There is a customer on ecointalk reporting today that his unit melts its power cord.
his hosting company is refusing to run it.
Powercord melting aint to blame on the unit but a defective powercord..
I would think so too, although he claims they've gone through a few.
In terms of the issue of these things burning up, it is possible that some of them are drawing too much power, which might cause that.
I can see how this might happen. Too much power causes the cord to heat, which reduces efficiency. That causes more power to be drawn, heating them further and so on. Eventually this leads to meltdown of the cords and is possibly causing the internal components to start on fire also.
The other issue is that this is the same thing that is going on inside your walls and wiring. Of course the breaker is going to trip normally, which is what he's reporting also. If it doesn't, however, due to a faulty breaker, which does happen, or someone gets the bright idea to over-fuse without understanding the danger of putting too much load on his wiring, a fire results. The wire heats up, melts its insulation and arcs. Boom, you're on fire.
An X-1 user reported that sort of fire also, BTW. Things kept tripping breakers, so he put a copper rod in. Burned his garage to the ground. I'm not sure if he's bullshitting or what, but he hasn't denied the story.
Is that BA's fault? clearly not, but people are going to do dumb things. it's the manufacturer's responsibility to make sure the ratings are accurate so these dumb things aren't necessary to keep these things running.
These people are actually making people pay the shipping to RMA their firebomb components. I find that very hard to believe. Ridiculous. "oh, we nearly burned your house down? please pay 100 dollars to ship the components to us." Are you fucking kidding me?
It should also be noted that we're going into winter. The air is much dryer, and so are the studs and insulation in your home. Everything becomes much more prone to burn as the humidity disappears. If anyone is crazy enough to run these in their house, which I am not going to do under any circumstances, it would be a good idea to not run power through your walls. Put a small hard drop in right next to the panel. Make sure the breaker is new, etc. This way if it arcs out it's doing it hopefully in your panel or your short drop of conduit and simply shorts out instead of burning your damn house down.
This is a serious danger to people and from what I'm seeing they're not even recalling them. telling people to wait and maybe they'll ship some parts out. They have no idea what is causing the problem, but don't worry, we'll send you a new board and see how that goes.
What a joke.