Start from the symptom in front of you, and do the first check that belongs to that symptom. Replacing the inverter is a later decision. The check that only needs your eyes and the screen comes first. Any check that means opening equipment, testing insulation, or working on the array belongs to a qualified person. The table is the sort. The paragraphs under it say when two rows are really one fault.
| What you see | First check |
|---|---|
| No production at noon | Look at the sky, then at the alarms. Cloud and heat belong with the weather article. A ground-fault or arc-fault code does not. |
| Trips when something starts | Name the load that had just started. Then read whether the code is a surge, a setting, or a ground fault. |
| Clicks at night | A relay can click when it connects or when it searches. A new grind belongs on the noise page. Chatter that will not stop is a call. |
| Error after rain | Treat water and leakage as the leading idea until a qualified person says otherwise. Follow the ground-fault stop rule. |
A noon with no watts
If cloud is on the array, compare the curve with solar inverter faults and the weather before you condemn the box. A dip that tracks the sky is the array following irradiance. A clear noon with an empty alarm list moves you to shade, soiling, an open string, or clipping. Those are production questions. A ground-fault or arc-fault code at that same noon outranks the weather story. Which monitoring alarms matter is the sort for the words on the screen. A PV ground fault means stop cycling the light.
Write down whether the monitoring portal agrees with the inverter's own display. A dead router can look like a dead array if you only check the phone. Stand at the inverter. If its screen shows power and the portal shows zero, you have a communications gap. If both show zero under a clear sky, you have a production gap. Those are different afternoons.
Starts, night sounds, and rain
A trip that happens only when the well pump or the refrigerator starts is a load event until the code says otherwise. Running watts and start watts are added in how to add up inverter loads. If the inverter is grid-tied and does not run those motors at all, a startup trip is not a pump story. Read the code. A ground fault that appears as the array wakes up is the ground-fault page, not a motor page.
Clicks at night are often the relay, and inverter noise is where a normal click is separated from a grind or a smell. One click at dusk or at dawn can be the unit connecting or disconnecting. A rattle that continues, or any smell, ends the listening test. Shut the unit down by the posted labels and call.
An error that shows up after rain, and fades when things dry, is still an error. Water found a path. Drying hides it until the next storm. Keep people off a wet array, photograph the code, and hand it to a qualified person with the note that rain was involved. Do not schedule a reset for the next sunny hour and call the path repaired. The symptom table is a first sort, not a permission to keep operating through a fault that returns.
Write the code before anyone clears the screen
The words on the display are the only clue the next person will have. A photograph of the code, the hour, and the sky beats a memory that it beeped. Alarms that should stop the day are sorted in which monitoring alarms matter. A reset is only a test, and only after that photograph: resetting a solar inverter. Replacing the inverter is the last check, after the grid, the weather, and the array wiring have been ruled out.
