SpongeboB Sinewave
Solar Enthusiast
I don't know about the Chinese brand inverters because I don't have any, but there are a lot of cr*p products from no-name brands that fail quickly. I would guess components and/or design. Midnight in this thread has mentioned protection circuits, which of course make a big difference in letting the inverter live to fight another day. Stress-testing and iterating in design of course, to find what your designers missed.
Also quality name brand products built in China. Even for US manufacturing, you have to police your suppliers or they will falsify test results and ship out of spec/defective products. In China, much of the electronic manufacturing is performed for US companies by Electronic Contract Manufacturers with factories there (and elsewhere.) It is their job to do that policing, and obviously do considering the quality of iPhones and other products we buy. But they can also be the ones making substitutions of cheaper components and skimming the difference. When you built a product for about 7% over raw component cost and profit 1% or 2%, that can be very tempting. Sometimes, they've been caught with their hand in the cookie jar.
Nope. MidNite themselves have not said anything about building in more protection. I wish they did though ! Would like to find out where that is mentioned so I can try to change that statement.
Yes, there are certainly plenty of crap coming from China. But lots of good crap as well. They are getting good at this.
The MidNite DIY series are an "If you can't beat 'em (on price), join 'em" type of thing but with some added benefits like Epanel and combox-- (both coming) as well as decent support (hopefully) in addition to MidNite products manufactured in the US.