A West Coast installation lives in salt air. Everything outdoors ages faster here than it would inland, and a system nobody inspects will eventually show it.
None of the following requires you to open anything. Opening electrical enclosures is not a homeowner job.
1. Generation is down on comparable days
Compare like with like: this month against the same month last year. A consistent shortfall on clear days points at soiling, shading that has grown or a string that has dropped out.
2. Visible staining or corrosion at the array
Rust marks on mounting hardware, or discolouration around a panel frame or junction box, are worth photographing and sending to us. Fixings are structural and they are the part most exposed to salt.
3. The battery is not reaching full charge
If the system used to reach 100 per cent on a sunny day and now stops short, something has changed. It may be generation, it may be a charge setting and it may be the battery.
4. Warning indicators or repeated alarms
An occasional alarm during a genuine grid event is normal. A recurring one is the system telling you something and it should not be dismissed as a quirk.
5. Nothing has been checked since installation
Terminations loosen through thermal cycling. Enclosure seals age. Firmware moves on. If nobody has been through the system since the day it was commissioned, that is reason enough for a check.
What we look at on a service visit
Terminations and torque on both AC and DC sides, the condition of the array and its fixings, enclosure sealing, firmware and settings against how you now use the property and a performance test with a written report.