Enphase Microinverter Warranty Claim Causes Heartburn

We should say right up front that we generally have a bias in favor of microinverters.  Most of the solar energy systems that we sell at SolarTown are sold with microinverters rather than central inverters. We have explained in our learning article explaining inverters and micro inverters why generally we favor microinverters in the residential solar market. This is still a very hot topic and we are preparing another learning article on why we continue to endorse microinverters for most of our residential customers who are going solar. Our recommendation, however, may be tempered by our recent experience dealing with customer care of the leading microinverter manufacturer, Enphase.  

Microinverters have quickly garnered acceptance especially for solar installations on homes.  Although we expect some major competition starting this year, Enphase is undoubtedly the leader of this fast expanding market, and as of this writing, is the only microinverter we carry at SolarTown.

We may have not been as sensitive to the reliability issue of microinverters, or particularly the Enphase microinverter, until one of the Enphase parts failed on one of our customer’s installations. The part that failed was the Enphase Envoy, which is, according to Enphase, the “communications gateway” for the solar energy system. It basically monitors the performance of the system.

Our customer dealt direclty with Enphase technical support to troubleshoot the problem with the Enphase Envoy, but was unable to get the part to work. Our customer was getting increasingly frustrated with Enphase and like all installers, simply wanted to get on to the next solar installation, rather than trying to get the Enphase Envoy to work.  At SolarTown, we want to make sure that our installers are doing what they do best, and that is installing solar energy systems, not dealing with a warranty claim. We decided that we would replace the Enphase Envoy and deal with Enphase directly on the warranty claim. The new Enphase Envoy worked without any problem and our customer was pleased. We then had to deal with the warranty claim directly with Enphase. Going into our further discussions with Enphase, we had a very high level of confidence that there was a problem with the Enphase product.

We have now spent hours (yes, read hours) on the phone with Enphase, which doesn’t seem particularly interested in taking back their defective product. Possibly they think that the more that they drag out the discussions, the more likely that we will not press to find out what is the problem with the Enphase product. Maybe Enphase doesn’t want to own up to the fact that possibly there may be reliability issues with its products. Coincidentally, our March 2011 issue of Solar Today makes the same point: “The advantages of microinverters do appear to be attractive to the residential market and will only increase with greater availability of AC modules, so the longer microinverters remain on the market without significant reliability problems, the faster they are expected to grow. However, the reliability question is a real one . . .” (Our emphasis.)

Maybe it should come as no surprise then that the central inverter and microinverter companies, are battering each other at Solar Summit 2011 this week. Take a look at this summary of the high decibel discussion at GreenTechMedia.com: “’There is this idea that centralized inverters are more reliable, but the data doesn’t support that,’ said John Berdner, general manager of North America for SolarEdge during a panel discussion. ‘This idea is simply not true.’”

Whoever is right, our impression is that when dealing with us, Enphase is simply trying to wish its problems away.  We are thinking that if Enphase doesn’t have to take back its non-working part, then it can show that there have been no customer returns—but we hope that we are wrong on this impression. Despite our raw experience with Enphase, we will continue to carry Enphase products in our store, but possibly with less enthusiasm than we had before.

It is hard not to notice the difference between Enphase’s handling of our claim (actually not a claim, because they still won’t issue a RMA) and the approach taken by SMA, a leading central inverter manufacturer.  Besides the benefits of installing SMA Sunny Boy grid-tie Inverter in a solar installation, SMA provides a separate guarantee that if there is a problem with the SMA Sunny Boy inverter, the company will not only replace the inverter, but also provide an additional monetary refund to the installer for time lost in troubleshooting a solar installation. We admittedly have not tested SMA’s warranty, but it sure sounds like SMA wants to stand behind its products.