Solar panel warranties, beware

[rhino]

I started looking at fine details of panel warranties especially when I saw mention of CanadianSolar only giving fraction of dollar amount for a panel that died shortly after installation. When looking at CanadianSolar BiHiKu warranty doc there was some interesting points:

You get no warranty if:

1. You installed on something non-stationary
2. You move the panel from it's original installed location
3. If the label on the panel is no longer legible or missing

And if you do have valid claim the options they can give you are:
1. repair the Products
2. replace the Products with new products whose labeled power wattages equal to or exceed the Warranted Wattages of replaced Products (the Warranted Wattages is defined as the labeled power wattages of the Products minus the permissible accumulated degradation)
3. provide a refund of the fair market value of the Products assessed based on the Warranted Wattages at the time of claim.

It's option 3 where they get you and can say the fair market value is way below what you actually paid for it.

Just an interesting issue I came across when researching panels. I'm going to look at others to see how they compare.

 

[Ampster]

I have only had one warranty claim on 16 panels which I purchased in 2010. They were BP SX170 Which worked fine but we're under a recall because of bad solder joints. British Petroleum sent me enough that I was able to use that to purchase 20 Canadian Solar panels.

 

[v_green57]

About 2003, I bought a single Kyocera KC120 that I used for years when camping. In 2019 it developed an intermittent open connection on the internal foil bus. I was able to get things to work for the rest of the weekend by using a piece of 3/4" PVC pipe with electrical tape wrapped around jammed under the frame rail pressing against the foil bussing. See attached image.

Just for fun, I contacted Kyocera to see if it was something covered under warranty. I did have the original invoice from Northern Arizona Wind & Sun. They got right back to me and told me that during that time period, they were transitioning to lead-free solder and has issues just like the one I described.

They shipped me a brand-new KC-120R on their nickel.

If only every vendor I dealt with treated me like Kyocera, life would be good.

 

[rhino]

Unfortunately I'm not even sure Kyocera makes panels anymore? All of my panels are also Kyocera. Also have the KC120's, KC130's, KU265's, and KD315GX.

 

[rhino]

It doesn't look like Kyocera does anymore but amazingly they still have large clear button to get warranty service! amazing!

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