Everything Solar Forum

Kindly share your top 3 problems, this can help all of us to learn and take necessary preventive measures. (Don't hesitate to add if there are repeated problems)
My Top 3 problems were,
1. Power loss due to cables laceration by rodent bites on a roof of rice mill (this looks silly but took lot of time to fix)
2. Missing of anchor bolts when the base plates are cemented and mounted on a flat roof
3. Poor cable management leading to power fluctuations

There aren't a lot of things we saw, but rodents (mostly squirrels in our area) did sometimes bite through wires - some of them seem to have bionic teeth!

Most service calls were for Enphase micro-inverters or Solaredge optimizers needing replacement after a few years - which should usually be covered under warranty. Relatively easy to identify and remedy, but a cost all the same.

Kindly share your top 3 problems, this can help all of us to learn and take necessary preventive measures. (Don't hesitate to add if there are repeated problems)
My Top 3 problems were,
1. Power loss due to cables laceration by rodent bites on a roof of rice mill (this looks silly but took lot of time to fix)
2. Missing of anchor bolts when the base plates are cemented and mounted on a flat roof
3. Poor cable management leading to power fluctuations

Hi Dara,

Thank you for response.

Looks like are squirrel / rat bites are common problems irrespective of location, we had this issue only on 1 site though.

Have you taken any preventative measure to control them? Do you suggest any other methods other than the below listed measures.

We had this issue recently and I realized they are so many wires were bitten so I am completely changing the wiring, the few measures that I took are 

1. Elevated the height of the panels, so that rice husk might be deposited on the roof instead of the panels
2. Added a mesh below the panels, so that the wires are protected.
3. Adding rat traps at multiple places on the roofs 
4. Using chemical repellents / naphthalene balls 

It is good to hear that there are no major reworks, looks like your service call or expenses are very less.

Do you used to track the installations performance of every system that was installed. 

There aren't a lot of things we saw, but rodents (mostly squirrels in our area) did sometimes bite through wires - some of them seem to have bionic teeth!

Most service calls were for Enphase micro-inverters or Solaredge optimizers needing replacement after a few years - which should usually be covered under warranty. Relatively easy to identify and remedy, but a cost all the same.

Kindly share your top 3 problems, this can help all of us to learn and take necessary preventive measures. (Don't hesitate to add if there are repeated problems)
My Top 3 problems were,
1. Power loss due to cables laceration by rodent bites on a roof of rice mill (this looks silly but took lot of time to fix)
2. Missing of anchor bolts when the base plates are cemented and mounted on a flat roof
3. Poor cable management leading to power fluctuations

Hi Venkata - 

We didn't have this issue that often, and you can often avoid it by removing any clumps of leaves that might collect under the panels before the critters can get settled under there and cause a lot of damage.  If some damage occurred, we'd usually fix it and put down some repellent and make sure the homeowner stays on the lookout for any gathering clumps under the panels going forward.  If a system has multiple occurrences (and voracious critters) we would put a "critter guard" mesh around the panels.  This can be expensive and doesn't often last as long as you'd like (although it does come with a short warranty).

We could monitor performance for systems after installation - year to year production variations weren't really easy to track since weather can cause pretty wide variations for a perfectly performing system, but  we (and the customer) could be notified if, for example, an inverter failed or there was some error message somewhere.  So any major issues should be seen relatively quickly to avoid large production losses.

Dara

Hi Dara,

Thank you for response.

Looks like are squirrel / rat bites are common problems irrespective of location, we had this issue only on 1 site though.

Have you taken any preventative measure to control them? Do you suggest any other methods other than the below listed measures.

We had this issue recently and I realized they are so many wires were bitten so I am completely changing the wiring, the few measures that I took are 

1. Elevated the height of the panels, so that rice husk might be deposited on the roof instead of the panels
2. Added a mesh below the panels, so that the wires are protected.
3. Adding rat traps at multiple places on the roofs 
4. Using chemical repellents / naphthalene balls 

It is good to hear that there are no major reworks, looks like your service call or expenses are very less.

Do you used to track the installations performance of every system that was installed. 

There aren't a lot of things we saw, but rodents (mostly squirrels in our area) did sometimes bite through wires - some of them seem to have bionic teeth!

Most service calls were for Enphase micro-inverters or Solaredge optimizers needing replacement after a few years - which should usually be covered under warranty. Relatively easy to identify and remedy, but a cost all the same.

Kindly share your top 3 problems, this can help all of us to learn and take necessary preventive measures. (Don't hesitate to add if there are repeated problems)
My Top 3 problems were,
1. Power loss due to cables laceration by rodent bites on a roof of rice mill (this looks silly but took lot of time to fix)
2. Missing of anchor bolts when the base plates are cemented and mounted on a flat roof
3. Poor cable management leading to power fluctuations