Concerns about micro inverters

[silversaver]

for anybody that has done it can you give me a ball park for what it costed in labor to have somebody come replace a micro inverter ?

I have a friend at SD area and he has 28 M190 on his roof. So far 4 out of 28 have been replaced. The guy charges $150 each visit paid by Enphase. The guy also monitoring his system for free because he gets pay pretty good from Enphase

[Volusiano]

I have a friend at SD area and he has 28 M190 on his roof. So far 4 out of 28 have been replaced. The guy charges $150 each visit paid by Enphase. The guy also monitoring his system for free because he gets pay pretty good from Enphase

And I assume that it requires 2 visits for each failure? First trip to retrieve it and send back for warranty replacement. Second trip is to come back out and install the replacement. So that's $300 in labor per failure.

[silversaver]

And I assume that it requires 2 visits for each failure? First trip to retrieve it and send back for warranty replacement. Second trip is to come back out and install the replacement. So that's $300 in labor per failure.

Not sure about that, but each visit is $150. The same guy quote me $150 X 16 hours = $2,400 to install a 22 X 280W LG with M250.

[fuzzelogic]

Maybe I'm missing something here regarding the Enphase micro inverter, BUT wasn't one of the selling points / main benefits of the product was that it could give you individual panel stats via the envoy system to get very detailed information on a per panel basis FOR FREE up until late 2012 early 2013???!!!

Now, Enphase goes public and the 1st thing they do is start charging extra to get per panel stats which everyone was getting for FREE a couple of months earlier!!!

I guess next year they will implement a annual / bi-annual fee to access even the generic envoy system that homeowners are getting now but without the per panel stats.

[SunEagle]

Maybe I'm missing something here regarding the Enphase micro inverter, BUT wasn't one of the selling points / main benefits of the product was that it could give you individual panel stats via the envoy system to get very detailed information on a per panel basis FOR FREE up until late 2012 early 2013???!!!

Now, Enphase goes public and the 1st thing they do is start charging extra to get per panel stats which everyone was getting for FREE a couple of months earlier!!!

I guess next year they will implement a annual / bi-annual fee to access even the generic envoy system that homeowners are getting now but without the per panel stats.

It's like that "free" software people were giving out. Now if you want to get the latest revision (which is needed) you have to either pay each time for a new revision or have a service agreement and then you get the revisions and their support for "free" for a year.

Like most technology getting people to purchase it or receive it "free" in the beginning is the easy part. Then you have them hooked into paying for the upgrades like a new cell phone as well as now that you will need a bigger data plan for all those new apps they will be charging you where in the beginning the data was "free".

[DanS26]

One of the main selling/marketing points for micro inverters is the individual panel monitoring. But now charging for that capability will blunt some of their efforts.

In designing string inverter systems, if a choice can be made between one large inverter and two or more smaller inverters, then it is advantageous to design with multiple smaller same size string inverters. Why? Because if one inverter begins to under perform then, first, you easily know you have a problem and secondly, you can diagnose that problem on that smaller string or strings.

Not quite individual panel monitoring, but very much helpful for problem identification and solution. If customers balk at the Enphase monitoring charges, this may be an alternative that will be attractive to them.