This is part of an ongoing essay detailing my experiences with solar energy. To see if solar is right for you, visit SunPower.
The evening of Saturday, February 14th, 2014 there was an unexpected snow storm which later turned to freezing rain accompanied by gale force winds.
The following day there was no solar production at all. There was a bit of ice on the panels from the night before, but most of it had melted by early afternoon.
On Monday morning, the panels were clear of ice and snow but production was still flatlined; the web-based monitor displayed the "inverter(s) down" and the inverter showed a STATE 457 SYNC AC error w/ an orange LED. If I turned off the AC circuit breakers the inverter would change to STATE 445 and a red LED. These error messages are buried within the SunPower documentation, but aren't easily found using Google. Cycling the utility disconnect and DC disconnect had no effect. I phoned Solar Energy World and a service call was scheduled for the following day.
On Tuesday morning, a SEW technician came out to the house. He was able to verify that DC power was being produced by the panels (good), repeated most of the power cycling steps I had taken (OK), and also reseated the controller card within the inverter (why not, works for computer memory). After a call with SunPower it was decided to replace the whole inverter under warranty care.
On Wednesday morning, the inverter came back online, as if nothing had happened.
The inverter got replaced anyways a few days later, under warranty. The whole swap took a few hours, but didn't require me to be home or to fiddle with any of the existing mount points to the walls or roof.
Last Modified: 2016-04-27
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