Deye

Deye

Basic information
Founded	1990
Type
Industry	Solar Inverters, Dehumidifiers
Official website	https://deye.com

Deye initially started out making dehumidifiers, but the Ningbo, China based company hat since become one of the biggest players in the solar inverter market.

Consumer impact summary

Overview of concerns that arise from the company's conduct regarding (if applicable):

• User Freedom
• User Privacy
• Business Model
• Market Control

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Incidents

This is a list of all consumer protection incidents this company is involved in. Any incidents not mentioned here can be found in the Deye category.

Inverters intentionally bricked by manufacturer over the internet (November 2024)

Deye intentionally disabled inverters remotely if they were connected to the internet. Deye has an exclusive agreement with a dealer/distributor in the United States and the bricked devices were the ones thought by them to be imported by unofficial means, citing compliance concerns. However, not only legally purchased devices were affected, also users in other regions found their micro inverters displaying an error message and refusing to operate.

This raises customer protection concerns if a manufacturer has the ability to destroy or render unusable equipment legally purchased by an individual, but also cyber security concerns if a Chinese company (all of which are controlled by the state as per law of the PRC) or an individual or group who gains control of the system has the power to remotely disable or destroy infrastructure in other countries.

RelayGate (July 2023)

A group of YouTubers revealed that Deye submitted compliant solar micro inverter devices for certification by German authorities, but later omitted a critical safety component (safety relay) in production runs of several models that were shipped to customers in that area. It was estimated that up to 25% of balcony micro solar installations were affected. After the scandal went public, Deye offered customers a free additional relais box to retrofit the missing safety component to the relevant devices.

Ways to operate inverters without internet or a cloud

For security reasons and in light of precendets of inverters being disabled remotely, it is recommended not to connect an inverter to the internet and to avoid using the manufacturer's cloud services.

Some Deye solar inverters can be used with SolarAssistant, a solution that runs on the local network on a RaspberryPi and makes all data and settings available to smart home systems via MQTT. It is neither free nor open source, but supports a wide range of inverters and makes the data available using open standards. Many but not all Deye inverters are supported, particularly not the micro inverters affected by the incidents described above.

Alternatively, other brands of inverter which directly offer local APIs without a cloud can be considered. This allows the inverters to be connected to a local smart home system like Home Assistant without going through the manufacturer or even connecting them to the internet. For micro solar installations such as balcony mounted panels with a micro inverter, the APSystems EZ-1 offers a local API out of the box. For bigger installations, companies such as Fronius also offer local cloud-free integration.

In both cases, a private VPN can be set up to connect to the home network on the go, a feature found in many prosumer routers. This way monitoring and control is still possible from a mobile device on the go, while the inverter is not exposed to the internet or a cloud.

See also

Link to relevant theme articles or companies with similar incidents.

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