Hello r/solarDIY. I have a friend who needs some help. He went solar about 20 years ago (early adopter, awesome), but he's recently run into an issue: the original inverters (two SMA Sunny Boys) crapped the bed. He replaced one of them with an Aurora wind turbine model he found, and that seems to be functioning okay. The remaining Sunny Boy is functioning but not exporting. Or it might be completely toast. I don't exactly remember. He's had difficulty sourcing a replacement that will work with his array.
I don't know the exact issue, to be honest, and I feel bad asking for help with that knowledge gap. Nevertheless, to my mind he has a few options, to my mind:
- Connect both arrays to the one functioning (Aurora) inverter. This was his idea, and did not seem ideal to me, but I don't exactly know what sorts of ratings margins he has.
- Replace the Sunny Boy with a comparable inverter (he said he was having trouble finding something that would work, and a lot of the difficulty stemmed from the grid-tied aspect - information he conveyed to me).
- Add a battery bank and export to the home/grid from there.
I have pictures if that would be helpful. Any thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks!