Enphase gives preview of new Enlighten website

[GeekEV]

I'm starting to wonder how many Enphase owners currently have failed modules that they do not know about because the failures are not particularly visible on the Enlighten website. I'm willing to bet it is not a trivial percentage of M190 owners.

On the main, graphical, display of your panel layout, wouldn't you see that failed modules as black panels because they're not producing anything?

[Nekota]

I just noticed another change in the past few weeks. I look at events history to see what fault activity is being reported and now that interface has changed. The events page now has "resolved" in place of history and a hard to see 'Filter' button (it looks like magnifying glass) that has to be pressed to update the page. It used to be when one selected history the page automatically updated with the history.

[RegGuheert]

I'm starting to wonder how many Enphase owners currently have failed modules that they do not know about because the failures are not particularly visible on the Enlighten website. I'm willing to bet it is not a trivial percentage of M190 owners.

On the main, graphical, display of your panel layout, wouldn't you see that failed modules as black panels because they're not producing anything?

Only if you switch the display from an "Energy" plot to a "Power" plot. If you have an intermittent problem, then you have to look at the right TIME when the power was low to see the problem whereas the energy plot makes such problems easier to find.

I just noticed another change in the past few weeks. I look at events history to see what fault activity is being reported and now that interface has changed. The events page now has "resolved" in place of history and a hard to see 'Filter' button (it looks like magnifying glass) that has to be pressed to update the page. It used to be when one selected history the page automatically updated with the history.

Thanks for that! I have always looked at events directly on the Envoy itself, which seems to limit them to 500. It's nice to be able to see a longer history.

[RegGuheert]

- There is no longer a per-module thermometer code (with different colors) that shows energy produced over the selected period. If you want to find failures, you need to carefully READ each and every energy number and compare them. IMO, this is a major step backwards in their UI. So, not only can I not see others' failed modules, it is also more difficult to see my own. It seems they are trying to hide them. (BTW, you can still see currently-failed modules in a different color in the thermometer plot of powers.)

Enphase responded a couple of days ago on this issue by saying it was a known problem and they are working on it. Looking at it today they have fixed the problem. That was pretty quick!

They also have finally responded to an old issue I had with my data and elevated it to engineering. Hopefully they will take care of this issue also.

[dsinned]

I suggested NUMEROUS times that they incorporate a calculated "efficiency" column in the listing of microinverters. This could simply reveal an average value (percentage) of output power to input power in watts, updated daily, hourly or upon command. This is really all ENLIGHTEN MANAGER needs for monitoring purposes to "flag" deficiencies of individual inverters. As far as I'm concerned, the means to monitor the measured average conversion efficiency of a micro inverter (typically spec'd 95% or greater) is paramount to the "health" of same. When an inverter falls well below this spec (say 85% or less) and remains that way over time, the end user should receive an "alert" of any such inverters failing to perform to spec. Of course, Enlighten Manager users can do this for themselves, but it is a rather tedious and time consuming data retrieval process to do all the calculations for each inverter especially in a large array, when the Enlighten software could easily automate and report the results for the system owner or Installer or leasing company. Of course, this will never happen because such a "feature" would expose Enphase to countless customer inquiries, potentially resulting in warranty claims (especially with respect to M190s).

[RegGuheert]

- Feedback tab on the right side of the screen is a very visible feature of the new website. It even used to accept feedback. But now it just sits there wasting real estate. Frankly, they never fixed any of the issues I reported using that tab in any case.

Enphase replied that it works for them and suggested that I clear my cache, try other browsers and other computers, and if that doesn't work, to then to contact the manufacturer of the computer if that doesn't work.

Anyway, none of that worked, but I did find what was causing the problem: I have a widget blocker called "Ghostery" on all of the PC browsers. That was blocking the feedback tab (through feedbackify.com) from launching.

[Nekota]

I suggested NUMEROUS times that they incorporate a calculated "efficiency" column in the listing of microinverters. This could simply reveal an average value (percentage) of output power to input power in watts, updated daily, hourly or upon command. This is really all ENLIGHTEN MANAGER needs for monitoring purposes to "flag" deficiencies of individual inverters. As far as I'm concerned, the means to monitor the measured average conversion efficiency of a micro inverter (typically spec'd 95% or greater) is paramount to the "health" of same. When an inverter falls well below this spec (say 85% or less) and remains that way over time, the end user should receive an "alert" of any such inverters failing to perform to spec. Of course, Enlighten Manager users can do this for themselves, but it is a rather tedious and time consuming data retrieval process to do all the calculations for each inverter especially in a large array, when the Enlighten software could easily automate and report the results for the system owner or Installer or leasing company. Of course, this will never happen because such a "feature" would expose Enphase to countless customer inquiries, potentially resulting in warranty claims (especially with respect to M190s).

There is a feature in Enphase where you can download the last 7 days of data {Date/Time, AC Voltage(V), AC Frequency (Hz), DC Voltage (V), DC Current (A), Temperature (?C), Power Produced (W)} which you are probably familiar with but it has to be done panel by panel and several steps to get that data to download. The data isn't always sampled at same time so the AC power to DC power can be different when the power level is changing. My calculations using those numbers are okay when the power level is changing slowly from 5 minute intervals. A graphical view can also be created by clicking on the panel you want to graph while in power mode.

[RegGuheert]

I see a slight change to the public websites today: When you load the page, you now get a splash screen which reads "Loading (e) MyEnlighten" with a progress bar. Other than that the sites look the same to me.

I seem to recall that there is some change to their business model which means that new customers now only get the "MyEnlighten" site and have to pay extra for the detailed site. Is that correct? (At the time, I really didn't know what "MyEnlighten" was, so what I read did not have meaning to me.)

They seem to be having problems with data on some sites today, as well.

[RegGuheert]

Enphase made another change to the public Enlighten websites this week: They removed the lifetime energy production for the site.

What are they thinking?

As it stands now, if I send someone to my public website to see the production of my system, they see neither the annual product nor the total production. The biggest roll-up of data is for a single month.

Personally, I think that makes it much harder for most people to get an idea of how much energy these systems produce. I think it would be much more "enlightening" for people to see 66.4 MWh and calculate that at the current rate of $0.12/kWh, that equates to $8000 of electricity production in less than five years' time!

[RegGuheert]

Enphase made another change to the public Enlighten websites this week: They removed the lifetime energy production for the site.

What are they thinking?

The lifetime energy production information is back. Musta been a bug.