What to do if your solar system isn't producing

Walk through this in order. Most "system is down" calls turn out to be one of the first three items.

1. Check the date and the weather

Solar systems do not produce when the sun is not up. They produce very little in heavy clouds, snow cover, or fog. Before assuming something is wrong:

• Open your monitoring app (Enphase Enlighten, SolarEdge, or similar)
• Look at the production graph for the last seven days
• Compare to the same week last year

If today is overcast and last year's same-day was sunny, the difference is weather, not the system.

2. Check the inverter status lights

Walk to your inverter (usually mounted near the electrical panel or in a utility area). Look at the indicator lights.

Enphase microinverter system:

• Solid green LED on the IQ Combiner: all good
• Blinking green: system communicating, normal
• Solid amber: grid present but production stopped (often a utility issue)
• Solid red: fault, contact support

SolarEdge string inverter:

• Green LED solid: producing
• Green blinking: standby (often dawn or dusk)
• Red: fault code on the screen, read it and call us

SMA, Fronius, or Tesla: check the screen for error codes. Photograph any code you see and send it to us.

3. Check your home's electrical panel

If your house has lost power and the grid is down, your solar system will not produce. This is by design. It is a safety feature called "anti-islanding" that prevents solar from energizing downed lines while utility crews work on them.

If you have battery backup (Enphase IQ Battery, Tesla Powerwall, or similar), the backed-up loads will continue running and the system will keep producing into the battery. If you do not have battery, no grid means no production until the grid comes back.

4. Check the AC disconnect

Most systems have an AC disconnect switch, a small metal box near the meter. If anyone (an electrician, a tree crew, a neighbor) has flipped it off, the system cannot push power to the grid. The handle should be in the "ON" position.

Do not touch it if you are unsure. Call us first.

5. Look at the production data

In your monitoring app, look at the per-panel production view. With a microinverter system, every panel reports separately. If one panel shows zero while the rest produce normally, that panel or its microinverter likely needs service.

With a string inverter, the whole string drops to zero if any one panel has a serious problem. The fault will not tell you which panel. That is a service call.

When to call us

Call if:

• The inverter shows a red fault light
• Production is at zero on a sunny day
• One panel or string consistently produces less than its neighbors
• An error code appears on the inverter screen

You can reach us at help@cityrenewables.com or by submitting a ticket. Include the make and model of your inverter, the error code if any, and a screenshot of the last seven days of production from your monitoring app. That gets us to a fix faster.

What is not a problem

• Lower production in winter
• Lower production on cloudy or rainy days
• Lower production in the first and last hour of daylight
• Brief gaps in monitoring data (the cloud platform syncs every 15 minutes; small gaps are normal)