Why has my production dropped off...?

[dahur]

Four years ago I had my 3.6KW ground mount system installed here in New Mexico. It's been working great, and has covered over 100% of my power requirements, (grid tied-no battery back up). 16 225w Schott panels, each backed with an EnPhase micro inverter. This time of year on a clear day, I get 24-25 KW, with a high of 3.18KW per hour. I happened to check my monitoring, and the last 7 days, the hourly topps out at 2.23KW, and the daily has been 20KW. It hits 2.23KW and won't go any higher. I've turned off the disconnect switch a couple times..no change. Any ideas what might be wrong before I call the company...? I could understand if one or two inverters/panels showed a problem...but they're all producing about the same. An actual count from the REC meter over a 24 hour period verified the 20KW per day, when it should have been 24-25KW.

[silversaver]

weather or... If you have your solar for 4 years already, then you can reference yourself... degrading? time to wash the panels?

[Ian S]

Looks like clipping somehow but as you say you see it in all the panels. Can you go back further in time and see if this happened suddenly or gradually? I'd be calling the company about it as something is clearly amiss.

[dahur]

Looks like clipping somehow but as you say you see it in all the panels. Can you go back further in time and see if this happened suddenly or gradually? I'd be calling the company about it as something is clearly amiss.

Yes, when I go back farther than 7 days ago, all is normal. One day it produced as was expected..the next it plateaued at 2.23KWH. No gradual decline...as in dirty panels. It happened overnight.

[Ian S]

BTW, I use a great little free program called screenhunter to do screen captures to jpeg files. Just be careful when installing to avoid having unwanted programs installed.

[silversaver]

It will be odd if *all* panels have sudden drop on the outputs.

naptown?

[dahur]

It will be odd if *all* panels have sudden drop on the outputs.

naptown?

That's what appears to have happened, which is mystifying to me. There's a bottleneck somewhere in the system.

[pleppik]

This sounds really odd to me, and I would make sure you rule out a problem with the monitoring tools. I could see how a problem with the software or displays could either make this happen, or make it really confusing about what's really going on.

Multiple simultaneous failures (or degradations) are extremely improbable. It's much more likely that something has gone wrong in the single common point of the system, which is the monitoring.

Have you called Enphase tech support?

[Ian S]

It's much more likely that something has gone wrong in the single common point of the system, which is the monitoring.

Except his REC meter which I assume is a separate physical meter confirms the lower output.

[pleppik]

Except his REC meter which I assume is a separate physical meter confirms the lower output.

In which case, it's more likely that a single microinverter failed and he's not interpreting the monitoring correctly, than that multiple microinverters simultaneously cut their output.

[Ian S]

In which case, it's more likely that a single microinverter failed and he's not interpreting the monitoring correctly, than that multiple microinverters simultaneously cut their output.

One failed micro out of 16 should not result in a 16-20% loss of output. This is a mystery that the installer will have to diagnose but I'll be interested to hear what they find.

[dahur]

Yesterday, I e-mailed the company that installed my system. Their support guy called me right back, and said he was calling EnPhase as soon as we hung up, and he would call me back today. He has access to my monitoring, and confirmed I have an issue. He reassured they would take care of it.

[dahur]

It's fixed. I just got the call, he had me go to my monitoring, and sure enough it was coming in at 2.73@11:05am. Remember I was topping out at 2.23 for the last week. He said EnPhase had mistakenly done an blanket software upgrade, that should only have been done to select customers. My system had no problems..they hit me with the upgrade I didn't need, and it cut my production on all the micro inverters. They put me back to the old firmware, and it corrected my issue.

[Ian S]

It's fixed. I just got the call, he had me go to my monitoring, and sure enough it was coming in at 2.73@11:05am. Remember I was topping out at 2.23 for the last week. He said EnPhase had mistakenly done an blanket software upgrade, that should only have been done to select customers. My system had no problems..they hit me with the upgrade I didn't need, and it cut my production on all the micro inverters. They put me back to the old firmware, and it corrected my issue.

That sounds like they have the capability to remotely turn off/reduce your production. Interesting.

[Naptown]

Four years ago I had my 3.6KW ground mount system installed here in New Mexico. It's been working great, and has covered over 100% of my power requirements, (grid tied-no battery back up). 16 225w Schott panels, each backed with an EnPhase micro inverter. This time of year on a clear day, I get 24-25 KW, with a high of 3.18KW per hour. I happened to check my monitoring, and the last 7 days, the hourly topps out at 2.23KW, and the daily has been 20KW. It hits 2.23KW and won't go any higher. I've turned off the disconnect switch a couple times..no change. Any ideas what might be wrong before I call the company...? I could understand if one or two inverters/panels showed a problem...but they're all producing about the same. An actual count from the REC meter over a 24 hour period verified the 20KW per day, when it should have been 24-25KW.

Did the revenue grade REC meter agree with the Enphase monitoring during the same time? They are separate items and reading the same should mean that the system had something going on that you didn't see on Enlighten