With all due respect, I think the inverse is more likely to be true. Pv panels have a very long track record, with very few field failures. Personally, with dozens of panels (not a very large sample to be sure) over ~20 years, we have had one failure, and that was spiders in a J bot, causing a short, proper series fuses would have prevented the damaged panel!) I'm not bath mouthing Enphase here, but the likely hood of random electronic failure in one or more micro inverter is probably greater than the likely hood of a PV failure. As for the future of micro inverters and their place in the market. Time will tell. (Once again, I am not bath mouthing the concept or Enphase) but the market is littered with good products that were commercial failures. Who remembers Laser discs, 8 tracks, even cassettes and now CDs? 10 years in the electronic world is a life time. In ten years, perhaps some one will have invented a wireless inverter that connects to the grid via the net! Icarus
I'll agree that the track record of solar arrays is good. It was not a comparison of reliability, but a note that good engineering solutions live beyond specific vendors. Your examples of failed technologies are actually media failures, not audio technology failures. Everyone can complain that players for their 8 tracks cannot be found easily, but nobody is complaining that it is impossible to hear music from the 60s. Could Enphase go out of business? Quite possible. Will distributed power inverters go away? Hardly.
How was I able to use the term "bath mouth" twice in the same post? Interesting,,, Time will tell if Enphase remains viable, and or if another micro-inverter player (or several) come into the main.
This is more of a theoretical discussion rather than a practical one. If a decade from now I need to replace a Sharp 235w panel or Enphase M190 micro-inverter, chances are, not only are they not available, but I wouldn't want them anyways because there will be better alternatives then that still plug and play. That being said, I would like to add some data to some of the statements below, rather than taking them just at face value. Here are the numbers: Device...MTBF -------------- Traditional central or string inverter 10 - 15 years Disk drive in a personal computer 57 years Enphase Micro-inverter >300 years Solar panel/module >600 years -- [Source: Enphase's white paper provided earlier] If these figures are correct, one should expect one Enphase micro-inverter to fail during the lifetime of the array (25-30 years), per 10 panels of a PV array. For string inverters, one should expect a couple of failures per inverter in that same timeframe. Enphase is no longer the only micro-inverter company. My contractor informs me of at least one other, whose differentiation at this point is that they will offer a 25 year warranty (to exceed Enphase's and to match the current industry standard warranties for PV modules). I agree that warranties are only as good as the companies that back them...that goes for the string inverter companies, too.
Good info John, thanks, My point however, is if a Sharp 225 fails in 15 years, an exact replacement would most likely be unavailable, but it is also likely that a "pretty close" replacement will likely be available, as panels are largely "generic" with Vmps, Imps being in a relatively small range. As for micros, as I say, time will tell. I actually haven't heard of a second company, but it certainly wouldn't surprise me. Just today, it was announce that Outback Power Systems has been bought by Alpha Technologies of Bellingham WA, so shake ups in the industry are pretty common. Xantrex was sold to Schnieder last year. Who knows who will be around in 15 years. One thing is certain though, conventional grid tie inverter will be around in some form or another.
