I'm canvassing for practical experience with PV inverters. The inverter on our system has just died at 25 months. It was an Eversolar which is now called Zeversolar and is part of SMA. It's in warranty but clearly a life of only two years is completely useless. I'm thinking about replacing it with a better unit. Our system is a 2kWp. Whta are the most reliable inverters?

NB we did not choose the original, it was what the installer supplied. Internet searches illustrate that the Eversolar stuff fails at around 2 years.

Thanks, so not SMA. If that many fail with one installer surely the whole lot should be recalled.

It was a faulty batch apparently. All replaced by SMA as far as I know.
I still rate them highly.
Stecca are good, and they kick in at 80V, but pricey.

I think I heard that SMA had pulled out of the wind market. No idea why.

Power-one are amongst the best as far as I know .
Hope I will be still saying so in 15 years time who knows.

Just had an Enphase system installed (we have some tree shading issues). It will be a few months before it actually gets connected to the mains but meanwhile I'm quite happy with the downfeed cable just lying around in a coil

I'll let you all know how it works out.

Aurora do seem to have the edge on reliability now from what I have heard. I was always and SMA fan, but not so sure now.

The way it worked out for us was a lengthy wait for delivery of the replacement Zeversolar unit. They keep no replacements at all in Europe and all have to shipped from China. We lost around 5 weeks or so. The European office is in Germany and their customer support is nigh on useless and they frequently do not respond. Their default position is to try to waste time and your money in carrying out tests on the installation trying to shift blame. Zeversolar is SMA so beware.

Our original supplier can't be faulted. As soon as the inverter was delivered we called him and he was here and had it fitted all inside 2 hours. He has stopped using Eversolar/Zeversolar due to the high failure rate and complete lack of customer support.
I am expecting another failure and it will probably be out of the warranty period (5 years) so will replace with another brand. Thanks everyone for the suggestions. I have made a note for future reference.

RRP for a Sunny Boy 5000TL is about £1250 + VAT, other makers are a lot cheaper. I acquired an earlier generation 5000 for £1000 last year.

The FIT was originally set on the assumption that the inverter would need to be replaced once or twice in the 25 year payment period. That seems a perfectly reasonable, if pessimistic, assumption to me.

Aa GTIs are now commodity items and priced accordingly, I wouldn't worry too much about the cost.

Posted By: GotanewlifeI really ought to save for replacement of those major capital items I deliberately liberally funded on retirement.

One of the things that attracted me about the Enphase system was the 25-year warranty (though their site says 20 years so it might be interesting trying to claim in the last five years). Another thing is that if one of the inverters goes, it's only £80 to replace it. So there should be no large outlays even when units do fail out of warranty. Although I suppose there might be a case for replacing the lot to a schedule as they do with fluorescents in a warehouse or factory.