Cracking glass on Heliene 300 watt panels

[Lorne McIntosh]

I just had new panels installed Dec 2017, as a new micro-fit project. Now three have significantly cracked glass. Has anyone else encountered this problem?

[Rob Beckers]

Lorne, you're not the only one.
Who supplied those panels? I'm not seeing you on our list of customers so they must have come from elsewhere.

Heliene received a batch of tempered glass that must have been bad, and the panels made from it are randomly shattering for no reason. We received a shipment of around 400 panels late October, that we sold, and so far we have been seeing around 5% breakage in that batch. There have not been any broken panels before or after, for us it was just this batch.

This is a first for us, and I assume for Heliene too. We have been selling their modules since 2011 and I can count the number of problems on one finger, until this particular batch of panels. To their credit they have been replacing the broken modules (and I have been replacing modules for people that brought them in to our warehouse until we ran out of Heliene panels).

Please contact Heliene support to get a warranty claim started. They will need pictures of the front of the shattered module, the label on the back, and the label with the serial number (there are two stickers with the serial number, one on the back, one on the side of the module).

FYI, the shattered modules will work for some time. Electrically the broken glass has no real effect, there is no water intrusion (the cells are embedded between layers of clear plastic). Eventually the panel will fail because the glass no longer provides structural support and the movement from the wind will crack/break the cells and tracks.

-RoB-