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

[RegGuheert]

From the "jagged production curves" thread:

So from the public page you can monitor and see when a micro inverter fails?

That was true until September 3, 2013. Before that date, I could gather enough information from the public pages to identify failures. On that date Enphase reduced the amount of data which was available on every system's public page. As a result, I now depend on reports from owners or friends of owners to know how many failures a given system has experienced.

Feel free to add mine. It’s a brand new system.

John

Thanks, John! I added your system as Row 238 in the spreadsheet. Please check the details I wrote there to ensure they are correct. If you want me to keep up with your system's reliability, please drop a note into this thread occasionally and let me know how many failures you have had, even if there have been none. There is no need to do that regularly, as MTBF data accumulates very slowly. But if you do it every year or so that's fine. Please identify which row your system occupies at the time you make the report. TIA!

Congratulations on your new system!

[RegGuheert]

Let's see if I can get any M190s to fail during the summertime this year.

Wow! That was fast! One of the M190s is now reporting a "Hardware Failure".

My evil plan is working!

That one inverter had a hardware failure almost the entire first day it was back in service. None since then. These M190s with the latest firmware are much less likely to die than they used to be, but they still frequently give slightly less power than normal and report "Grid Gone" errors.

Let's see how they do this summer...

[RegGuheert]

I may have just experienced the first failure of a four-generation inverter including an integrated ground. (To my knowledge, all failures of M215s that I have recorded to date were the early ones without the "IG" suffix.) I currently have four of the latest-style fourth-generation M215IGs on my roof that include the metal case. They were built in week 45 of 2015. One of those four inverters malfunctioned yesterday. It had a dropout at about 12:30 PM with no event recorded in the log. Then at about 2:00 PM it stopped producing power. About an hour later it reported "DC Power Too Low" in the event log and did not produce any power for the rest of the day.

That was the first failure of an M215IG that I experienced and I have now had a second one fail on Wednesday of this week, June 20, 2018. This failure was also from that first group of four M215IGs which I purchased which came a metal case. (The 24 M215s I had purchased prior to those had come in plastic cases.) I will call Enphase on Monday to report this failure.

As a result of this failure, I decided to pull out those M215s in metal cases and put them into their own row (as if I didn't have enough rows in my spreadsheet for my system already!). They currently live in Row 137 of my MTBF spreadsheet. Those four inverters were put into service just two years ago, so they have a miserable MTBF of only 4 years now. That contrasts with the 12 M215IGs with plastic cases that have early 2014 date codes which I purchased from QueenBee and installed four years ago. Those have experienced no failures after 48 device-years of operation. I also have 12 more plastic M215IGs built in the middle of 2014 which have experienced no failures even though they were installed at the same time and on the same roof as the metal units. Finally, in March 2017, I installed one additional M215IG with the metal case with a date code at the very end of 2016 which has not failed. (Coincidentally, the replacement Enphase sent me for the previously-failed unit has a date code very close to the one for this unit.) In other words, the MTBF of the *plastic* M215IGs on my roof is still undetermined with over 72 device-years of service while the MTBF of the *metal* ones is (somewhat) established at only about five years.

I also have nine M250s in the plastic cases which have operated flawlessly for the past two years. But in 2017 I purchased 24 M250-72s in metal cases. Only 12 of those have been in service and only for about 5 months, so I only have about five device-years on those inverters. No failures so far.

I'm hopeful that all of my metal-can fourth-generation Enphase inverters are not as bad as that first batch of four that I purchased!

Does anyone else out their have M215IGs or M250s (either 60- or 72-cell) with metal cases on your roof?

[ltbighorn]

Does anyone else out their have M215IGs or M250s (either 60- or 72-cell) with metal cases on your roof?

All of my row 220 M250s have metal cases and are still operating without issue.

[RegGuheert]

Does anyone else out their have M215IGs or M250s (either 60- or 72-cell) with metal cases on your roof?

All of my row 220 M250s have metal cases and are still operating without issue.

Thanks! I updated the spreadsheet on the day you posted this, but I forgot to respond until today. Your update put the M250s over 400 device-years without a single recorded failure. Pretty impressive, especially when we consider that some of them have been in service for over four and a half years.

[RegGuheert]

I may have just experienced the first failure of a four-generation inverter including an integrated ground. (To my knowledge, all failures of M215s that I have recorded to date were the early ones without the "IG" suffix.) I currently have four of the latest-style fourth-generation M215IGs on my roof that include the metal case. They were built in week 45 of 2015. One of those four inverters malfunctioned yesterday. It had a dropout at about 12:30 PM with no event recorded in the log. Then at about 2:00 PM it stopped producing power. About an hour later it reported "DC Power Too Low" in the event log and did not produce any power for the rest of the day.

That was the first failure of an M215IG that I experienced and I have now had a second one fail on Wednesday of this week, June 20, 2018. This failure was also from that first group of four M215IGs which I purchased which came a metal case. (The 24 M215s I had purchased prior to those had come in plastic cases.) I will call Enphase on Monday to report this failure.

I received the replacement for this failed inverter yesterday, which was exactly one month after the failure date. About a week and a half of that month was a delay in reporting the failure on my part.

Right before I reported the failure, Enphase rolled out a new capability which, in theory, allows me to report failures directly from my Enlighten Manager webpage or from the Installer Toolkit. The automated voice told me this when I called in so I gave it a try. Unfortunately, I ran into no end of trouble and it did not work for me, so my experience with this failure was much worse than normal.

I got a call from a senior support specialist who asked a bunch of detailed questions. I replied immediately with the responses but he never replied, instead sending me an email saying that if I wanted help I needed to answer his questions. Very strange. Hopefully I can get to the bottom of the disconnect sometime next week.

Ultimately, I am looking forward to being able to request an RMA directly online. This will be a nice improvement to their support process.

On a related note, one of the M190s which I have in service this summer has a severe communications problem. It can only communicate when the sun is low on the horizon and it is producing less than about 10 W of power. But I can see that it DOES produce as much energy throughout the day as the neighboring inverters because its overall production matches. I suppose I cannot RMA this unit until it completely loses the ability to communicate.

[GetOffYourGas]

Update for line 153. I have now had the 8th M215 inverter fail, out of what was initially a 16-inverter system. It failed at 12:20pm on 7/21/18. The 7th failed inverter has not yet been replaced. This is the odd ball that suddenly started producing at about 15-20%. For example in the past 7 days, it has produced 1.2kWh whereas all of its neighbors have produced 6.8-7.4kWh.

[RegGuheert]

Update for line 153. I have now had the 8th M215 inverter fail, out of what was initially a 16-inverter system. It failed at 12:20pm on 7/21/18.

Thanks for the update. I have updated your entries by adding row 154. I calculate that your old-style M215s have operated for a total of 96 device-years. With 8 failures, that means they have an MTBF of only 12 years.

The 7th failed inverter has not yet been replaced. This is the odd ball that suddenly started producing at about 15-20%. For example in the past 7 days, it has produced 1.2kWh whereas all of its neighbors have produced 6.8-7.4kWh.

I don't understand why that one is not yet replaced. The last I heard from Enphase, they will replace when production drops below 80% of what is expected.

[GetOffYourGas]

The 7th failed inverter has not yet been replaced. This is the odd ball that suddenly started producing at about 15-20%. For example in the past 7 days, it has produced 1.2kWh whereas all of its neighbors have produced 6.8-7.4kWh.

I don't understand why that one is not yet replaced. The last I heard from Enphase, they will replace when production drops below 80% of what is expected.

I blame my installer. He came out and replaced one that was dead, and was supposed to replace this one too. I haven't checked too closely, but I think he might have replaced a working inverter instead.

[RegGuheert]

I blame my installer. He came out and replaced one that was dead, and was supposed to replace this one too. I haven't checked too closely, but I think he might have replaced a working inverter instead.

That stinks. But I shouldn't say anything: I did exactly that a couple of weeks ago when I replaced the M215IG that failed in my system. OTOH, I noticed the mistake before I left the roof.

drees mentioned early on in this thread that it appeared to him that some batches of inverters had manufacturing defects that others did not have. I have to say this is likely the best theory to explain why some systems have such a high failure rate while others in the same area hold up very well. In this case, your original-style M215s are showing a very high failure rate while others in your area on on my spreadsheet are not. Also, I have a batch of four M215IGs which are on my roof which have experienced two failures within two years while the other 25 M215IGs, which have been there even longer, have had no failures so far.

BTW, Enphase finally got rid of my 5-minute reporting. They did it under the guise of my Enovys "needing network security certificate updates". I granted them special access to the Envoy-Ss and this is what I got.

Perhaps I should switch back to my old-style Envoys for now since Enphase was unable to update them.