Enphase Microinverter Mass Failure

[Kellymstl]

We had a system installed about 6 months ago that recently stopped producing due to a power surge.
It is a 5.985 KW system with 19 REC 314 Watt Solar Modules and 19 Enphase IQ 7 235 W-350 W Microinverters [IQ7-60-2-INT]

Of course we are being told by the company that installed the system that power surges are not covered by the warranty. We are making a claim against the utility company and will also make a home owners insurance claim if necessary.

Has anyone seen something like this happen before?
Is there any way to prevent this in the future?

Not sure how a power surge that did literally nothing to anything else in our house completely fried a brand new system.
Is it possible something was done incorrectly with the install? We are in touch with another company to come out and evaluate the system in case there is any workmanship issue.

Any insight from those experienced with these kinds of things would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you,
Kelly

[peatmoss]

Sorry to hear that. What kind of surge was it? Lightning strike? if not how does the installer know it was a surge. Also interesting that it took out all inverters but nothing else. Seems fishy to me.

[J.P.M.]

I've not seen a situation such as you describe, but I'd only suggest that whoever evaluates the system do nothing to it, including touching it. That might well be specific way to invalidate any warranty or any claims.

Have you contacted Enphase or just the vendor ?

[Mike90250]

That sounds just wrong. Preserve the system as is, don't muck with it, or allow anyone else to muck about with it.

Contact enphase directly. Why do you say it's a surge ? Was there a power failure? A planned outage ? A accident involving a power pole that crossed Kv lines with household lines ?

There would be some common problem to cause 19 inverters to all fail on the same day. Do you have any failure codes ? Can you manually check your house voltage with a meter, if you are able to use a meter. Could the breaker for the circuit have tripped off - sometimes, they only move a tiny bit, the never go all the way to OFF.

And sometimes the installer is at fault for an improper install. Some drag the inverters around by their cables, damaging the internals, but those would fail over time, and not all at once.

[Kellymstl]

Thanks for the replies.

We were not home at the time but there were several neighbors who reported issues via the Nextdoor App and our neighbor who was out of town at the time had one of their outlets fail which caused their deep freezer to go without electricity and they lost everything in their freezer.

The breaker on our main panel tripped but we didn't notice it for a week when we noticed our system hadn't been reporting production. I know there are some other breakers that are outside but I haven't tried doing anything with them myself. The company who installed the system had one of their troubleshooting people out here who said he spent a great deal of time trying to figure out what happened.

I am not aware of any failure codes, not sure where I would see those.

We have not been in contact with Enphase directly since we were told it was not covered under their warranty.

The below is the email from the person who was out here:

I spent a lot of time at your house yesterday troubleshooting what may be going on. Unfortunately the news isn't good. After doing lots of tests and climbing up on your roof to make sure that the wiring looked good (it looked great, actually they did a very good job) it was determined that a power surge from the utility has most likely fried all of the micro inverters. Essentially all of the micro inverters are still communicating to the Envoy but if you look at the data that they transmit, they all say they are getting 0 volts AC power which inhibits them from starting up. I was able to measure good voltage getting to the micro inverter trunk cables so obviously they are getting the voltage but just aren't recognizing it. From what the level 2 tech said yesterday it sounds like they will all have to be replaced. A power surge like this is not covered under the warranty sadly. This brings me to my next question, do you have insurance on the system? If so, a claim will have to be submitted stating that a power surge took out all of your micro inverters and that new ones will have to be purchased and installed.

I have honestly never seen this before and don't know how everything will work out. I'm sure the insurance company will have to ask us how much we would charge in order to get a job like this done. It would take a full day in order to do the work but it wouldn't be too hard to do.

I apologize for this bad news, my immediate thought was how bad I felt for you when I heard this from the tech. Essentially, if the micro inverters are getting AC voltage they should recognize it and start producing power no matter what. The issue is that the sensors that detect the voltage all seem to be fried.