SunPower latest monitoring firmware bricks the system?

[logan_dan]

I had a PVS5x monitoring system that had been reporting data properly until Jan this year. All in a sudden it stopped reporting data and said the internet connection is lost. I did see that the PVS5x is not on my router's connected device list. However, the monitoring portal indicated the WiFi is connected and working, which I believe it's misleading and wrong. I couldn't even connect the LAN/installer port with my laptop, the port light was not blinking when I plugged in the Ethernet cable and sunpowerconsole.com was not accessible. So I contacted sunpower tech myself and they tried to remotely reset the WiFi connection but it was not successfully. Eventually I had the installer/dealer came out to do some troubleshooting with SunPower on the phone. It was then determine the unit is network component is dead and they will replace it with PVS6. A week later, installer came back and put on PVS6. The initial setup via the installer port worked fine until the point that it's self-updating the firmware. The initial version out of the box was 2019.04 and the console website got stuck on the firmware updating phase. Eventually it timed out and threw an error. The device LED indicator did blink blue first and then purple. After this, PVS6 was no longer connected to my WiFi (because I didn't see it on my router admin console) and also the installer port seems disabled. sunpowerconsole.com became inaccessible again just like my PVS5x and the port LED light does not blink at all with the Ethernet cable plugged in. installer decided to try a second PVS6 (he brought 2 units) but it's the same result -> initial setup went through fine with WiFi connected and it timed out during firmware update. installer port became disabled and WiFi dropped. Installer then called SunPower tech support and the tech support claims my system is working and can see it via my WiFi connection, which I believe its BS because I don't even see the device on my router's admin console)
With 3 failed units ( 1 x PVS5x and 2 new PVS6), it makes me believe that the latest SunPower monitoring firmware bricks/breaks the device.
If you have any similar issue, please share your experience and solution if you have any.

[logan_dan]

Answering my own post....
It looks like SunPower just rolled out a new firmware which resolves the issues I had.
PVS6 is now connected to my WiFi and I just saw production data started to show up on the dashboard.

[bklynjim]

Do you know the version number of the new PVS6 firmware? Are you able to see individual inverter information on the sunpowermonitor.com/partner/ portal? I get "no data available" message when at individual panels. It worked originally but stopped working a few months ago. I'm hoping a firmware upgrade will fix the problem.

[logan_dan]

Do you know the version number of the new PVS6 firmware? Are you able to see individual inverter information on the sunpowermonitor.com/partner/ portal? I get "no data available" message when at individual panels. It worked originally but stopped working a few months ago. I'm hoping a firmware upgrade will fix the problem.

I don't know the exact version number but I noticed when I had the internet communication problem the firmware was dated Nov.2019.
Later on when it started working again about a week ago, I saw the latest firmware version is dated Dec.2019.
Yes I am able to see individual inverter info.

[renormalize]

A question for logan-dan: since you've experienced both, are there any notable differences in features or performance between the older PVS5X and the newer PVS6 monitor?

[logan_dan]

Feature or performance-wise, I don't notice any significant differences but am noting what I observed.

1. PVS6 is able to discover and use 5Ghz Wi-Fi whereas PVS5X can only connect to 2.4Ghz Wi-Fi
2. I like the physical/hardware design of PVS5X more than PVS6 for a couple of reasons.
a. PVS5X has individual LED lights with symbols for different status such as Power, Inverter Error, Internet Error etc. but PVS6 only has one LED with colors but no symbols.
Based on the manual, PVS6 only shows the following status - booting, firmware updating, firmware update failed, critical error, normal and operational. As you can see, there is no independent status for inverter or internet error anymore
b. PVS5X has 3 screws to hold the cover but PVS6 got rid of the screws and use a plastic latch. For me PVS6's cover is almost impossible to open with a bare hand and still hard to open with a tool. Maybe I just hasn't got the hang of it.
3.When I had PVS5X, I got slow data or data error (not internet connection related) warning message on SunPower's monitoring website. I believe my data was still showing up properly and daily, so I just ignored the error. After I got the PVS6, the slow data or data error warning banner is gone.
4. With PVS5X, I noticed some sporadic abnormal production spikes (for example, within one hour the power generated went up 5 or 10 times than my system capability. However, I am not sure it's really PVS5X's fault or something else

[renormalize]

Thank you logan_dan for the summary of the PVS5X vs PVS6. I've recently had a couple of similar problems with my PVS5X monitor (installed since 2017):

I lost all internet connectivity for a week until I briefly disconnected the ethernet cable (my monitor is hardwired to my router). This apparently forced my PVS5X to reboot its communication software and it was then able to re-establish contact with the Sunpower servers. (And fortunately it repopulated the missing week's data from its memory.) What I was told is that the problem was likely due to the fact that Sunpower was re-configuring their servers around that time. No communication problems since.

And like you, over the past several months I've also had the PVS5X report bogus data, not report for hours at a time, or miscalculate my energy-mix percentages. But this I think was a problem at Sunpower's end as well since all during that time they displayed a warning message about possible reporting errors. Just in the last week or so the warning message disappeared from their site and my reporting has been flawless since.

So all-in-all I'm now happy with the performance of my PVS5X and, based on your observations, I don't see any compelling reason to consider swapping to the newer PVS6.