Long-term system maintenance strategies in commercial solar are diverse, but the goal of stakeholders across the industry is uniform: reduce future cost liabilities—and headaches.
During the Enphase Energy Commercial Summit, which took place online, Jason Michaels, senior business development manager, and J.S. Roy, director of solar development, talked about the maintenance differences between micro- and central-inverters.
It was clear as Roy spoke that micro-inverters are, according to him, the way to go. He said central-inverters, which handle DC current, are too powerful for a standard electrician to maintain — a major hurdle when looking for quick maintenance. The speakers said it takes a lot of time and skill to work with central inverters, and they displayed this slide for comparison:
“Your standard local electrician can work with Enphase microinverters all day long, and that’s because they work with AC all day long,” Roy said.
He compared a micro-inverter and a central inverter system that were located 46 miles apart in New Jersey. “It’s really a tale of two systems,” Roy said. Each system experienced a catastrophic fault.
The entire central inverter system was down for 5.5 days before Enphase was able to send a technician, retrieve necessary parts — which couldn’t be found at the local hardware store — and fix the system. Meanwhile, they used this slide to explain the repair process on the micro-inverter:
“All told, it took the mechanic four hours to do all his troubleshooting and testing … and fire that branch circuit back up,” Roy said. “Not only was the system not affected nearly as much as the central inverter system, but the power was restored much more quickly and much more easily, even with a one-day delay.”
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