Solar Guppy,

You ask why not happy with Xantrex? Well I missed the original offer to upgrade the Suntie, I never was sent a letter, note, or Email reguarding the upgrade. Xantrex sure new I had one. When I found out I contacted Xantrex, I was told it was too late for them to help me. I do not give up that easy, I contacted Smitty Ovits (sp) he offered to have mine upgraded at an OK cost. We sent many emails back and forth, delays here, troubles there bottom line he did not get it done. Several months later I found my inverter had developed a problem and started to produce less power than normal, now I needed a solution. Smitty offered me a "new string inverter" all I had to do was re-wire my whole system, thanks no. I found a new STX on Ebay, purchased it, installed it in about an hour and all is good. I sent the old ST in for warranty repair and Xantrex shipped me a new STX. I plan on putting it up on Ebay to recoup my cost. I think the whole thing was a bit over the top and Xantrex did not step up. PFM

I agree that they should have been more active in sending out notices to the current owner of ST and ST/XR's , the entire group of people that had anything to do with the ST are now gone at Xantrex

I'll mention to Xantrex about the service rep you dealt with also ...

But Xantrex did replace you ST with a UPG when the ST failed, and according to your post, they offered a new GT3.0 which has a retail of double the UPG, which can be bought through Sun Electric in Miami for about 900 bucks new in box.

Xantrex is the major play in RE , and with new products , actually design by Xantrex , they will have best in class in both price and performance and at least I feel have stand behind products with there logo on it. There is no other company in RE that has done this ... if your pissed, think how the Advance Energy purchasers feel

Hello all,

By way of an update, after the greatest rainfall in near 100 years and the clouds that went with it the STX is now showing it's metal, one perfect day with the old ST we saw 11KWH, now with still short days 11,9xx is the norm. We should see 11+++ in a few weeks. The mixed sky days and cloudy day performance is at least 20% better.

I have a fresh STX in the box if anyone here is interested.

Regards,

PFM

Just a quick update, the STX does very well indeed. Our best day so far has a peak power of 13,854 watts. The average power improvement is 25 to 30 percent. The "June gloom" days improvement is very impressive, maybe as good as 50 percent better (very subjective looking at a grey day).

Regards,

PFM

Hello all,

I have a new update and question. My system is now on a second meter provided by SCE, the meter is a Landis + Gyr, MOdel AXRS4. This meter is installed between the STX and my breaker pannel. It is there to measure power produced. For the month of June the system averaged 11.9 KW per day as recorded by the Landis + Gyr. There is a second meter a "bi-directional" meter to measure power used / produced. I am looking at the Landis + Gyr as compaired to the STX lifetime meter. The Landis + Gyr shows 1614 kw as compaired to the STX shows 2222 kw this is an error of 608 kw for an error of 27.4% based on 8 almost 9 months of data. Has anyone else checked the data? I will guess the Landis + Gyr is correct as it is a regulated device. I have been so impressed with the power production but now wonder just how well it is doing.

Regards,

PFM

27% error is a redflag for sure. The Suntie should be within 1-2%, you can double check this by comparing to the DC power numbers reported by Fishbowl and verify that your seeing 90-91% efficicencys. FYI, The DC and AC power measuring is independant in the Suntie so there is NO chance they will both be in error.

To be off by 27% , the unit would have to be reporting 110% efficiency. This will narrow down the fault to the Suntie or the newly installed utility meter.

You can also compare a single days production (check in the morning and at Sunset and compare the two values.

Also, it almost goes without saying, make sure there are no other loads on the Suntie Circuit

The Suntie does use about 4 wHr at night , so this will have about 50 wHr/day ( about .04% in of your production ). With about 2000 units out in the field, this is the only report I have received of production totals not matching

Anything is possible of course ... I hope these suggestions help track down your issue

I have an ST and am way behind the curve to get it upgraded to an STX. Now I'm wondering if there is a way to trade it in for a GT3.0 or something. Is there anyone that can give me a nudge on what thread to read on this or where to look? When calling Xantex they basically told me "too old, too long ago, etc" even though it was still new in the box (well it was until a few months ago).

Any help is appreciated! I almost had this project going/installed last year about this time, but had a little run in with some hospital time that delayed everything about 9 months

Woo hoo...

Marcos

The upgrade program was almost 3 years ago ... I always caution people about buying Sunties to verify that its the UPG version.

Xantrex has discontinued the Suntie and has no ability to even work on the units (all manufacuring/techs are gone). All that is left is customer service stock for warrenty repairs

How much did you invest into the old ST?

too bad I did'nt find this forum earlier. I too have a NEW in box ST1500 I purchased last winter. It's date is October 2001. I installed it in the spring and have just started noticing how the output dives with even the slightest shading. One thing I do wonder though is if there are any software updates and if it would be worth paying someone to do it. Mine is running version 3.0.
Any advice wold be appreciated.[/i]
P.S. I paid $528.

There is no software only upgrade.

The UPG upgrade I designed for Xantrex is both software and hardware changes that both have to be done together and the rework in extensive.

For 500 bucks, you got a fair deal. You have a gridtie inverter that while not stellar performance, does work.

Bottom line is there is no upgrade path. If you want a UPG, www.sunelec.com sells them for about 900.00, you can eBay the ST and get most of your money back and then apply that towards the UPG model.

The cheapest gridtie box NEW is the Xantrex GT3.0, the street price is about 1800-1900 so this puts the cost/value of the ST/UPG into prospective.