MJLorton Solar Power and Electronic Measurement Equipment Forum
Solar Power => Solar Power => Topic started by: kibi on May 25, 2014, 06:15:48 PM
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This mainly applies to the non-US market as far as I know.
I recently got hold of an Enphase M215 micro inverter. It's sensibly priced and well built. Unfortunately it's a rather expensive brick until it's programmed with the correct grid profile.
The only way to flash the grid profile to it is if you happen to have their Envoy energy monitoring product. This Envoy gadget costs nearly four times as much as the inverter it's self!
If this is the way that Enphase work, that's fine, but it would be good to know this from the start. There is no mention in the datasheet of the need of an expensive gadget just to get the inverter to fire up. I just happened to find the information in some help document.
Oddly, the correct grid profile is set on the hardware targeted at the US market, but the international models do not have any grid profile set at all.
So basically, don't buy an Enphase inverter unless you are willing to shell out a great deal more money on their Envoy unit too.
On a positive note, I may well do a teardown of the inverter since it is utterly useless to anyone in it's current state.
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I have contacted Enphase who have provided an acceptable solution to the problem.
I guess my previous warning to others is still valid, but I am extremely pleased with the manner in which Enphase UK have dealt with the situation, I had not expected such professionalism.