Enphase field MTBF: M190: ~36 Years M215: ~316 Years M250: >357 Years

[ltbighorn]

With Enphase it seems the exposure is both Enphase or the installer going out of business. If my solar installer goes out of business, can I hire another "solar professional" to take their place?

Yes. My original installer pulled out of the DFW market, and Enphase sent me a list of local authorized installers. I picked one, and they have replaced all 15 of my M190s that have failed over the last 2 years. The first 14 were initiated by me, Enphase shipped me the replacement and I contacted the contractor to install after receiving the replacement unit. This most recent one was ordered by the contractor and installed after they received the replacement unit. All 15 were installed under warranty with no cost to me.

Very interesting, thanks Bill. Looking at the Enphase warranty, it specifically excludes coverage of labor costs. Is your new installer providing the labor uncompensated as far as you know? Was the most recent one ordered by the contractor specifically because Enphase no longer takes tickets from owners? Were you ever listed as the (self-)installer? Thanks!

 

[ltbighorn]

SolarEdge seems interesting, though seems combine the risks of a central inverter with many more points of failure. Their new system with no electrolytic capacitors -- is that expected in weeks or months?

According to their press release? Three months ago. Anyway, it may be worth an inquiry.

Hah! So are SolarEdges safer from fire as well? Do the optimizers detect arc-faults and automatically shutoff DC output from the panels?

Certainly, but I wonder how long they will honor NEM 1.0, even for those who are "grandfathered. They can make net metering very unattractive simply by fiddling with the rates. If I lived in CA, I think I would be making sure to install a system with the potential for energy-shifting with a battery (which both Enphase and Solar-Edge offer).

Yes, certainly a concern of mine. It sounds like they will tweak the rates (I'm on E-6 now in prep for solar) and potentially minimum charges depending on how they're framed, but at least it'd keep the annual true-up, retail credits, and TOU hours (well, for the next 5 years on E-6, not 20). If I understand correctly what's locked in by NEM 1.0, anyway.

I haven't looked much into the battery options much, but it seems like it wouldn't be very cost-effective right now to load shift that way, especially as you'd need to be able to store most of a day's kWh production to fully benefit. Maybe in 5-10 years?

To a certain extent I'm going out on a limb that they won't bend the economics backwards that much before I've at least paid off the system, which would probably be 7-8 years. Hopefully with the TOU hours set for at least 5 of those, the rates won't be able to be too punitive -- allowing me to at least continue to offset my usage 1:1 even if I'm no longer benefiting from the peak multiplier effect. On the upside, at least I can charge my Leaf at home during the day! (though I rarely need to charge it more than 1-2 times a week).

On second thought - on NEM 1.0, in a worst case, couldn't I always go back to non-TOU E-1 rate? As long as a non-TOU rate is available to the general public, I got the impression you'd be allowed to be on it.

Enphase has recently made changes to further monetize their monitoring, so I don't know the exact situation today. I do know that installers have a different portal, but I think you have full access once you pay an additional one-time fee.

Should I insist that my installer list allow me to register as the installer, to protect myself down the road? Given that Enphase apparently won't even talk to owners anymore?

It might be a good idea.

This is definitely the aspect that worries me. Terms changing after you've locked in.
Is there anything that gets more difficult for my solar installer, if I insist on registering with Enphase as my own self-installer? Trying to anticipate what objections or concerns they might have.

Would I be able to get an eBay replacement online, producing, and monitored without Enphase's cooperation?

I've done it with the four (new) M250s now on my roof, but I'm the installer. To be more precise, you can easily replace an inverter and have the Envoy find it without any intervention by Enphase. Even without connection to an Envoy, the inverter will produce electricity just fine. The Envoy will track production and will let you know of any problems. But you need to have access to "Array Builder" online in order to modify the online monitoring. I'm pretty sure that is only for installers (or self-installers).

Though I suppose with 12-15 micros it's less of a disaster if I have to replace all the micros for compatibility reasons, vs a 30 or 70 micro install.

I don't see that happening. You can even purchase a spare microinverter or two now. The shelf life should be many decades.

Excellent. Seems like in a very worst case -- if Enphase went out of business, as long as I bought a few spares before they all disappeared (and there weren't sudden mass micro die-offs), I'd be able to swap and keep generating power, just without per-panel monitoring (no web service). That feels within my risk tolerance.

I could still keep an eye out for issues by examining daily production -- though if that requires manually inspecting the LCD daily, it'd be hard to tell whether you have a panel/micro problem or just a cloudy day. Can the Envoy be polled for production data locally? (i.e. not through the web service?). If so then I could graph the data myself should that ever happen. Assuming the Envoy doesn't die -- any MTBF stats on those? Online reviews are terrible...

MUCH safer. See below.

Thanks for the excellent links. They make the point well.

One more advantage of Enphase:
+ no inverter taking up space in my garage (nobody has outside electrical panels here) -- I really like that, as more square footage is the most expensive thing here

I think if I can get myself listed as the installer, then the risks of the installer, Enphase, and/or the web service going away can be reasonably mitigated, and the potential upside of the 25-year warranty is nice. The better fire safety, less interior space occupied, panel-level monitoring and potential option for battery load-shifting someday is enough to convince me they're probably my best bet. I don't mind using a nice service as long as I'm not crippled if it goes away. I think I'll also request my installer put some of Enphase's ferrite chokes between the subpanel and my main, and an outlet on the subpanel for the Envoy -- to minimize potential issues from AC noise affecting the ability to talk to the modules, or interfering with other systems in my home (like powerline networking), which I've heard some people complain about.

Looks like it's just final tweaking on sizing and roof mounting details to sort then.

 

[billg]

Very interesting, thanks Bill. Looking at the Enphase warranty, it specifically excludes coverage of labor costs. Is your new installer providing the labor uncompensated as far as you know? Was the most recent one ordered by the contractor specifically because Enphase no longer takes tickets from owners? Were you ever listed as the (self-)installer? Thanks!

Enphase has always paid the installer directly, and I'm sure that the installer wouldn't be doing it for free. They are a licensed electrical contractor, with no reason to be doing it gratis, since they didn't do the original install. I believe that Enphase was paying the installer $150 for replacing one unit, and any additional units replaced on the same trip were $75 each. I don't know if that's the current deal or not.

The most recent unit was ordered by the contractor because Enphase won't deal with me directly as they had in the past. I called the contractor about the problem, and they took it from there. I have never been listed as the (self) installer.

By the way, I can tell which units have crapped out by checking Enlighten Manager. I understand that this program is not available to new homeowners (unless it's an extra-cost option, not sure). There is no easy way to monitor the panels individually, that I am aware of, without this program.

 

[philip]

Can the Envoy be polled for production data locally?

Yes it can - but it doesn't have inverter level detail:

Envoy URL: /api/v1/production

Response body:

{
"wattHoursToday": 3820,
"wattHoursSevenDays": 144430,
"wattHoursLifetime": 4988977,
"wattsNow": 1609
}

 

[RegGuheert]

So are SolarEdges safer from fire as well? Do the optimizers detect arc-faults and automatically shutoff DC output from the panels?

I think they are safer. According to this poster from NREL they do have panel-level arc-fault detection. (In case anyone is wondering about the arc-fault capabilites in the SunnyBoy: Note that if even you disconnect the PV from the inverter, you can STILL have an arc fault which causes a fire. This issue is with the fact that the array is wired in series.)

I haven't looked much into the battery options much, but it seems like it wouldn't be very cost-effective right now to load shift that way, especially as you'd need to be able to store most of a day's kWh production to fully benefit. Maybe in 5-10 years?

No argument. The point is that they ARE cost effective in some locations today and CA appears to be one place where they could become cost-effective in the near future.

On second thought - on NEM 1.0, in a worst case, couldn't I always go back to non-TOU E-1 rate? As long as a non-TOU rate is available to the general public, I got the impression you'd be allowed to be on it.

Truly, things can change overnight. Look at what just happened in Nevada.

Is there anything that gets more difficult for my solar installer, if I insist on registering with Enphase as my own self-installer? Trying to anticipate what objections or concerns they might have.

If you are listed as the installer, then they will not be able to access your system through their installer portal like all their other customers' systems. You could give them login access, but it still would not be as convenient for them. Also, you would be on the hook to handle any warranty interactions and they would not have a way to be paid for the (specifically disallowed) warranty claims which Bill's installers receive.

I could still keep an eye out for issues by examining daily production -- though if that requires manually inspecting the LCD daily, it'd be hard to tell whether you have a panel/micro problem or just a cloudy day. Can the Envoy be polled for production data locally? (i.e. not through the web service?). If so then I could graph the data myself should that ever happen.

The Envoy will do better than that. It logs all events from all microinverters, including faults or simply not reporting in. As long as you have a map of where each microinverter resides, that tells you where the problem exists.

Assuming the Envoy doesn't die -- any MTBF stats on those? Online reviews are terrible...

Yes, I have compiled MTBF statistics on the Envoy, as well. Have another look at my spreadsheet. BillG has had one die in his system, IIRC. The MTBF of the Envoys certainly could use improvement. Hopefully Enphase has done this with the latest model. They DID increase the warranty from one year to five years. That's a step in the right direction.

One more advantage of Enphase:
+ no inverter taking up space in my garage (nobody has outside electrical panels here) -- I really like that, as more square footage is the most expensive thing here

Yeah, you may need that space for AC Batteries in the future!

I think if I can get myself listed as the installer, then the risks of the installer, Enphase, and/or the web service going away can be reasonably mitigated, and the potential upside of the 25-year warranty is nice. The better fire safety, less interior space occupied, panel-level monitoring and potential option for battery load-shifting someday is enough to convince me they're probably my best bet. I don't mind using a nice service as long as I'm not crippled if it goes away.

That's about where I am, though I'm currently down to less than 10 years of remaining warranty on my M190s.

I think I'll also request my installer put some of Enphase's ferrite chokes between the subpanel and my main, and an outlet on the subpanel for the Envoy -- to minimize potential issues from AC noise affecting the ability to talk to the modules, or interfering with other systems in my home (like powerline networking), which I've heard some people complain about.

I'm one of those people that has had, and still has, this issue. Note that isolating the sub-panel with ferrite beads is only a solution if you can plug in your Envoy into the sub-panel and still get internet access there. In my case, I need to plug my Envoy into the main panel in order to have easy access to the internet. (If it were a big problem, I would run a long ethernet cable back to the sub-panel to make it work.)

By the way, I can tell which units have crapped out by checking Enlighten Manager. I understand that this program is not available to new homeowners (unless it's an extra-cost option, not sure). There is no easy way to monitor the panels individually, that I am aware of, without this program.

As noted above, you can access the micro web server in the Envoy and read the event log, which will tell you which microinverters are not reporting in or are malfunctioning.

 

[RegGuheert]

Can the Envoy be polled for production data locally?

Yes it can - but it doesn't have inverter level detail:

Envoy URL: /api/v1/production

Response body:

{
"wattHoursToday": 3820,
"wattHoursSevenDays": 144430,
"wattHoursLifetime": 4988977,
"wattsNow": 1609
}

Thanks!

How new is that feature? Here is what I get:

{
"status": 404,
"error": "",
"info": "Resource /api/v1/production not found",
"moreInfo": ""
}

Of course I can still see the information in a browser directly at: Envoy URL://production

 

[philip]

How new is that feature? Here is what I get:

{
"status": 404,
"error": "",
"info": "Resource /api/v1/production not found",
"moreInfo": ""
}

Of course I can still see the information in a browser directly at: Envoy URL://production

I installed my system last June, Envoy software version is R3.12.34. The URL has always been there for me - I use it to grab data for my home energy display: http://philip.spigelmire.com/2015/09/07/home-energy-display/

There is discussion about the local API on the developer portal here (account required): https://developer.enphase.com/forum/topics/api-local-envoy

 

[ltbighorn]

Very interesting, thanks Bill. Looking at the Enphase warranty, it specifically excludes coverage of labor costs. ...

Enphase has always paid the installer directly, and I'm sure that the installer wouldn't be doing it for free.

In my searching, I haven't been able to find anywhere that labor is covered by a warranty -- some have been told by installers they're not compensated, while others have suggested that Enphase compensates some installers via specific certified installer agreements, i.e. nothing they're legally obligated to. Confusing, but ultimately I could manage do the swaps myself if I had to!

By the way, I can tell which units have crapped out by checking Enlighten Manager. I understand that this program is not available to new homeowners (unless it's an extra-cost option, not sure). There is no easy way to monitor the panels individually, that I am aware of, without this program.

From what I understand it now costs a one-time $250 fee for the owner to have access to Enlighten Manager ( http://www2.enphase.com/enlighten-help/tip/how-do-i-provide-a-system-owner-with-enlighten-manager/ ).

Without paying extra, it appears the non-self-installing owner just gets "MyEnlighten", which doesn't have inverter-level production data, just aggregate production. (Or access to any of the other detailed info like voltage, etc.)

The main use I see for the inverter-level output is identifying issues like underperforming inverters that aren't outright faults. Without that I'm not sure that one would ever know. It does appear that one's installer can generate inverter-level reports and email them, but as that's a manual action (not scheduleable), one could go a long time before noticing (depending on how frequently you bother them for reports). On the other hand, a couple months solar production is a lot to pay for data you don't actively use on a regular basis. Hate when companies try to lock you out of hardware you own.

Can the Envoy be polled for production data locally?

Yes it can - but it doesn't have inverter level detail:
...
http://philip.spigelmire.com/2015/09/07/home-energy-display/

Very helpful, thanks! Appreciate the common interest in being able to poll things locally. Right now I graph my EVSE usage with local polling. Didn't know real-time data could be gotten from the smart meters with the rainforest automation gateway. Very cool.

 

[ltbighorn]

Truly, things can change overnight. Look at what just happened in Nevada.

Yes -- though Nevada is why I wouldn't be going forward if CA didn't have already 20-year grandfathering passed in law. Obviously it's not bulletproof, but it's reduces the risk greatly and demonstrates some degree of political will out here.

If you are listed as the installer, then they will not be able to access your system through their installer portal like all their other customers' systems. You could give them login access, but it still would not be as convenient for them. Also, you would be on the hook to handle any warranty interactions and they would not have a way to be paid for the (specifically disallowed) warranty claims which Bill's installers receive.

In that case, perhaps better to leave them as the installer and try to get reassigned to another installer if they go out of business. Saw a post by one owner who had success getting reassigned by Enphase as self-installer when the owner ended up into legal disputes with their installer.

 

[RegGuheert]

Following up on a post from December 15:

If Enphase goes down in a ball of flames I can assure you that a workable replacement for Enlighten will come together.

I agree, and I know there has been quite a bit of effort done on homebrew access software for the Envoys. Perhaps a bigger issue would be the reliability of the Envoys themselves, which I am now tracking. You know better than I do that these things fail. If you cannot purchase a replacement, then there could be a real issue determining what is going on up on the roof.

Note to self: Consider picking up a spare Envoy...

I purchased a new, old-style Envoy on eBay today to function as a cold spare for when ours dies. I paid less than half the price of a new Envoy-S.

I have decided to make some changes to my strategy for the original M190s since I have 12 72-cell panels which would like to keep running for as long as possible. After over five years of operation, I have had four M190 failures and currently about seven more units are misbehaving. As I see it, ALL of my M190s will be out of warranty in a little under 10 years regardless of what I do. If I keep them all in service, it is likely that most or all will die and be replaced with newer-style inverters during that period (assuming that Enphase remains viable). That is certainly preferable for the 60-cell PV modules on the roof. But those newer-style modules will likely fail in cold weather if used with the 72-cell modules.

So I have a dilemma: Can I keep 12 old-style M190s alive for significantly longer than 15 years? I certainly don't know the answer, but I have decided to do the following to try to get 30 or more years out of this system (perhaps a bit less from the 12 72-cell panels):

- I currently have nine used (no-warranty) M250s. I will put those into service on my roof to replace nine old-style M190s. Hopefully these M250s will last a long time since they will have low electrical and thermal stresses on them due to being paired with 235 Wp PV modules. (It seems to work for drees!)
- All old-style M190s on the roof which are currently misbehaving (there are three) will be moved to the field array where they can be easily replaced.
- Nine M190s which are showing no sign of malfunction will become cold spares. These units will no longer get daily thermal cycles and hopefully will last much longer than if they had remained on the roof.
- All old-style M190s remaining on the roof (16 units) will be positioned so that they can easily replaced in case of failure. Seven of these will be located at the bottom edge of the garage roof so that they can be replaced without even going onto the roof. Nine will be placed along the top edge of the roof over the house so that they can easily be replaced by lying on the back side of the roof.
- As M190s which fail are replaced with new-style modules, they will be inserted into the strings of M190s until an entire string can be replaced by Engage cable (also purchased today on eBay).

This will result in the following arrangement:

- Field: 12 old-style M190s, seven of which are showing signs of problems.
- Garage: Top two rows will be populated by 12 M215IGs, one M250 and one M190IG on one Engage cable. Bottom row will be populated by seven old-style M190s.
- House: Top row will be populated by 9 old-style M190s. Bottom two rows will be populated by 12 M250s on one Engage cable.

It's a bit of a crap shoot, since there is no guarantee that an M190 cold spare will last any longer than one that is cycling, but I'm going to give it a try.

 

[RegGuheert]

I picked up four NEW M215IGs on eBay for $91.00/ea. shipped, so I will put a few more M190s up as cold spares. I simply couldn't pass up that price considering the warranty on those lasts until 2041! The remaining warranty on the original M190s is now less than 10 years.

Now if the wind would ever die down, I could think about getting up on the roof!

On topic: It has been nearly one full year since the last M190 in my system died (on April 28, 2015). Several of the M190s have been misbehaving including one which occasionally throws a "Hardware Error." But somehow the new firmware manages to keep them operating at a production level close to their neighbors.

 

[DaveEV]

I picked up four NEW M215IGs on eBay for $91.00/ea. shipped, so I will put a few more M190s up as cold spares. I simply couldn't pass up that price considering the warranty on those lasts until 2041! The remaining warranty on the original M190s is now less than 10 years.

Wow, nice deal! I'm hoping that Enphase is able to reduce price as much as they are saying they need to to remain price-competitive with SolarEdge, another year or two and Enphase could have much less expensive inverters - perhaps reaching < $100/new.

 

[RegGuheert]

I'm hoping that Enphase is able to reduce price as much as they are saying they need to to remain price-competitive with SolarEdge, another year or two and Enphase could have much less expensive inverters - perhaps reaching < $100/new.

I think they will get there if they can stay in business. What I'm not convinced of is how reliable these cheaper units will be. Unfortunately, the road maps they have published makes me think they will move away from Engage, which I am now fully committed to. I'm very pleased with the M215IG-and-later models, both in terms of performance and reliability, so I'll be happy with M190IGs, M215IGs and M250s on my roof. At FREE for an M190IG when the old M190s fail or $91 for a new M215IG, I'm happy to pick either of those up! Of course if the new generation is even cheaper, then the M-series inverters will get even cheaper.

FWIW, I'm seeing S280s priced over $150 on eBay (in quantities of 6). I haven't seen any S230s there, yet. But I'm not interested in the S-series anyway, since I now own TWO of the older-style Envoys.

 

[RegGuheert]

Following up on my post from March 25:

Following up on a post from December 15:

Note to self: Consider picking up a spare Envoy...

I purchased a new, old-style Envoy on eBay today to function as a cold spare for when ours dies. I paid less than half the price of a new Envoy-S.

I went ahead and put the new Envoy (2013 manufacturing date) onto the network and called Enphase to have them add it to my system. Since it seems that the warranty started four months after manufacture and has since expired, I saw no good reason to leave this out of my system. Now I see two Envoys on my system's site: one with all of the microinverters attached and one with none attached. This allowed me to update the firmware on the new Envoy from R3.2.0 (May 17, 2012) to R3.12.45 (Aug 12, 2015). Rather, it made sense to go ahead and register it and get the firmware updated while I still can. (Plus, who knows? Perhaps they wouldn't let me register these legacy devices after X number of years or perhaps they will start charging to do that in the future.) It is now returned to its box to wait for its chance to provide some value in this system.

According to the support representative who handled this for me, I will still need to contact them to move the inverters over to the new Envoy once the old one dies. The good news is that I will be able to do that immediately rather than having to purchase a new one (likely at full price), wait for it to arrive and deal with any possible fees that may apply with a new device at that time.

Here are some specifics on these devices:

Old Envoy:

Manufactured: 2010 (Week 20)
Type on Enlighten: 800-00024-r02 (Envoy)
Firmware Version: R3.2.27 (bed096)
Firmware Date: Tue Aug 11, 2015 11:33 AM PDT
Powerline Device: 461-00004-r01

New Envoy:

Manufactured: 2013 (Week 11)
Type on Enlighten: 800-00069-r05 (Envoy-R-NA)
Firmware Version: R3.12.45 (f9b2fc)
Firmware Date: Wed Aug 12, 2015 05:27 PM PDT
Powerline Device: 480-00008-r01-v02.0a.19

Interestingly, the new Envoy has two USB ports while the old one only had one. I suppose they may have changed things a bit to accommodate wireless internet connected via USB. Here is a picture showing the new Envoy in the foreground and the old one in the background:

I picked up four NEW M215IGs on eBay for $91.00/ea. shipped, so I will put a few more M190s up as cold spares. I simply couldn't pass up that price considering the warranty on those lasts until 2041! The remaining warranty on the original M190s is now less than 10 years.

The new M215IGs arrived late last week. They are dated in late 2015 and are the new style which includes a potted metal back rather than the black plastic which is on all of the other non-M190 inverters I currently have installed.

Now if the wind would ever die down, I could think about getting up on the roof!

The wind HAS died down, but now it is too hot! There's no hurry on this project. I'll get to it when I get to it.

 

[philip]

Since the new one has the latest firmware, it will get you the local system production API - for whatever that is worth to you.

 

[RegGuheert]

Since the new one has the latest firmware, it will get you the local system production API - for whatever that is worth to you.

Thanks, Philip! Yes, I thought of that! I appreciate you teaching me about that. But that will have to wait. The main goal is to have a ready backup for the old one when it gives up the ghost.

 

[ranss12]

While monitoring my 39 panel installation at the enlighten website (http://enlighten.enphaseenergy.com) I see my micro inverters occasionally turn off during the day, usually 1 at a time but occasionally more than one at a time) for a minute or so before coming back on line. I was thinking this was due to firmware updating, but then I noticed that it was not uncommon for some of the same inverters to flash off more than once over a period of a couple of days. If my reasoning was correct that means the software for some inverters is being updated very often. Can someone confirm what's going on here? My inverters are M215s.

 

[pclifton]

) I see my micro inverters occasionally turn off during the day, usually 1 at a time but occasionally more than one at a time) for a minute or so before coming back on line....Can someone confirm what's going on here? My inverters are M215s.

Ranss12: It could just be a powerline communications issue. The inverters talk to the Envoy over the powerline. If the signal is marginal or something like a bad ballast in a fluorescent bulb is putting out a lot of noise, then the communication is interrupted.

You might want to look at the Event Log on your Envoy. The log will only hold the last 500 entries, so you will only see fairly recent events.

Respectfully,

Ken Clifton

 

[RegGuheert]

) I see my micro inverters occasionally turn off during the day, usually 1 at a time but occasionally more than one at a time) for a minute or so before coming back on line....Can someone confirm what's going on here? My inverters are M215s.

Ranss12: It could just be a powerline communications issue.

Could be, but the inverters save their data until communication is reestablished, so typically there are no blank spots in the Enlighten display after they restore communications unless one of two things happen:

1) The inverter truly was not producing during that period.
or
2) Some data did not come down when you loaded the webpage.

Because of 2), I encourage you to reload the page whenever you see this. Also, I tend to ignore such artifacts if they are on today's display. It seems that Enphase does some sort of data corrections overnight.

If it is 1), you should NOT see the inverter recover immediately. Likely it will take time for an inverter which has stopped producing to again produce at full power.

You might want to look at the Event Log on your Envoy. The log will only hold the last 500 entries, so you will only see fairly recent events.

+1 One thing which could cause the inverters to shut down during production is an overvoltage condition. If that is the case, you should see this reported in the event log.

 

[ltbighorn]

RegGuheert, it certainly sounds like you're in a good position in regards to spares!

I'm probably going to pull the trigger in the next week or two on the solar install. Probably going to go with 12x 280W LGs (LG280N1C-G3) with Enphase M250s, as recommended by my installer. It sounds like they intend to pair it with the regular 2-year warranty Envoy. I'm hoping I won't have to preemptively go to quite such lengths re: spares.

Are there any good reasons to push for and/or pay the additional cost for an Envoy-S (besides the 5-year warranty)? Not sure how much the cost spread is for new Envoy vs new Envoy-S. MTBF looks OK for the Envoy on the spreadsheet, but anecdotally it seems like a common failure point.

I expect to go ahead and pay the extra $1k or so it'll cost to have the roofer seal ~20 solar penetrations and include in my roof guarantee. Still on the fence whether to pony $250 for Enlighten Manager and individual panel data. With the M190 it seems like a necessity to be informed of the fairly frequent issues, but with the M215 and M250, perhaps it's unnecessary? It just makes me nervous not being able to tell if a panel is underperforming, given that without per-panel stats, I have no ability to tell whether variations over time are due to panel issues or just variations in solar radiation.