If you are a former SunPower customer, you know by now that they declared bankruptcy, as we announced last month. Many SunPower systems use microinverters that were manufactured by Enphase and branded as SunPower microinverters. These are just Enphase IQ series inverters that were designed to talk to SunPower’s monitoring portal through their proprietary monitoring hardware device.
The question arose – what happens to the warranty for SunPower’s microinverters now that they are bankrupt?
The great news is that Enphase has agreed to cover the warranty on the Enphase-manufactured products. This includes the AC modules that were produced with Enphase microinverters pre-attached and branded by SunPower as “Powered by Enphase.”
While that is great news, the SunPower monitoring portal is likely to disappear, so finding a faulty microinverter would be challenging, relying on the lights underneath the array. Even knowing that a microinverter has failed or is underperforming would be impossible without the monitoring portal.
But Enphase is coming to the rescue on that as well. They have a way to move SunPower customers over to the Enphase Enlighten monitoring portal and app. However, this requires installing an Enphase IQ Gateway device. It’s not as simple as calling an Enphase dealer to do it, however. Due to technical nuances, the installation needs to be done by an Enphase Field Service Technician. At this time, we do not have details on what this will cost consumers, but I would highly recommend doing so. The Enphase Enlighten app is superior in every way to the SunPower app, and it will provide future monitoring and serviceability of your system through a huge network of qualified Enphase dealers.
The full consumer FAQ from Enphase regarding the SunPower warranty and monitoring is located here:
