Inverter, solar optimizer, and home energy storage provider SolarEdge announced it has opened a service called Re-Energize, extending retrofit upgrades to existing U.S.-based customers.
Homeowners with SolarEdge projects installed before June 30, 2022, excluding Home Hub customers, are offered several upgrade options through the Re-Energize program. The company said installers can add devices on the DC-side of the inverter, allowing for component installations with minimized main panel upgrade requirements.
The program offers promotional pricing for the company’s Home Hub inverter, which comes with a 12-year warranty and a 5-year data cell card that extends the ability of the home energy management system to connect to smart devices and appliances. The 5-year data card enables customers to connect to the company’s solar monitoring platform via their cellular plan.
Participants in Re-Energize are able to add more solar panels to their system, for up to 200% oversizing, add home battery backup, and connect home energy devices like EV chargers, load controllers, and more.
The company said the promotional program allows installers to re-engage existing customers with an incentive to upgrade their system.
SolarEdge said installers interested in the program can get involved with a three-step process. First, installers order the Re-Energize Home Hub inverter from a distributor, then, the company performs an upgrade on a qualified SolarEdge inverter. A document outlining eligible inverters can be found here. Installers then ship the replaced inverter back to SolarEdge, becoming eligible for the promotional pricing. An equipment return document is available for installers here.
Residential solar equipment providers like SolarEdge and Enphase have had a difficult year, with their stock prices shedding over 50% of their value. High interest rates, lowered demand, and equipment oversupply in Europe have dragged down earnings in the industry. In January 2022, SolarEdge announced it would cut about 900 jobs, or about 16% of its total workforce. One of its major competitors in Enphase also laid off 10% of its workforce.
Time-to-failure
The upgrade program gives homeowners the opportunity to get new equipment for one of the most failure-prone elements of their residential solar system. Researchers from the Bern University of Applied Sciences conducted an online survey to investigate the “time to failure” (TTF) for residential inverters. They have found that 34.3% of the devices experienced their first failures after 15 years.
“I would say this failure rate is acceptable, even good,” researcher Christof Bucher told pv magazine. “One assumes the inverter must be replaced once in the lifetime of a PV system.”
The survey included inverters from Fronius, Huawei, Kostal, SMA, SolarEdge, and Sputnik.
The survey showed that more than 65% of the inverters did not present yield-relevant faults by their 15th year of operation. The scientists said the TTF mainly depends on the manufacturer and a device’s location, with outdoor installations having shorter TTF rates.
This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.
By submitting this form you agree to pv magazine using your data for the purposes of publishing your comment.
Your personal data will only be disclosed or otherwise transmitted to third parties for the purposes of spam filtering or if this is necessary for technical maintenance of the website. Any other transfer to third parties will not take place unless this is justified on the basis of applicable data protection regulations or if pv magazine is legally obliged to do so.
You may revoke this consent at any time with effect for the future, in which case your personal data will be deleted immediately. Otherwise, your data will be deleted if pv magazine has processed your request or the purpose of data storage is fulfilled.
Further information on data privacy can be found in our Data Protection Policy.