Skybox is history

[Mike Curran]

I see Outback now lists Skybox as a legacy product.

[raysun]

Its been in the the lineup for what, 5 - 6 years?

[Mike Curran]

Ampster was an early adopter in 2018, so yeah, 5 years or so. I guess I shouldn't be surprised, but it's still disappointing.

[raysun]

Ampster was an early adopter in 2018, so yeah, 5 years or so. I guess I shouldn't be surprised, but it's still disappointing.

Very much so, as the full potential never seemed to be realized.

[pss]

I think Outback was smart to do this. The competition is ripe with new designs of all kinds of scales and combinations of intelligent hybrid inverters capable of connecting larger arrays, battery banks and inverter capacity. And easy to install and commission.

I'm sure they will be coming out with new products soon.

Outback, if your listening, many homes and buildings in California and the Southwest have their main panels outdoors and for these installations, NEMA 3R and more equipment is needed and due to restrictions on the simple geography of many homes, larger capacity inverters in a single package are needed. Also, temperature ranges need expansion due to the climate.

In my own case, if I wanted to adopt skybox, I would have needed to install and configure 4 of them and then combine a big battery bank and it would be a lot of work as compared to say a single 20K watt inverter in one package.

[Mike Curran]

@pss - you're right, with all the changes going on, Skybox became obsolete quickly. Being grid-tied and only backing up some critical loads, a single Skybox was perfect for my needs. Skybox has a NEMA 3R rating and that was the reason I went with it over a Radian - had to be outdoor mounted.

Now, if I had to replace it my simplest option would be to buy a spare Skybox (they're made so that they can be swapped out without disconnecting any of the hard wiring to panels, signal wiring, and AC connections), and you can find used ones on ebay. Otherwise it'd have to be a Mojave in combination with an FM100 - much more expensive. Plus the hassle of rewiring everything.

[Electrictrauma]

Guess that means we’ll never know why the sporadic error codes and restarts!

[JDL]

So the question is - How long will outback support the Sky box Will they have spare parts? and if so for how long? Outback - feel free to respond.

[Mike Curran]

I'm sure they will honor the 10 year warranty but beyond that we're probably on our own. Since many vendors are still selling new Skyboxes it would seem Outback will have to provide support for those sales. Note warranty states coverage starts 6 months from factory shipment. Since they're no longer being produced, that gives new owners 10 years or less of warranty coverage, as I see it.

[mhspohr]

This is sad.
My investment of $10,000 seems to be wasted now.
They are still functioning most of the time but have a nasty habit of just randomly going off line leaving me without power.
I can't rely on them so will need to look for replacements.

[Mike Curran]

@pss - you're right, with all the changes going on, Skybox became obsolete quickly. Being grid-tied and only backing up some critical loads, a single Skybox was perfect for my needs. Skybox has a NEMA 3R rating and that was the reason I went with it over a Radian - had to be outdoor mounted.

Now, if I had to replace it my simplest option would be to buy a spare Skybox (they're made so that they can be swapped out without disconnecting any of the hard wiring to panels, signal wiring, and AC connections), and you can find used ones on ebay. Otherwise it'd have to be a Mojave in combination with an FM100 - much more expensive. Plus the hassle of rewiring everything.

Edit: Make that 2 FM100s, plus weatherproofing (or finding space indoors) for a Mojave, which is not outdoor rated like Skybox..

[mhspohr]

I was looking at the Mojave. I'd need to also buy new solar inverters and rewire.
I'd rather they just fixed the Skybox.