SolarEdge is Done

In an industry facing serious bankruptcies by major players, SolarEdge seems to be doing everything to make itself the next victim. Effective immediately, we will no longer be servicing SolarEdge systems. They have placed the straw that broke this camel’s back.

What Happened?

I don’t take this kind of decision lightly. Many abandoned system owners out there in Southwest Florida have SolarEdge systems installed by solar contractors who are no longer around for one reason or another or who refuse to service SolarEdge equipment. We seemed to have been one of the few remaining options for customers when they had failed SolarEdge equipment. I have a soft spot for people who have been orphaned by their solar installer, and we do our best to service people in need.

But SolarEdge’s latest move put me over the edge.

They have decided, effective 2/17/2025, that in order for you, the system owner, to provide monitoring access to a new installer, there will be a $99 transfer fee. The site transfer process needs to be initiated by the new solar contractor, with the fee paid before the monitoring access will be given.

The process of transferring sites was a total kludge prior to this move, and they have created another unnecessary impediment, cost, delay, and frustration.

Without access to the monitoring system, we can’t even begin to remotely diagnose what we are getting into and how to best assist system owners.

Worse yet, imagine as a system owner, you pay a contractor to take over system monitoring, and then they fail to resolve the issue or decide they do not want to get involved with the mess. Then you have to pay again to transfer the site to another contractor. How would you feel about that?!

It makes no sense!

SolarEdge Has Gone Downhill

At one time, SolarEdge was right there with Enphase in terms of competing for dominance in the residential solar energy space. As module-level power electronics became popular and even necessary with electrical code changes, these companies had everything going for them. Enphase went in one direction, providing legendary 24/7 service and a liberal warranty replacement policy, while SolarEdge’s service has become increasingly infuriating and ineffective.

Ideally, customer service would not be needed much, but it’s a reality with these new systems types that rely heavily on the connected world. However, when hardware fails, the process for diagnosis, warranty coverage, and replacement should be easy for dealers. Customers should be shielded from the frustrations, delays, and technical aspects of resolving issues. SolarEdge has done everything possible to make that not so.

Why We Refuse to Service SolarEdge Systems Anymore

SoalrEdge is well known for failures of their HDWave inverters and even repeated failures with warranty swaps, sometimes failing again in short order. Their optimizers are also prone to failure. It’s one thing to have failures, but the real problem is in how they are handled. Here are some of the frustrations dealers have, and why we have decided to stop servicing SolarEdge systems altogether.

Site Access

The owner should be able to initiate a transfer of the site monitoring to any solar contractor they want to use without intervention by SolarEdge staff. At one time ,we could gain access to a site by calling SolarEdge. Then they went to a web form that we fill out, but that form requires that the homeowner provide us with the Site ID from the monitoring system and an inverter serial number. Otherwise, we would need to visit the site to gather this information. Then, the form is sent to SolarEdge, which manually processes the forms during business hours. In other words, the new solar contractor cannot get access immediately if they are on site to do diagnostics or repairs.

Now, SolarEdge wants us to pay a fee to make this transfer. Who owns the site anyway – the system owner or SolarEdge? Seriously!

So now we have to collect payment from a system owner before we have done anything, get them to send in their Site ID and serial number, wait for access, and then get our first glimpse of what we are dealing with. This is all before we can even schedule a service call.

Contrast that with Enphase systems that can be transferred to new solar contractors via the consumer’s app or other methods, and the homeowner can provide access to multiple contractors simultaneously with one dealer acting as the “System Maintainer.” (which provides a little more access to change the layout of the system in the monitoring app). All of this can be done for free and without intervention from Enphase. And it can be done 24 hours a day.

Single Point of Failure

A longstanding argument in the industry is whether it is better to have a single inverter at ground level, or have module level electronics on the roof. In the case of a single inverter, if there is a failure, you just swap that out without even needing a ladder (sometimes). With module level electronics, you have many potential points of failure, and you have to get on the roof to do a replacement.

The counterargument is that a single module-level failure doesn’t take down the whole system, whereas a single inverter could result in extended downtime of the entire system. And string inverters are more time consuming and expensive to replace, whereas a microinverter, for example, is a quick and easy swap in most cases.

SolarEdge gives you the worst of both worlds. You have an optimizer under each panel that can fail and render that panel non-functional, but you also have a single inverter that can bring down the whole system. Not only that but if there are not enough functional optimizers remaining on a string, the whole string of panels will go down.

While microinverter failures are frustrating, they are not urgent, whereas SolarEdge inverter failures or multiple optimizer failures can result in significant economic loss while the system is waiting to be repaired. This increases the urgency for homeowners seeking repairs, and sometimes, it is impossible to work service calls into our calendar quickly enough to satisfy this urgency. By servicing SolarEdge systems, we are setting ourselves up for failure and customer disappointment.

Diagnostic Hoops

Requiring solar contractors to jump through ridiculous hoops has become an epidemic in the industry. Requiring solar technicians to take voltage readings and document them with pictures sent in via email rather than trusting them to do the diagnostics properly is a slap in the face to professionals like me. They want us to “prove our work,” I guess.

To be fair, even Enphase does this in some cases, but SolarEdge has taken this rigamarole to a new level. Even slam-dunk warranty claims with clearly dead inverters or optimizers take a ridiculous amount of diagnostic effort. That effort takes time, and labor time costs money. Ultimately, this is passed on to the consumer. Who do you think the consumer gets mad at when they get the bill? It’s the solar contractor – the one just trying to help the poor customer who is caught in the middle.

Imagine being on the phone with customer support, and they want you to give them the serial numbers of optimizers that are not producing power. That is precisely what the monitoring system is for, and they can see that information, yet they sometimes make the technician read off the serial numbers they are claiming to be not working.

If you are lucky enough to get a customer service rep who is a little experienced, you can sometimes get a warranty claim processed without calling multiple times, but it is never easy, and there are always diagnostic hoops.

Misdiagnoses

Nothing is worse than burning diagnostic time for SolarEdge tech support to conclude that there are optimizer issues that require on-roof diagnostics, only to find out later that there was a clear error code in the inverter that indicated a fatal internal failure of the inverter.

This is commonplace, but it just happened to me yesterday. I had sent a pair of techs out to a site for something that appeared to be an optimizer or wiring issue on the roof, and SolarEdge tech support was happy to lead them down this rabbit hole. When I dug into the remote monitoring system myself, I found out pretty quickly that there was an error code that indicated a clear inverter failure. Ultimately, the inverter was approved for warranty replacement, but not until we wasted hours of diagnostic time at the customer’s expense. This should have been easily recognized by SolarEdge tech support.

That brings me to the next frustration:

Poor SolarEdge Apps

The installer app, or SetApp as it is known, does not have all of the detailed diagnostic information that you can get from the web-based interface that requires a laptop or desktop. The monitoring app provides only nebulous and unhelpful information about errors that exist within the system. Sending technicians into the field with a laptop in this day and age doesn’t make any sense.

Contrast that with Enphase, which provides an Installer Toolkit app with terrific insight into real-time diagnostics. To be fair, Enphase does have much more robust information on their web-based installer portal, and the Installer Toolkit can be slow and flaky at times, but the level of information provided in the app to help diagnose issues is far and away better than SolarEdge’s technician resources, and is typically adequate to do on-site diagnostics without going back to the office to dig deeper into the web-based interface.

Delay and Deny

It seems that SolarEdge tech support representatives have been instructed to do everything possible to make a warranty claim difficult, even when the issue is obvious. I understand that they do not want to incur costs unnecessarily, but sometimes, it’s hard to tell if the customer service rep has been trained at all on how to think critically.

Once again, I can’t give Enphase a total pass, especially with customer service reps jumping to the tired conclusion that “interference” is causing issues with the system, even when there is a clear power production issue that is unrelated to monitoring. With that said, SolarEdge has taken excuses to a new level.

The delay and deny tactic inevitably results in return visits to gather additional diagnostics, often for information that can be retrieved remotely.

3G Modem Debacle

Many SolarEdge systems installed years ago were connected to the Internet via cellular modem. These modems came with prepaid data plans. However, the cellular networks eventually made 3G networks obsolete, rendering these modems useless. In order to get a new data plan, the system owners needed to buy new modems on top of new data plans!

While some inverters had alternative connection methods, some would require upgrades to connect using WiFi or Ethernet. And SolarEdge refused to support one of the best workarounds for Ethernet enabled inverters, which was using a WiFi Extender to convert the Ethernet to WiFi. I did it anyway since there was technically no way for them to know, and it was a ridiculous policy.

I thought this was the last straw, but so many people reached out in desperation since this debacle that happened a while back. We did our best to support SolarEdge owners dealing with this issue, but it was painful, to say the least. SolarEdge was quite unhelpful.

Down But Not Out

I don’t know anyone in Southwest Florida selling SolarEdge anymore. I’m sure there are some out there who have not received the memo. SolarEdge is done. At least in my mind, they have shot themselves in the foot with this latest move. I don’t know if this decision came out of HQ in Israel or SolarEdge US in California, but I think this may go down as one of the dumbest ideas in their history.

System owners across Southwest Florida are already having a hard time finding people who will even touch their faulty SolarEdge hardware, and now SolarEdge has made it even harder for solar contractors and more expensive for system owners.

With this information, would you dare buy products from this company?