Solaredge Monitoring Offline ?

[Mr Gus]

Solar edge used to have more detail (conversation) but as the forum moved , a lot of knowledge was lost, lucky for us we have an OGB

As far as spares are concerned have you tried cracking the lid & identifying components & their values yet? ..if you start a list on the internet someone will find & add to it eventually.

[Oldgreybeard]

If anyone wants to get data from the Sofar Modbus then this is the method that I pretty much copied: https://github.com/cmcgerty/Sofar2mqtt

I used a slightly different display and put the whole thing in a small plastic box, with a power supply module (just to save having a 5V power brick plugged in the outbuilding where this lives). The WiFi connects to the house LAN and then Home Assistant runs the Mosquito MQTT broker which just pulls data from the ESP8266 module and makes it available to any HA integration.

Sofar MQTT.jpg (130.52 KiB) Viewed 1036 times

[marshman]

For anyone with a Solis inverter Ginlong publishes a very useful document giving full details of the ModbusMap for their inverters.

You can download it from here:

https://ginlongsolis.freshdesk.com/supp ... -inverters

[Fintray]

Solar edge used to have more detail (conversation) but as the forum moved , a lot of knowledge was lost, lucky for us we have an OGB

As far as spares are concerned have you tried cracking the lid & identifying components & their values yet? ..if you start a list on the internet someone will find & add to it eventually.

If you are referencing the Solaredge optimisers my advice is don't bother as I had one fail, which was promptly replaced under warranty, I opened the failed unit only to find the entire circuit board is encased in potting compound.

[Mr Gus]

Grr, that's annoying, ..epoxy resin or something else? (Not great potential for failure analysis nor recovery & recycling I anticipate)

[Oldgreybeard]

On the plus side they have a very good warranty, 25 years IIRC.

[marshman]

Grr, that's annoying, ..epoxy resin or something else? (Not great potential for failure analysis nor recovery & recycling I anticipate)

No, but good for hermetically sealing electronics in harsh environments and generally ensuring a longer life - assuming correct margins have been designed in for thermal conductivity etc. I see far too many circuit boards with inadequate (read none!) protection from moisture, corrosion etc. which ultimately shortens the life of the device. Chances are the components are mainly SMT (surface mount), not well marked (not enough room on the device) so even if not "potted" chances of repair would be slim.

25 year warranty says it all really, they have confidence in their design and construction.

[Mr Gus]

It certainly does make me view the product & the price differently, hope the 25yr warranty is backed up properly.
Thanks MM, I'd only heard folk talk of failed units that had cost them an arm & a leg, not the warranty scenario.

[Oldgreybeard]

No, but good for hermetically sealing electronics in harsh environments and generally ensuring a longer life - assuming correct margins have been designed in for thermal conductivity etc. I see far too many circuit boards with inadequate (read none!) protection from moisture, corrosion etc. which ultimately shortens the life of the device. Chances are the components are mainly SMT (surface mount), not well marked (not enough room on the device) so even if not "potted" chances of repair would be slim.

25 year warranty says it all really, they have confidence in their design and construction.

I remember a tear down of a Solaredge optimiser, looking at the design and why they were able to give that long warranty. Apart from the potting to keep moisture out, the one take away from that I remember was that they use very long life capacitors. I believe this was related to the relatively low power handling of each unit, that enabled them to avoid using electrolytics, and by doing that the most failure prone component was eliminated from the design.

It does seem that big capacitors are the weakest point of a lot of high power electronics. I have wondered whether it might be worth pre-empting failure on our 8 year old inverter by replacing all the capacitors before it goes wrong.

[marshman]

No, but good for hermetically sealing electronics in harsh environments and generally ensuring a longer life - assuming correct margins have been designed in for thermal conductivity etc. I see far too many circuit boards with inadequate (read none!) protection from moisture, corrosion etc. which ultimately shortens the life of the device. Chances are the components are mainly SMT (surface mount), not well marked (not enough room on the device) so even if not "potted" chances of repair would be slim.

25 year warranty says it all really, they have confidence in their design and construction.

I remember a tear down of a Solaredge optimiser, looking at the design and why they were able to give that long warranty. Apart from the potting to keep moisture out, the one take away from that I remember was that they use very long life capacitors. I believe this was related to the relatively low power handling of each unit, that enabled them to avoid using electrolytics, and by doing that the most failure prone component was eliminated from the design.

It does seem that big capacitors are the weakest point of a lot of high power electronics. I have wondered whether it might be worth pre-empting failure on our 8 year old inverter by replacing all the capacitors before it goes wrong.

I wouldn't worry. Wait until it fails then either repair or replace - probably replace with a more efficient inverter.

In my view electrolytic capacitors have developed a bad "rap" due to a spate of failures of capacitors produced in the early 2000's. Just Google "capacitor plague"! I remember repairing many failed switch mode power supplies in everything from PC power supplies to PSU boards in set top boxes. In recent years the only failures caused by failed electrolytic caps I have seen have been in products produced in that era, or using components produced in that era. It is a known and documented problem caused by "dodgy" electrolyte produced in Taiwan. It was a massive problem for the industry. It was exacerbated by poor design where components were underspecified. Decent designs would use well specified components with wide temperature ranges, low ESR (internal resistance) etc. with care taken to minimise peak currents. All of which stress the capacitor and with the poor quality electrolyte led to early failures. A capacitors worst enemy, as with nearly all electronic components, is heat - but they are particularly vulnerable as it degrades the electrolyte. So a decent design, with comfortably rated components with adequate cooling/ventilation will last many years.

A much more common capacitor (non electrolytic) failure is on AC motor start and run capacitors and "X2" rated mains filter caps on appliances.