LionKing Posted July 18, 2020 Posted July 18, 2020 We have a Infini Plus 10KW installed in our house for 2 years now and its been working fine, apart from really crappy SNMP web card logger. Currently we have 5.12KW string on MPPT1, and I've been thinking about adding another 3KW string on MPPT2 - so been talking with local solar installers. During conversation the topic switched to inverters and he mentioned that they have stopped installing Infinis (voltronic in general) because of number of failures they've been getting. I've seen on this forum and on web/youtube people complaining about blown IGBTs so it seems like a common issue with Infini. Is this common failure point with other inverters as well? When the inverter fails, does it affect connected load i.e. damage from surge output etc? Is the failure catastrophic i.e. loud bang and smoke? Also wondering whether its a good idea to add 3KW string, would it overwork the inverter and cause earlier failure? Quote
Jaco De Jongh Posted July 19, 2020 Posted July 19, 2020 10 hours ago, LionKing said: During conversation the topic switched to inverters and he mentioned that they have stopped installing Infinis (voltronic in general) because of number of failures they've been getting. I am glad to hear another installer admitting that. An installer closer to me also told me how he almost went bankrupt after installing Voltronics for less than 18 months. By then, all his time was spend attending to support calls and call outs and he just could not do any more new installations. He had to replace all of those inverters out of his own pocket. 10 hours ago, LionKing said: blown IGBTs so it seems like a common issue with Infini. True, My own infinis blew Fets over and over.... 10 hours ago, LionKing said: Is this common failure point with other inverters as well? Nope, not that i have seen.. or not happening with the inverters I prefer to install. 10 hours ago, LionKing said: Is the failure catastrophic i.e. loud bang and smoke? Pretty load bang, I was in the inverter room twice when the Mosfets blew, not so much smoke though.. 10 hours ago, LionKing said: When the inverter fails, does it affect connected load i.e. damage from surge output etc? I never experienced damage tot he connected appliances.. 10 hours ago, LionKing said: Also wondering whether its a good idea to add 3KW string, would it overwork the inverter and cause earlier failure? There is a member on the forum using a few of those 10kva Units with a max PV panels connected, and his been running for about 2 years already without issues. He did replace one or 2 units in the beginning, but i think all is sorted now. Quote
LionKing Posted July 19, 2020 Author Posted July 19, 2020 (edited) @Jaco de Jongh Thanks for the thorough reply. Which Inverters do you use now? You think its ok to add 3KW string to 2nd MPPT without having to worry about reducing life? Edited July 19, 2020 by LionKing Quote
Jaco De Jongh Posted July 19, 2020 Posted July 19, 2020 20 minutes ago, LionKing said: Which Inverters do you use now? Victron and the occasional Goodwe. 20 minutes ago, LionKing said: You think its ok to add 3KW string to 2nd MPPT Imo, it should be okay. I cant see why it wont work. Quote
ChristoSnake Posted July 19, 2020 Posted July 19, 2020 Interesting topic, because my first InfiniSolar inverter was DOA. The second unit had no problems and has been in use for about a year & a half now. But Jaco's comment did make me wonder, and the only way us non-installers have of knowing these things is by using PVOutput as a guide, or asking installers for their opinion. I tried the latter, and found it to be much like asking a Nissan or Mercedes dealer what the best car is. The former has no brand loyalties, and to my surprise 17 of the top 30 longest registered inverters in the country are made by Voltronic (by far the most of any manufacturer). Of the many Voltronics, an Axpert is in spot number 5 (4.5 years service), and the oldest InfiniSolar is all the way up at number 12 spot (with just over 4 years of active service). The stats look like this: Voltronic Axpert & InfiniSolar: 17 SolarEdge: 2 Victron: 2 Goodwe: 2 SMA/SunnyBoy: 2 EnergyMonitor: 2 i-Energy: 1 Micro Inverter: 1 Socomec: 1 I understand that VW Golfs aren't the most reliable cars out there because we see so many of them on the road, and Porsches aren't crap because there are so few of them around. But it does show that Voltronic products can outlive their warranties! All Voltronics have their outputs column highlighted., and the 4x Infinisolars also have their name column higlighted: Disclaimer: Three of the Voltronics (and one of the two Energy Monitor inverters) have not updated their stats recently. You may interpret that as "Voltronic inverters failed more than any other inverter in ZA", or you may interpret that as "Voltronic accounts for 43% of the longest running inverters in ZA" Quote
___ Posted July 19, 2020 Posted July 19, 2020 (edited) 1 hour ago, ChristoSnake said: Victron: 2 There is no built-in interface for Victron to log to pvoutput, and VRM is much more capable anyway. The two Victron's on pvouvput is probably mine and one other, and they all use my very hacky dbus-pvoutput script (which was written on boxing day some years ago when I was bored and never improved after that). The same is true for Goodwe. They have their own cloud solution. Conversely, other inverters log to pvoutput cause they don't come with their own cloud solutions and pvoutput is free. In short: Not the best way to come up with stats Regaring the Infini: I'm no expert, but over the years I kinda sorta figured out that there is a high end unit (that's even more expensive than a Victron setup), and then there are the "Plus" and "V" models which are more budget. Most people fit the budget ones. I suspect (but don't have numbers) that the high end units are probably not too bad, except nobody installs that one (due to cost). Edited July 19, 2020 by plonkster Quote
ChristoSnake Posted July 19, 2020 Posted July 19, 2020 Hello Plonkster, pleased to meet you. I guess you may call me nobody I initially looked at a Victron when I set out to build my system, but I got the impression that their systems are so modular that I had to buy an inverter, two MPPT controllers and a battery charger to get the same stuff that's bundled into a single InfiniSolar. A few quick sums suddenly made it look very expensive! Yeah, I did have to buy a RPi, ICC, etc to get nice Cloud putputs, but my RPi is also used for some IoT things which means that the expense wasn't a complete waste. There are two very nice benefits to that do come to mind with separating the components: Flexibility when upgrading Repairing/replacing only the bits that break (I know Victrons don't, but please humour me here!) I didn't know about PVOutput until late last year, I guess many other inverter owners are in the same boat and don't post their outputs there either? It would be interesting to hear from more people. I'd know I'd hate my inverter to pack up before it's lived to a ripe old age... Quote
Jaco De Jongh Posted July 19, 2020 Posted July 19, 2020 1 hour ago, ChristoSnake said: All Voltronics have their outputs column highlighted., and the 4x Infinisolars also have their name column higlighted: 41 minutes ago, plonkster said: In short: Not the best way to come up with stats I have to agree, Victron has its own "Cloud" VRM to log all the data, so no need for a Victron owners to register on PVOutput and similar platforms. I also used PVOutput when I still had Infinis on my wall, but never bothered when I replaced my Infinis with Victron. 26 minutes ago, ChristoSnake said: I'd know I'd hate my inverter to pack up before it's lived to a ripe old age... I really dont want to go into this, because I cant find my research from about 2 years back, but it went something like this. Plonk will tell me if I am wrong about Victron. Please remember, this is how I remember it, Axpert / Infini = 5 year design life - 1 to 2 years warranty/guarantee depending on where you buy it. Goodwe = 8 year design life - 5 year warranty/guarantee Victron = 15 year design life - 5 year warranty/guarantee And the others I cant remember. I have personally saw Victrons reaching 10 years and above without any issues. Quote
LionKing Posted July 19, 2020 Author Posted July 19, 2020 1 hour ago, Jaco de Jongh said: Axpert / Infini = 5 year design life - 1 to 2 years warranty/guarantee depending on where you buy it. Goodwe = 8 year design life - 5 year warranty/guarantee Victron = 15 year design life - 5 year warranty/guarantee And the others I cant remember. Oh wow. I guess thats why the installer switched away from voltronics. In my area, mostly voltronics are sold/used so there are quite a few third-party repair centers as well. I'll call someone tomorrow and get their take on common issues with voltronics and repair cost. I did see GoodWe hybrid inverters being sold locally, however, don't see any mention of it on GoodWe's website, I guess they discontinued it. That would have been a good option. 2 hours ago, SolarNoob said: My infini has been installed for nearly 4 years now with absolutely no issues. Cool. How many & what sized PV arrays are hooked upto it? @ChristoSnake How is data from inverter uploaded to pvoutput? Quote
ChristoSnake Posted July 19, 2020 Posted July 19, 2020 1 minute ago, LionKing said: How is data from inverter uploaded to pvoutput? I use the ICC software on a RPi - it feeds to EmonCMS (2x separate feeds) & to PVOutput... Quote
___ Posted July 20, 2020 Posted July 20, 2020 11 hours ago, Jaco de Jongh said: Please remember, this is how I remember it, History is written by the winners 11 hours ago, Jaco de Jongh said: I have personally saw Victrons reaching 10 years and above without any issues. I know of a guy with a very very old unit that started life in an ambulance. Still kicking around... I believe it's around 12 years old now. I suppose these things should be understood much like we understand infant mortality. Yeah, what a mental jump I hear you say! So you may have heard people discuss the reliability of history and they'd say things like "oh, people only lived to an average of 35 so nobody was alive who even remembered what happened 50 year later", but that would be wrong, because you're forgetting that the average was skewed by the infant mortality rate (people who died before making it to 18). If people actually made it through childhood, and didn't fight in any wars, they usually lived into their 60s. Similarly, most units that fail for any brand fail in the first year or maybe two. If they make it past that, they tend to last quite long. As a result, you will find many many Voltronics out there making really old bones Quote
jykenmynie Posted July 20, 2020 Posted July 20, 2020 10 minutes ago, plonkster said: Similarly, most units that fail for any brand fail in the first year or maybe two. If they make it past that, they tend to last quite long. As a result, you will find many many Voltronics out there making really old bones This is what they call survivor bias. Another funny story (I found this link by virtue of Google, but I remember it from elsewhere: https://clearthinking.co/survivorship-bias/) Basically the first thing I think about when I read about these extremely wealthy entrepreneurs. Yeah sure, you made it, but how many others set out to do the same and failed. ___ 1 Quote
___ Posted July 20, 2020 Posted July 20, 2020 16 minutes ago, jykenmynie said: This is what they call survivor bias. Conversely, there is also another bias that I don't know the name of, but it affects people who paid a lot of money for something. Because they paid so much for that thing, there is an internal refusal to admit to poor quality, so they convince themselves -- often subconsciously -- that the product is better than it really is. That is why car satisfaction surveys are done 6 months after the sale, to account for some of that new-car bias. The funniest story I heard though was a guy with a Mahindra bakkie of some sort. So how is it treating you? Oh, very well, very well! I've only had to replace the leaf springs at the back twice! Quote
jykenmynie Posted July 20, 2020 Posted July 20, 2020 1 minute ago, plonkster said: Conversely, there is also another bias that I don't know the name of, but it affects people who paid a lot of money for something. Because they paid so much for that thing, there is an internal refusal to admit to poor quality, so they convince themselves -- often subconsciously -- that the product is better than it really is. I'll let you know how I feel about my Victron setup in about 4-5 months' time then. The biggest dilemma I face when purchasing generally expensive things: You've got a base price, the price below which you cannot find anything that serves the purpose you need it to. That could already be a large amount of money. Then you need to decide how much you are willing to spend extra, since you are already spending what you consider to be a large amount of money, to get a better quality product, or features that you think you might need. Sometimes it is difficult to draw that line, because it becomes quite subjective and quality is only guaranteed for a number of years. Quote
___ Posted July 20, 2020 Posted July 20, 2020 8 minutes ago, jykenmynie said: The biggest dilemma I face when purchasing generally expensive things: You've got a base price, the price below which you cannot find anything that serves the purpose you need it to. That could already be a large amount of money. Then you need to decide how much you are willing to spend extra, since you are already spending what you consider to be a large amount of money, to get a better quality product, or features that you think you might need. Sometimes it is difficult to draw that line, because it becomes quite subjective and quality is only guaranteed for a number of years. I'm in the process of buying an oscilloscope. You can heave cheap DSOs for around 7k... but I had got it into my head that I want at least a basic MSO (mixed signal). The first decent MSO starts at around 40k... BUT... you can get USB logic analyzers that can do this for 5k... and Keysight has a low-end (educational/home use) scope that has this for around 10k... so you can imagine how hard a choice that is! Quote
jykenmynie Posted July 20, 2020 Posted July 20, 2020 2 minutes ago, plonkster said: The first decent MSO starts at around 40k... BUT... you can get USB logic analyzers that can do this for 5k... Sounds like a number of though choices! If a logic analyser is that thing that just plots the high and low signals, you can probably build one for much cheaper if you are willing to do some coding: I.e. with an Arduino board - As long as you have enough digital input pins. While I know nothing on the subject, I follow a youtuber who builds computers from first principles, and in his later videos he wanted to explain how a certain processor chip works, so he showed how to analyse the logic with an Arduino board. Quote
___ Posted July 20, 2020 Posted July 20, 2020 24 minutes ago, jykenmynie said: logic analyser is that thing that just plots the high and low signals Indeed, but it usually comes with some kind of software and you can decode what is going on. So you could wire it to the RX/TX wires of a serial connection and spy on what is going on, or you could wire to to the SPI wiring between a CPU and some other peripheral, etc etc. My requirement is to read RS485/modbus-rtu and line it up with other analog signals and then work out the timing (how long since this analog signal do I get that digital signal). This opens up a whole new avenue for tools that I want but cannot afford. The baseline would be the Rigol DS1054Z. That came without the decoding feature (which you can have by paying extra), but then came the Siglent SDS1104X-E (which is technically still a budget scope) and they bundled decoding for free, so Rigol also made it free. Of course both these scopes are 1) around 12k and 2) not available in South Africa so it takes several weeks to import. So while I'm here complaining about the cost of scopes, one of my colleagues laugh at me, stating these units I consider expensive are "toys"... I guess if you need them for work, then you don't mind shelling out a 100k on a scope. Quote
jykenmynie Posted July 20, 2020 Posted July 20, 2020 6 minutes ago, plonkster said: Indeed, but it usually comes with some kind of software and you can decode what is going on. So you could wire it to the RX/TX wires of a serial connection and spy on what is going on, or you could wire to to the SPI wiring between a CPU and some other peripheral, etc etc. My requirement is to read RS485/modbus-rtu and line it up with other analog signals and then work out the timing (how long since this analog signal do I get that digital signal). This opens up a whole new avenue for tools that I want but cannot afford. The baseline would be the Rigol DS1054Z. That came without the decoding feature (which you can have by paying extra), but then came the Siglent SDS1104X-E (which is technically still a budget scope) and they bundled decoding for free, so Rigol also made it free. Of course both these scopes are 1) around 12k and 2) not available in South Africa so it takes several weeks to import. So while I'm here complaining about the cost of scopes, one of my colleagues laugh at me, stating these units I consider expensive are "toys"... I guess if you need them for work, then you don't mind shelling out a 100k on a scope. If this will help you to give me Pylontech's voltages etc. over the CAN bus, I think you need to buy it ASAP. Quote
___ Posted July 20, 2020 Posted July 20, 2020 6 minutes ago, jykenmynie said: If this will help you to give me Pylontech's voltages etc. over the CAN bus, I think you need to buy it ASAP. Aaah no, that has to be done by the Pylontech engineers. And rumour has it the firmware with the new CAN-ids is almost ready for release. You don't need me for that... just hold ear to the proverbial ground at Pylontech Quote
Travis Posted September 23, 2020 Posted September 23, 2020 My Infini is "Green Leighton" on the PV Output list. Been running over 4 years now and going strong. Installed in June 2016 and still one of the top systems daily in terms of efficiency. I paid R16 377 in May 2016 from Current Automation. Generated 24MWh so far and has exceeded my expectations. Only "mod" I did was to remove the fan filters and I clean with compresses air once a year roughly. Running a 3.4KW solar array and has regularly been pushed to 8kw for long periods without issues when grid is available. I will replace with a 5kw unit when it dies with dual MPPT as I currently have 20 panels connected to inverter + 6 connected to DC geyser element. I'll move the 6 panels from the element to the second MPPT rather as the geyserwise MPPT dies after roughly 3 years.. Coulomb 1 Quote
Gnome Posted September 28, 2020 Posted September 28, 2020 (edited) On 2020/07/19 at 5:45 AM, Go-Solar Electrical said: I am glad to hear another installer admitting that. An installer closer to me also told me how he almost went bankrupt after installing Voltronics for less than 18 months. By then, all his time was spend attending to support calls and call outs and he just could not do any more new installations. He had to replace all of those inverters out of his own pocket. Have you considered that perhaps the problem is not the product? By this I mean, doing research and sizing appropriately? Don't get me wrong, I'm not one to advocate for the user is the problem. But in this case, I've seen a lot of problems with Axpert inverters when users load them up with solar panels to the point of exceeding the maximum voltage rating which usually ends the way you describe. On Inifi/Axpert inverters I would not run the MPPT at more than 75% its rated voltage. For sure Voltronic Power are at fault for over-representing their product specifications and expecting the installer to use common engineering principles of 10-20% margin. They likely have little to no margin on their ratings. Edited September 28, 2020 by Gnome Quote
Gnome Posted September 28, 2020 Posted September 28, 2020 On 2020/07/19 at 7:51 PM, ___ said: Regaring the Infini: I'm no expert, but over the years I kinda sorta figured out that there is a high end unit (that's even more expensive than a Victron setup) There is such a model? The only one I know of that is more expensive is the 3 phase version, but I don't believe Victron has a competing product? Quote
LionKing Posted September 28, 2020 Author Posted September 28, 2020 On 2020/09/24 at 2:47 AM, Travis said: I will replace with a 5kw unit when it dies with dual MPPT as I currently have 20 panels connected to inverter + 6 connected to DC geyser element. I'll move the 6 panels from the element to the second MPPT rather as the geyserwise MPPT dies after roughly 3 years.. What do you mean? why does the MPPT connected to geyser dies after 3 years? Quote
Travis Posted November 29, 2020 Posted November 29, 2020 On 2020/09/28 at 2:01 PM, LionKing said: What do you mean? why does the MPPT connected to geyser dies after 3 years? I was using a geyserwise mppt made my microcare and it died after 3 years. The MPPT sits in the roof with the geyser and in insufficiently passively cooled. Various components have died over the years from the geyserwise "control box/Relay box" to the MPPT. They only come with a 1 year warranty. The geyserwise components have been the least reliable of my setup and I have now bypassed it by connecting the PV panels to the DC side of my PTC element directly. https://www.livestainable.co.za/product/geyserwise-eco-mppt/?utm_source=Google Shopping&utm_campaign=Primary Google Feed &utm_medium=cpc&utm_term=62450&gclid=Cj0KCQiAqo3-BRDoARIsAE5vnaJenAmZzdvBWCOCFTV0gODupyH1irmnufxzvo3rb34Ge2ougolgGkcaAryiEALw_wcB Quote
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