Inverter failure Warranty question

[PhilT]

Welcome to the Community @PaulD

@PaulD

“we don’t have the ability to pre-monitor the online portals and wouldn’t know the system has no production until our client lodges a service with us”.

Most inverters (manufacturers) have online reporting of some sort, some from their ‘cloud’ and others from the inverter acting as a local web host. Whether suppliers monitor on behalf of their customers is company dependent.

My supplier included 10 years of them monitoring my system (enphase microinverters); the system reports production and consumption at 15 minute intervals hosted at enphase; I can also log into my management interface to have a look. The system shows each panel individually as well as the aggregate production and consumption so any failure becomes apparent fairly quickly.

@PaulD

Could I make a claim for re-imbursement of increased electrical costs due to the for the Inverter failure?

I doubt it since no warranty of which I am aware includes coincidental or collateral damage. What yours covers should be clearly stated in your warranty documentation. The enphase document states in part

IN NO EVENT WILL ENPHASE BE LIABLE FOR ANY SPECIAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES, LOSSES, COSTS OR EXPENSES…

Even if a company was willing to step up (which they will not be) it would be a difficult proposition to establish one’s loss from solar being down because clouds and weather and hence production are variables. To wit. for the past few weeks Eltham has been so cloudy and rainy my system has been more decorative than useful

In contrast to mine, some contracts state monitoring and reporting problems is solely a customer responsibility.

@PaulD

The Inverter Warranty (10 years) does not ‘re-start’ with the installation of the new unit

The definitive advisory document is

Warranties%20and%20refunds%20-%20a%20guide%20for%20consumers%20and%20business.pdf

You will notice some bits are loose and on the consumer to make their case if the retailer/manufacturer declines warranty service. It also states a new replacement product has similar consumer guarantees to a new product, but the text does not explicitly address whether it is a new warranty or part of the original warranty.

While the written warranty might disavow ongoing support, it might be possible case dependent to call in the ACL guarantees on the basis that the original product was warranted for 10 years so the replacement should reasonably last 10 years, noting the onus is on the consumer to make the point and get the remedy.

There are a number of related topics

ACL - Does it work for consumers?

Has anyone had any luck getting a refund under the ACL for faulty products outside of the manufacturers stated warranty period? I’ve got a high end business laptop, 2 and a half years old, and it’s died on me. My expectation is that such a machine would last more than 3 years (considering that’s the minimum time you can depreciate it over with the ATO, they seem to think so as well…). I’ve contacted Lenovo about it (who sold it to me), they say the ACL only requires them to provide a warranty …

Warranty periods for replacement goods

Edit: New readers to the topic can join it as of January 2023 by clicking here. I recently had cause to return a faulty generator still under warranty, to the supplier. The supplier informed me the replacement generator would not receive the new machine warranty but would have a warranty period equal to the warranty time left on the faulty machine. Another fact here is they could not supply the same model as a replacement and I agreed to take a smaller capacity machine. Is this correct?It se…

and others that can be found using the community search.

Others more eloquent than myself will probably reply also.