Inverter Warranty

[jason121]

Pricing job this week up against national company who are promoting inverters with 20 year warranty. Anyone know of inverters out there that have a warranty of 20 years??

 

[JulianC]

Most of them if you're prepared to pay enough

 

[jason121]

National company said it was standard warranty for inverter

 

[zeljuga]

Enphase microinverter, 20 year warranty ,first year inclusive of access scaffolding. Panel temperature, AC,DC,monitoring on single panel level , Easy data rapports. Seem to be promising option.

 

[The Solar King]

Enecsys micro inverter

 

[jason121]

no wasn't micro i offered micro guy wanted standard inverter

 

[stevie gill]

no wasn't micro i offered micro guy wanted standard inverter

We too have come across this. It turned out that the National company had built in the cost of stretching out a warranty into their quote. Their salesmen were stating that this was a standard warranty, but when we dug into it, the customer was paying for the extended warranty inadvertently!

Needless to say that once I pointed this out to the customer, they told the National where to go, went with us and opted not to go for the extended warranty. This confused me a little.....

 

[whinmoor]

Fronius were doing something like this - 20 years for the price of 10. Not sure if scheme's still running:

Fronius International GmbH - Keeping up-to-date - News overview

 

[jason121]

I agree with Stevie bit of a con warranty is extended and hidden in cost some where. If you guys dont know of a inverter thats does a standard warranty, must be con.

 

[puddy]

I have a Fronius IG30 they said it wont last longer than 10 years but that's homesun problem but I understand they are good make is that correct?

 

[Eco Deal]

it will be an extended warranty in price.

 

[liquidity]

Any company that wants to stay in business over the long term factors the cost of a product's warranty into the sell price. A product with a 10 year warranty is not necessarily a better product than one with a 5 year warranty - it's simply that the manufacturer has estimated the number of failures across the projected number sold and added that to the sell price. Warranties are not free.

 

[SolarCity]

Your inverter is not destined to pack up after 10 years. Most of what I hear is that the life of the inverter is probably around 20 years - and judging by the low price of a warranty extension, it seems that the manufacturers are putting their money where their mouth is.

 

[jason121]

Thanks guys. Quote in the post with extended warranty as an extra

 

[puddy]

Your inverter is not destined to pack up after 10 years.

Great news for homesun then

 

[puddy]

Pricing job this week up against national company who are promoting inverters with 20 year warranty. Anyone know of inverters out there that have a warranty of 20 years??

But will the company be around in 5 10 or 15 years time?

 

[BruceB]

Your inverter is not destined to pack up after 10 years. Most of what I hear is that the life of the inverter is probably around 20 years - and judging by the low price of a warranty extension, it seems that the manufacturers are putting their money where their mouth is.

But they might after 20yrs. My recollection of sma warranty pricing is that it rises steadily until 20 years, but if you want it to what was the full 25 years of the fit then there was a significant hike in costs. I inferred they knew where the edge of their bathtub was!

 

[SibertSolar]

Most mainstream manufacturers I speak tend to take the stance that if the unit is matched to the panels correctly, and that it is installed according to recommended practices, and it doesn't fail in the first month, then it should be ok for between 15 & 20 yrs. 10yr warranties are pretty standard now, extensions to 20yrs were historically rather expensive but have come down a lot in cost recently. Bear in mind that inverter prices are continuing to fall also, so you can't always just assume that the extended warranties being provided are just "factored in" to the unit cost - it's more about market forces driving the requirement forward, imo...

 

[Vegelen]

Inverters: How To Pick A Good One | Solar Quotes | Power, Panels, Rebate, Installers

 

[SibertSolar]

Not a bad blog Vegelen, a little bit out of date perhaps but good advice all the same. His blog about efficiency curves is worth a read too - too much focus often put on peak efficiency and not enough on EU efficiency in my opinion. The smaller the % difference between peak and EU efficiency, the better - shows that the inverter is still operating in it's "sweet spot" even at very low power/irradiance levels, which they invariably are in the average UK climate...