How often do you need to reset your Sunpower PV Supervisor?

[dogunter]

I have had my Sunpowesr-based PV array up and running since 9/1 - one week now. In that time, the monitoring equipment has had to be reset twice and it is down again this morning. When the installer attempted to bring the system online last Monday he had already noticed a failed PV Supervisor and had to swap it out for a new one. On Friday it failed around 6pm and didn't come back until I went out and reset it by unplugging it, waiting a few seconds and plugging it back in. Yesterday, the same thing happened - 5 hours of data lost. It came back after I reset it again - long enough to get 2 updates through to the website. Then it went down again and is still down.

So I'm curious to see what sort of problems others have experienced on the monitoring side of things.

Thanks,
david

[J.P.M.]

I have had my Sunpowesr-based PV array up and running since 9/1 - one week now. In that time, the monitoring equipment has had to be reset twice and it is down again this morning. When the installer attempted to bring the system online last Monday he had already noticed a failed PV Supervisor and had to swap it out for a new one. On Friday it failed around 6pm and didn't come back until I went out and reset it by unplugging it, waiting a few seconds and plugging it back in. Yesterday, the same thing happened - 5 hours of data lost. It came back after I reset it again - long enough to get 2 updates through to the website. Then it went down again and is still down.

So I'm curious to see what sort of problems others have experienced on the monitoring side of things.

Thanks,
david

For about 2 years, my monitor runs at least 20 min. behind on data, and has dropouts lasting for several hours. I leave it alone and it has always filled in the data, almost always by the next morning.

Generally, IMO, a pretty crappy way to monitor, especially for all the S.P. hype about quality.

BTW, their support is about useless, both voice and e-mail. I gave up on any hope of getting the issues understood much less addressed about a year ago - or maybe they gave up on me.

I'd give the S.P. monitoring an overall grade of about D.

[Ian S]

Mine has worked pretty well for the 3+ years it's been running. It's a bit of a kludge and, as J.P.M. notes, it's prone to the occasional dropout which seems to catch up within a day or so but I've not seen the problems you describe. Are they still using data over power line communication? If so, could that be your problem?

[dogunter]

Yes, it is a system that transmits the data over a pair of power line adaptors. I have had to reset those only once. The other problems were specifically due to having the Supervisor stop transmitting packets.

Mine has worked pretty well for the 3+ years it's been running. It's a bit of a kludge and, as J.P.M. notes, it's prone to the occasional dropout which seems to catch up within a day or so but I've not seen the problems you describe. Are they still using data over power line communication? If so, could that be your problem?