Sunny Boy Solar Inverter Stops Working with Error 8

Just returned from holiday and found our inverter had stopped working! Nearly 2 weeks of prime August generation time had been lost, estimates based on other local installations indicates that this could equate to 180kWh of electricity generation that we have missed out on. With the FIT payments and electricity savings this is likely to equate to around £100 of lost income.

The most annoying part was that it appears the inverter developed the error on the day before we left so it could have been possible to resolve it before we went away and have not lost the generation for those days in August.

The error on the Sunny Boy 3000HF inverter was Error 8 - Waiting for Grid Voltage, Check Fuse,  Contact Installer. Having tried the usual turn off, turn on and resetting fuses without success we called out the installation company to investigate the problem.

Almost as frustrating as losing the generated electricity was that the solution was very simple - Turn off, leave off and turn back on again after 10 minutes. Obviously the short reset I had tried was not sufficient to restart or reinitialise the Sunny Boy inverter to reset the error. In addtion to the £100 of lost generation I was now down another £80 with the cost of the callout by the installers!



Sunny Boy 3000HF inverter was Error 8 - Waiting for Grid Voltage, Check Fuse, Contact Installer

So the moral of the story is - if your inverter stops and is giving an error I'd suggest turning off all switches, leave it overnight and turn on again to see if that resolves the problem before calling out the installers to investigate the problem.