Since getting my electric snowbike a week ago, I've been riding down my property to where my solar arrays are, and for the first time in 2 or 3 months, I hiked thru the almost waist deep snow to eyeball my Fronius's output display, expecting that warm fuzzy feeling of getting "free" power. To my astonishment, it was dead, zip, zero, nada. About 15 years in service FWIW.
BUT, last fall, I added another 260 watt REC module, used, bought cheap as part of another project, in series with the existing 15 year old REC 250 modules. Bringing the total wattage up to 3260. Knowing, that if my memory served me right I'd be bumping up against the max allowable power the inverter could handle, both in open circuit voltage and in amps, but assuming that the used new panel and the 15 year old main array would be putting out, by now, a bit less power anyway overall, so what the heck. Plus, I assumed the inverter would protect itself...., and if nothing else I would be producing the max power the inverter could handle on less than optimum days.
After the additional panel's addition, it all worked exactly as expected, no surprises, I probably laid eyes on the display a half dozen times late fall, before getting snowed out, and my confidence in the Fronius installed a lot of them back in the day) and solar in general led me to assume all was well. It could just have reached the end of it's service life, or, just maybe, while it worked fine this fall, the recent single digit temps resulted in higher than permitted open circuit voltage and something "broke." I'm going down today to trouble shoot, as much as I can, other than determine the power is getting from the array to the inverter, there's not much I can do. Now that I know it's down (and of course its sunny as heck) it will drive me crazy and I may just trhow some money at it and get a new one coming ASAP.
BUT, last fall, I added another 260 watt REC module, used, bought cheap as part of another project, in series with the existing 15 year old REC 250 modules. Bringing the total wattage up to 3260. Knowing, that if my memory served me right I'd be bumping up against the max allowable power the inverter could handle, both in open circuit voltage and in amps, but assuming that the used new panel and the 15 year old main array would be putting out, by now, a bit less power anyway overall, so what the heck. Plus, I assumed the inverter would protect itself...., and if nothing else I would be producing the max power the inverter could handle on less than optimum days.
After the additional panel's addition, it all worked exactly as expected, no surprises, I probably laid eyes on the display a half dozen times late fall, before getting snowed out, and my confidence in the Fronius installed a lot of them back in the day) and solar in general led me to assume all was well. It could just have reached the end of it's service life, or, just maybe, while it worked fine this fall, the recent single digit temps resulted in higher than permitted open circuit voltage and something "broke." I'm going down today to trouble shoot, as much as I can, other than determine the power is getting from the array to the inverter, there's not much I can do. Now that I know it's down (and of course its sunny as heck) it will drive me crazy and I may just trhow some money at it and get a new one coming ASAP.
