pclifton said:
Please add another M190 failure to my system total. This inverter dropped offline completely for three days back on July 5th, then revived itself somewhat, clipping power to about 139 watts until it was finally replaced on Sept 3, 2016. If I am counting correctly that brings me up to six failures out of twenty-four M190s, all top of pole mounted with lots of air cooling underneath.
I only had four recorded previously. Here are the last two entries I had in the "Notes" column for your system:
9/11/2015: Owner reports a FOURTH M190 has failed. 12/14/2015: Owner reports no further failures.
I've put in FIVE for now, but will certainly change it to SIX if you think that is correct.
If the actual number of failures is FIVE, your M190 MTBF is 25 years; if SIX, it is 21 years.
pclifton said:
Getting the inverter took some time -- about 3 weeks. I had to start a new case to find out what happened to the replacement unit.
I'm still waiting on my last one, but it has only been a week or so.
pclifton said:
When it finally arrived, the replacement unit was a M190IG with the adapter cable. I replaced the failed inverter with my last old style M190 spare. Now all of my spares are M190IG units.
I didn't remember that you also had spares in hand. Did you purchase those when you built your system? BTW, any chance you got the new 72-cell version that I received last month? It has the part number M190-72-2LL-S22-IG instead of M190-60-2LL-S22-IG for the previous one I received.
pclifton said:
This has been a long, hot summer. Here in the Piedmont of NC this summer has logged over 50 days above 90 degrees. I am surprised more units have not failed.
Same here: many more 90-plus degree day than normal. We've run the air conditioner for months when we normal would run it for a couple of weeks. In fact, I turned it on again today. It was over 90F today and it should be about 95F again on Saturday. I'm having a tough time saving up energy for the wintertime. With a strong La Nina coming to follow this strong El Nino, I expect the hot summer may be followed by a cold winter. Time will tell.
pclifton said:
I received an email newsletter from Enphase today. Interesting that one of the stories in the Enphase newsletter mentioned their cash burn rate toward the end of the PV-Tech.org article, link:
http://www.pv-tech.org/news/enphase...pricing-strategy-on-microinverters-takes-hold I am curious what others make of this? A lot of the financial sites are upset over the last loan that was done, that is also mentioned. I personally don't know what to think -- it sounds like they are gaining some market share, but...
Good article. Thanks! Personally, I don't think they had much choice regarding that last loan. Note the following sentence from the article:
PV Tech said:
...he conceded that when including Enphase’s Wells Fargo line of credit he estimated the company’s liquidity situation stood at over US$37 million, which could be sufficient for 3 to 4 quarters of operations.
If you take away $25 million, then you are left with only $12 million and the likelyhood of imminent bankruptcy.
They need to find profitability right away or they will be on the block soon.