that workaround is only good until you try to charge a different EV with a higher-power OBC. (That is, unless you can also program the EVSE to limit its output to 16A.)drees said:Not going to happen - already have 40A EVSE, 30A A/C heat-pump, 30A dryer, 50A range. Running load calcs puts me right up at 100A.wwhitney said:One option is to change your main breaker to 90A to allow 30A of solar back feed into the 100A paneldrees said:can backfeed 20A worth of inverters into the 100A panel
The new inverter arrived yesterday, just as expected. I installed it this morning. It took about an hour and a half and all seems to be working properly. I will try to make some comparisons of the electricity production versus the previous microinverter once I have some data.RegGuheert said:I got a tracking number from Enphase for the replacement inverter indicating it should arrive next Monday (July 28).
I wonder if/when the M190 microinverters in our system will be updated to the version that drees has installed in his.drees said:FWIW, my M190s are all running 520-00008-r01-v01.07.00 and were updated in late May this year.
Any word on your replacements, yet?ecoobsessive said:Almost three weeks after "we'll send those inverters right out" I still have not received them. "Time to contact Enphase for me, too
FWIW, I just noticed that the microinverter that was just replaced is the same inverter which recorded the highest temperature ever in this array. Note that 149F is the same as 65C, which is the upper limit for this inverter. In other words, it was not operated out of its specified range.RegGuheert said:You can see my array in the link in my signature, including photographs.
The hottest inverter is under a panel in the top row of the garage, third from the right. Here is the data again from the week containing the hottest day last year: July 6, 2012:
(The new Enlighten website refuses to put Y-axis information on their graphs for anything other than power. But by poking around, I have figured out that the scale for temperature in Fahrenheit is one-half that shown for Power Produced (W). In other words, if you see 250 on the scale, you read the temperature curve as 125F.)
O.K. I have also bolded the second inverter in this list. I just happened to look at the event log today and I noticed that more than one inverter was showing the "GridGone" event which is indicative of the "limp-along" firmware that I had previously received for one of the inverters which was malfunctioning. So I looked at the inventory and discovered that inverter 121045415714 had received this firmware update on August 2, 2014 without any communication between Enphase and me.RegGuheert said:The inverter that is bolded above failed this morning at about 8:00AM. So I didn't get the order correct, but the failure did occur in the 10% of the original array that I had recently identified as suspect due to their high power generation.RegGuheert on July 5 said:Based on this little factoid, I am going to make the following predictions:
- The next inverter to fail in our PV array will be 121045414066. This inverter is in the garage array, top row, second from the left.
- The second inverter to fail in the future in our PV array will be 121045415714. This inverter is in the house array, middle row, third from the left.
- The third inverter to fail in the future in our PV array will be 121045414823. This inverter is in the garage array, top row, fifth from the left.
- The fourth inverter to fail in the future in our PV array will be 121045415782. This inverter is in the house array, bottom row, second from the left.
Glad to hear you finally got them replaced! I think this explains why they agreed to send out replacements so quickly: The D380s were pretty bad. (Well, that and the Texas accent! ) I guess they want them all out of the field. In fact, Enphase paid to have a crew replace ALL of one customer's D380s with M215s. That may have been discussed upthread.ecoobsessive said:The replacements from Enphase arrived a couple of weeks ago and I was finally able to get them replaced last week. Turns out I actually had the 380s, not 190s. From re-reading this thread I see that the 380s are even more problematic than the 190s, and that those installed in mid 2011 had the most problems. Guess when was my original installation: June 2011! They sent 190s to replace the 380s.
Since the D380s are duals, I have you at 8 out of 24 failed, or 33%. Your system's MTBF is now down to about 10 years.ecoobsessive said:Then I had 2 more go out (only produce for a few hours in the morning) so the new installer put in a ticket for that. And I have several more that go out - down to zero -for a few minutes every day. My new installer is going to see if Enphase will go ahead and allow all of my 380s to be replaced with 190s since I'm approaching 30% failure for the entire system.
There is no excuse for that kind of sloppiness. I'm glad your new installer is cleaning things up.ecoobsessive said:Interesting thing is that the 2 that were only producing for a few morning hours recently started to work all day again, then went back to very low production, and then are normal again today. I haven't been able to check software/firmware updates but I may try to look into that when I have time. Other problem is that my original installer had gone out of business so I had to find a new installer, also the original installer did not map the inverters correctly on the map so my new guy had to spend a lot of time looking for the serial numbers and then fixing the map.
I have two of those right now and they seem to be holding their own versus their neighbors. I'm on board with this since it reduces the number of replacements I need to do. Some of the inverters will be quite difficult to replace.Weatherman said:I have six out of my thirty, m190 micros doing the "grid gone" thing and dropping power back on a routine basis. Enphase refuses to replace any of them.
Interestingly, I have a microinverter that has been "dead" since last Thursday, August 28, with a "DC Power Too Low" event. Enlighten shows no production from that inverter since about 1:50PM that day. What is interesting is that this inverter is easily visible from the driveway and I can see a blinking green light, which means it is producing power and communicating with the Envoy. What is also interesting is that I *think* this is the inverter which I disconnected briefly on June 29 in order to determine the polarity of the PV panels for my field project. (I know the date since I forgot to turn that portion of the array back on all that day! ) I wonder if that had any bearing on this problem. I'm going to disconnect and reconnect that one this evening just to see if that changes anything.Weatherman said:They did, however, offer a replacement on a micro which dropped to zero power on a "DC Power Too Low" event.
O.K. I've updated the spreadsheet to show 5 replacements and the note says 6 on "limp-along" firmware.Weatherman said:That one will be replaced on Thursday, this week. This will be the second micro replacement under that panel location. The first one lasted from June 2012 to October 2013. The second one lasted from October 2013 to early this month. I've had three others replaced, in different panel locations, so this will be replacement number five in a little over two years.
Enphase uploaded the "limp-along" version of the firmware to the newly-failed inverter yesterday evening and it is reporting "Grid Gone" events today, but it also still gives "DC Power Too Low" events and has not produced over 20W all day. As such, I expect Enphase will RMA this one, too. Fortunately, this should be one of the easiest inverters to replace in the entire array.RegGuheert said:Interestingly, I have a microinverter that has been "dead" since last Thursday, August 28, with a "DC Power Too Low" event. Enlighten shows no production from that inverter since about 1:50PM that day. What is interesting is that this inverter is easily visible from the driveway and I can see a blinking green light, which means it is producing power and communicating with the Envoy.
I was wrong about this. I had disconnected the inverter NEXT TO the one which just failed. (I can tell because when I disconnect an inverter with the MC4 tool that I have, I inevitably break the thin plastic on the Amphenol connectors that came on the M190s. I'm glad that Enphase decided to go with true-blue Multi-Contact MC4s on the M215IGs that I recently installed. I have sometimes wondered if the selection of non-standard MC4 connectors might be leading to some of the M190 failures.)RegGuheert said:What is also interesting is that I *think* this is the inverter which I disconnected briefly on June 29 in order to determine the polarity of the PV panels for my field project. (I know the date since I forgot to turn that portion of the array back on all that day! ) I wonder if that had any bearing on this problem.
I did that on Monday morning, but it did not make any difference, so I emailed Enphase at that time.RegGuheert said:I'm going to disconnect and reconnect that one this evening just to see if that changes anything.
That's good! DesertDenizen also reports very good results with his SunnyBoy string inverters:pchilds said:I have a 11 year old and 7 year old string inverter, neither has any problems.
Unfortunately, some of the M190s appear to have a failure mode which is greatly foreshortening their lives. I doubt it is a bad component. I suspect it is an improper design of a solder pad which is causing a failure after a certain number of cycles.DesertDenizen said:I have a 4k system with BP Solarex Amorphous panels. It is a 10 year old system, back then it required 120 panels! But in 10 years I have had no maintenance and it is working just fine.
So far I have not damaged the roof to the point of needing a repair while replacing a microinverter. That task is *much* easier on the roof than installing the array the first time around.pchilds said:If they do fail, I don't have to have someone go up on my roof, to do the repair and then hire a roofer, to fit the damage they did to my roof.
Ding ding ding! I'm loving my Outback as well. :lol:pchilds said:I have a 11 year old and 7 year old string inverter, neither has any problems. If they do fail, I don't have to have someone go up on my roof, to do the repair and then hire a roofer, to fit the damage they did to my roof.
I just got the shipping confirmation for the latest replacement M190 that Enphase sent out to me. Interestingly, it appears from this document that Enphase may have redesigned the M190 to include similar electronics to their latest-generation M215IG and M250IG microinverters, except with M190-compatible packaging. Here is what I see:RegGuheert said:I need to find a way to get Enphase to replace my failed units with M215s so that I am not replacing them with units which will suffer the same fate several more times within the warranty period.
From the latest replacement microinverter shipping confirmation:Item: M190-72-240-S12 Item description: 72 cells, 240VAC, Locking
This is a very good sign, as it might mean that the replacement M190s may now be using the same design as the new M215IGs that come with a 25-year warranty. If that is the case, while I may still have to replace each and every M190 as they fail, it is possible that they will be replaced by units that have a real 25-year life and possibly a much higher MTBF, as was stated on the original M190 datasheet ("MTBF of 331 Years").Item: M190240-M190IG-R Item description: M190 240V to M190-IG RMA kit
O.K. Thanks for the confirmation!Weatherman said:The last two m190s I received as replacements were a slightly different model that all the others I have installed.
But then I remembered something that I hadn't considered: The old M190s only have three wires in their attached cables: L1, L2 and N. The fourth wire and pin is vacant for the single-phase versions of the inverters. But the pigtail used to wire the string into the junction box includes that extra pin that would be required for bringing ground into the units. So the question I have is whether or not the new inverter has *only* the integrated ground and not the grounding lug which was found on the old units. If that is the case, then I will need to do two things to ground the new inverter:RegGuheert said:I know that when I installed the M215IGs recently, I had to attach ground to the wiring that goes to the microinverters. I suspect I will have to do the same thing with the new M190IG that is coming. In any case, it is an easy change.
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