- Jan 12, 2011
- 1,977
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At my parents house they've had two solar installations done. The first one was done by some "official" solar installer company while the other one was done by our electrician. The solar array that was installed by me and the electrician has been wonderful and problem free for the last 5 years. The first array however that was installed has had numerous issues from day 1 and so in that time, I've become sort of a solar installer expert to figure it all out.
Anyway I'm re-roofing due to a leak and so I have to remove the 1st solar array and while I'm up there, I'm inspecting the system and see that a fuse has blown. This annoys me because about a year prior, I had to replace another fuse on this same array due to it too being blown. So I'm looking and I see that there are a bunch of 12amp fuses and a single 15amp fuse, with the 15 being the one I installed the year prior. So one of the 12 amp blew and I was thinking, why are there 12 amp fuses, the PV panel's sticker specifies a 15amp fuse...
Fast forward like 2 weeks later to today and I'm talking with the neighbor about their solar array and they told me how they had their solar installer come out and replace some fuses as two had blown a while back. I thought that was interesting so I asked if I could take a look and see what sort of fuses they had up there. Went up on the roof to the combiner box and I open it up to see that it too has these 12amp fuses! So I have my neighbor (who is quite milfy and svelte) look under the PV panels and read back to me the sticker. She mentions that it specifies 15amp fuses for the PV panels. So I go home and I get to the combiner box for the second solar array that was installed by me and the electrician and see that we had installed 15amp fuses, not 12amp fuses. I've yet to encounter a solar PV panel that uses less than a 15amp fuse so I'm starting to think that these unscrupulous solar installers are purposefully using slightly lower amp fuses in order to get service calls out to the house. It's so rare and infrequent for this to occur that the customer would be none the wiser about it.
What do you guys think? Feels pretty scummy to me! If any of you guys have had a 'professional' solar installation, please, check out your combiner boxes and see if they too did the same thing. I have no idea if Solar City would do such a thing but my guess is, due to the high markup they have, and the fact they "warranty" all the equipment, that the answer would be a "NO".
Anyway I'm re-roofing due to a leak and so I have to remove the 1st solar array and while I'm up there, I'm inspecting the system and see that a fuse has blown. This annoys me because about a year prior, I had to replace another fuse on this same array due to it too being blown. So I'm looking and I see that there are a bunch of 12amp fuses and a single 15amp fuse, with the 15 being the one I installed the year prior. So one of the 12 amp blew and I was thinking, why are there 12 amp fuses, the PV panel's sticker specifies a 15amp fuse...
Fast forward like 2 weeks later to today and I'm talking with the neighbor about their solar array and they told me how they had their solar installer come out and replace some fuses as two had blown a while back. I thought that was interesting so I asked if I could take a look and see what sort of fuses they had up there. Went up on the roof to the combiner box and I open it up to see that it too has these 12amp fuses! So I have my neighbor (who is quite milfy and svelte) look under the PV panels and read back to me the sticker. She mentions that it specifies 15amp fuses for the PV panels. So I go home and I get to the combiner box for the second solar array that was installed by me and the electrician and see that we had installed 15amp fuses, not 12amp fuses. I've yet to encounter a solar PV panel that uses less than a 15amp fuse so I'm starting to think that these unscrupulous solar installers are purposefully using slightly lower amp fuses in order to get service calls out to the house. It's so rare and infrequent for this to occur that the customer would be none the wiser about it.
What do you guys think? Feels pretty scummy to me! If any of you guys have had a 'professional' solar installation, please, check out your combiner boxes and see if they too did the same thing. I have no idea if Solar City would do such a thing but my guess is, due to the high markup they have, and the fact they "warranty" all the equipment, that the answer would be a "NO".
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