Usgeese
New Member
Hello,
I have had a solar system for over 17 years that was installed by a company that is now out of business So they are no help to me now. We had to have our roof replaced because of the faulty installation of our system that caused some major leaks after a really bad storm. I had a company remove the system from the roof and reinstall it after the roof was replaced. But, there is always a but, the system was only putting out a little more than half of of what it was producing before the r&r. The company that did the r&r said that they wired it up exactly like it was when they removed it. They were no help either.
So, a little bit about my system. We originally had 30 205w panels with a SMA Sunnyboy 5.0 inverter. We decided to change the panels out since everything was off of the roof. We went with 15 400w qCell panels. The panels were installed in 3 strings with 5 panels each. We previously had 3 string with 10 panels in each string. The junction box from the panels has about a 100’ run to the inverter. In that line there is a ground, and one positive and one negative made up of 6awg Wire. At the inverter the two lines from the panels were split so that there are actually two (+) and (-) hooking up to the inverter.
I called a couple of solar companies to diagnose the problem and two of them said that there needed to be three lines or stings going from the three strings of panels to the three terminals at the inverter. So I picked the one that gave the cheapest quote to rewire the whole system. They showed up and went to work with me thinking that they were adding additional wiring to the system. When I went out to see what they were doing they had about half the panels reinstalled so that there were two strings of panels with 7 in one and 8 in the other. I asked the tech about adding the addition wiring but he said that he had not originally said that it need more wiring. He also removed the jumpers that were at the inverter . Confused, I went back into the house to look the quote over and his report from the initial service call where he stated that additional strings were needed. I wrote a letter to the company and am still waiting for a reply.
So I am looking for advice in case I have a long drawn out battle with the. Do I go ahead and pull one addition string so that the individual strings connect at the inverter, and if so, what size wire should I use?
thank you.
I have had a solar system for over 17 years that was installed by a company that is now out of business So they are no help to me now. We had to have our roof replaced because of the faulty installation of our system that caused some major leaks after a really bad storm. I had a company remove the system from the roof and reinstall it after the roof was replaced. But, there is always a but, the system was only putting out a little more than half of of what it was producing before the r&r. The company that did the r&r said that they wired it up exactly like it was when they removed it. They were no help either.
So, a little bit about my system. We originally had 30 205w panels with a SMA Sunnyboy 5.0 inverter. We decided to change the panels out since everything was off of the roof. We went with 15 400w qCell panels. The panels were installed in 3 strings with 5 panels each. We previously had 3 string with 10 panels in each string. The junction box from the panels has about a 100’ run to the inverter. In that line there is a ground, and one positive and one negative made up of 6awg Wire. At the inverter the two lines from the panels were split so that there are actually two (+) and (-) hooking up to the inverter.
I called a couple of solar companies to diagnose the problem and two of them said that there needed to be three lines or stings going from the three strings of panels to the three terminals at the inverter. So I picked the one that gave the cheapest quote to rewire the whole system. They showed up and went to work with me thinking that they were adding additional wiring to the system. When I went out to see what they were doing they had about half the panels reinstalled so that there were two strings of panels with 7 in one and 8 in the other. I asked the tech about adding the addition wiring but he said that he had not originally said that it need more wiring. He also removed the jumpers that were at the inverter . Confused, I went back into the house to look the quote over and his report from the initial service call where he stated that additional strings were needed. I wrote a letter to the company and am still waiting for a reply.
So I am looking for advice in case I have a long drawn out battle with the. Do I go ahead and pull one addition string so that the individual strings connect at the inverter, and if so, what size wire should I use?
thank you.
