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Laura Creighton's avatar

Speaking of economic wars: In solar power systems, essentially all of the smart electronic boxes (inverter/controller/battery management/etc.) are manufactured in China. US brands are almost entirely contract manufactured, and typically OEM rebrands of a Chinese design with some amount of customization. This is especially true of the current devices of choice for private and small business solar installations: The AIO (all in one) box, which simplifies installation, operation, and monitoring. The main EG4 (Texas) AIO, for instance, is a rebrand of a Luxpower (China) product, the (Chinese) Deye inverters are rebranded for Sol-Arc, sold in the northern US and central America, called Sunsync and sold in the EU, called inverex and sold in Pakistan and so on and so forth.

The Chinese are not interested in the competition between these rebrands -- each is given a region and a monopoly for what is sold there. There has been speculation and concern that such China-manufactured products may contain a backdoor to allow remote shutdown, which could be used to cripple both the US electrical grid and stand-alone solar powered sites should relations with China sour into open or cold war. People who have worried have been told that they are racist, fear-mongering conspiracy theorists for having such ideas, because of Climate Change.

Well, on November 15, the tin hats have been proven correct once again, at least in terms of Deye products. Deye "bricked" a number of Deye-branded AIO inverters, mainly in Puerto Rico, but some reported in the US, Canada, Pakistan and Costa Rica.

The inverters were shut down and displayed the following message:

This inverter is not allowed use at Pakistan/USA/UK

Pakistan contact inverex

USA contact Sol-Arc

EU contact Sunsync

Pls return to your supplier.

The following page requires a 5 digit passcode to start This passcode is generated overseas

Please have your passcode ready. [PROCEED]

So if you got the message in error, you could in theory get your inverter to start again. Otherwise you have a nice brick. This appears to be response to a Sol-Arc suit claiming Deye was not doing enough to stop dealers from selling Deye-branded versions of their inverters in their contracted exclusive territories, but you cannot rule out a Chinese cyberwar limited trial shot after the Trump election, preparing for conflict with the US, with the above as a cover story.

It's been two weeks and nobody has reported receiving any passcodes so far.

Discussion thread here in the DYI solar forum. There are thousands of messages but not a lot more information than what I posted here.

https://diysolarforum.com/threads/china-kills-all-non-sol-ark-branded-deye-unit-in-the-usa-this-morning.94349/

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John Yates's avatar

Absolutely brilliat. Clarifies and deepens the argument I and advanced manufacturing colleagues are championing in the UK. Thank you

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