Replace single optimiser? worth it?

[solarix]

Rapid Shutdown is a stupid rule with negligible safety benefits, but large costs to a solar install - with the net effect of less solar being installed. Especially with the lower end of the income spectrum. No doubt in my mind, the rule was selfishly promoted into the code by the two solar companies that had inherent rapid shutdown in their product.
The authorities have been so narrowly focused on home "safety" (1st, 2nd, 3rd) that they have ignored making solar more affordable and have exacerbated climate change. I dream of the day a state authority gives me a call and asks what they can do to make solar installs easier. I have a long list of all the hassle they have heaped on solar over the years.

[lisyloo]

Thanks for the comments
having checked my generation and my feeling is that the generation is reduced although it’s not necessarily clear cut (2nd lowest out of 7 years).

I don’t know which panel is it.
we have 8 SW facing and 4 SE facing.
I can tell from the generation figures that it’s one of the 8.

my feeling is that when we do eventually fix that it would be worth changing all 8, because they will all have to be lifted anyway and the parts are cheap compared to the Labour.
Labour is around £650 and parts are around £50 each, so we think it would be worth getting new ones.
although won’t be doing that until more fail and it’s worthwhile

[brycenesbitt]

Hiya, newbie here, need some advice
The cost of labour and scaffolding seems prohibitive to me for 1/12th of the generation.

Is it really scaffolding?
Send a photo.
Scaffolding's expensive, many repairs can be done from the roof with ropes or ladders.
There are exeptions.

[Will792]

Thanks for the comments
having checked my generation and my feeling is that the generation is reduced although it’s not necessarily clear cut (2nd lowest out of 7 years).

I don’t know which panel is it.
we have 8 SW facing and 4 SE facing.
I can tell from the generation figures that it’s one of the 8.

my feeling is that when we do eventually fix that it would be worth changing all 8, because they will all have to be lifted anyway and the parts are cheap compared to the Labour.
Labour is around £650 and parts are around £50 each, so we think it would be worth getting new ones.
although won’t be doing that until more fail and it’s worthwhile

you make assumption that new optimizers would be less likely to fail than your existing ones. I would not count on it. A graph of failure rates with time is like a bathtub. Initially high rates of failures from duds and eventual increase in failures from aging. Expected lifetime for optimizers is 15-30 years so your existing units should be still In the middle of the bathtub.

SE monitoring shows a view of all configured panels so it is typically trivial to figure which unit is faulty.

[lisyloo]

Is it really scaffolding?
Send a photo.
Scaffolding's expensive, many repairs can be done from the roof with ropes or ladders.
There are exeptions.

I am in the England in the UK. I think it would be difficult to get anyone to do this without scaffolding in my country.
Actually it's difficult to get anyone to do anything at the moment but that's related to factors (brexit, covid) outside of this discussion.
As you can see there is a porch in front of the roof so I think this might be one of those exceptions.

panels.jpg

[lisyloo]

layout.jpg

Unfortunately my installer did not provide a layout. I have called SE about this in case I was missing some admin privileges and SE said my installer didn't do it.
From the historical information I can see the generation went lower on the group of 8 after it failed, so I know it's in the 8 (in the picture) and not the other 4 on the SE facing roof.

[lisyloo]

I take the point about failures. The units are 7 years old, so thankyou for that point.
My friends who suggested replacing them all are not knowledgeable about the failure rates of these type of units.

[solarix]

Classic. The installer did not map the array so you have no idea which Solaredge powerbox is where. If these are the first generation units, I can tell you the plastic they used for the MC4 connectors does not age well, and will crack right off where mounted into the powerbox. We've seen this several times and been successful in getting Solaredge to replace all of them under warranty. Nice house btw...

[Will792]

The pitch of the roof does not appear to be high on the picture. I would guess 6 or 7 to 12. Generally speaking it is considered to be walkable with precaution.

From my point of view the problem is that the original installer didn’t map the array. Currently you do not know physical location of the optimizer. If you do decide to go ahead with the a replacement make sure that serial numbers of units that are accessible are recorded by taking a picture and a note of the location. Microinverters and optmizers give ability to triangulate location of a failure as long as the installer does his job.

Can you find a roofer to lift panels, one at a time, to get mapping recorded? After that the same roofer can replace bad optimizer. My assumption is that roofers are easier to find in your area and since they can walk on the roof the cost should be lower.

The other option is to wait and see a bit. If you have a bad batch of optimizers expected lifetime might be shorter than 15-25 years and one failed unit is just one that happened first. Solar systems are long game and a failure, or reduction of power production, for one panel does not change much, as long as the rest of system is functional.

[scrambler]

As an "easier solution" to do the mapping, you can cut a large piece of cardboard the exact size of one panel, duct tape a thin piece of wood like 3/4" square by 2.5 x the panel length on each side to use as handles, get on the roof edge, Then cover each panel one at a time for a period longer than the smallest sampling from your monitoring.

If your monitoring system samples every minutes, cover each panel for at least two minutes then move to the next.
Write down the order in which you do the panel covering, then review your over time monitoring and that will tell you which panel is which.

It is a bit time consuming to sit at the top of the roof for a while but less work than removing panels.
Make sure you sit at a place that does not cast a shadow on the array

Id did that to confirm some panel location after I suspected my installer had made some mistakes in its layout, and worked quite well.

If you have access to real time monitoring on a mobile device, you can also take that to the roof to know when you can move to the next panel.