400bird
Solar Wizard
Well, I never thought I'd need the warranty on my solar panels, but here I am.
5 years into the 25 year warranty.
Anyways, on to my story.
Yesterday evening, I logged into the Solar Edge monitoring platform and had this alert:
I like how at the end they basically says, our stuff isn't the cause here, this is your panel.
Anywho, here's panel level voltage for that array. The one obviously stands out.
Here's energy output today. Module 1.1.9 has the bad panel.
1.1.1-1.1.4 are different panels, hence the higher output on the west facing array.
All the other panels are the same Solaria PowerXT 325 installed in 2018.
Here it is over the past month or so, looks like it had some good days and some bad days.
Just for reference, here's the output of both arrays, you can see the south facing array peaks higher and earlier that the west facing array (which includes the bad panel)
The lower performance on the west facing array is due to direction, not the one degraded panel.
A little history, one of the panels/optimizers was acting oddly last year, it would have lower output on hot summer days. Here's a random summer day in 2022:
Along with some other work I was doing over the winter, I swapped the panel position onto a different optimizer. The fault followed the panel and now is nearly constant.
I pulled the panel today, and took some measurements:
OCV: 43.6 volts
ISC: 5.7 amps
It was about 8:30 am, but we pointed the panel straight at the sun, couldn't get it above 6 amps.
I wasn't sure on the current I should expect with a well aimed panel, the sun had been up for about 2 hours and was at about 20°
So, after inspecting the MC4 connectors, I put it all back together.
Panel spec sheet:
5 hours later, the sun is high in the sky and I grabbed the thermal imager and now I can see the problem for sure.
Sorry for the crappy alignment between the visual and thermal cameras. The sun was washing out the display so I couldn't see it at all. I just blindly took a bunch of pics and came inside to view them.
Just for reference, here's the next panel over (south). You can see the reflection of the sun (bottom left) and an increase in temp above the junction box (top center) on both panels. But the bad panel has a warm area where all the other panels are a pretty even temp.
With how the thermal imager redefines the temp to color, I suppose the bottom half could be cold and causing the problem, but considering it's down about 1/4 of its output and 1/4 is hot, I've made my conclusion.
I purchased these through Renvu locally. I sent them an email just to see if they had any leg up on the warranty process before I hunt down Solaria's warranty process directly.
Wish me luck!
I don't really have any questions now, just documenting my process.
Oh, any for everyone that says panel level monitoring is overrated, all I can say is that there is no way I would have noticed the loss of 50 watts (or 300Wh per day) to even know to go looking for this issue without panel level information.
5 years into the 25 year warranty.
Anyways, on to my story.
Yesterday evening, I logged into the Solar Edge monitoring platform and had this alert:
I like how at the end they basically says, our stuff isn't the cause here, this is your panel.
Anywho, here's panel level voltage for that array. The one obviously stands out.
Here's energy output today. Module 1.1.9 has the bad panel.
1.1.1-1.1.4 are different panels, hence the higher output on the west facing array.
All the other panels are the same Solaria PowerXT 325 installed in 2018.
Here it is over the past month or so, looks like it had some good days and some bad days.
Just for reference, here's the output of both arrays, you can see the south facing array peaks higher and earlier that the west facing array (which includes the bad panel)
The lower performance on the west facing array is due to direction, not the one degraded panel.
A little history, one of the panels/optimizers was acting oddly last year, it would have lower output on hot summer days. Here's a random summer day in 2022:
Along with some other work I was doing over the winter, I swapped the panel position onto a different optimizer. The fault followed the panel and now is nearly constant.
I pulled the panel today, and took some measurements:
OCV: 43.6 volts
ISC: 5.7 amps
It was about 8:30 am, but we pointed the panel straight at the sun, couldn't get it above 6 amps.
I wasn't sure on the current I should expect with a well aimed panel, the sun had been up for about 2 hours and was at about 20°
So, after inspecting the MC4 connectors, I put it all back together.
Panel spec sheet:
5 hours later, the sun is high in the sky and I grabbed the thermal imager and now I can see the problem for sure.
Sorry for the crappy alignment between the visual and thermal cameras. The sun was washing out the display so I couldn't see it at all. I just blindly took a bunch of pics and came inside to view them.
Just for reference, here's the next panel over (south). You can see the reflection of the sun (bottom left) and an increase in temp above the junction box (top center) on both panels. But the bad panel has a warm area where all the other panels are a pretty even temp.
With how the thermal imager redefines the temp to color, I suppose the bottom half could be cold and causing the problem, but considering it's down about 1/4 of its output and 1/4 is hot, I've made my conclusion.
I purchased these through Renvu locally. I sent them an email just to see if they had any leg up on the warranty process before I hunt down Solaria's warranty process directly.
Wish me luck!
I don't really have any questions now, just documenting my process.
Oh, any for everyone that says panel level monitoring is overrated, all I can say is that there is no way I would have noticed the loss of 50 watts (or 300Wh per day) to even know to go looking for this issue without panel level information.
