bower install: unknown encoding

I have an ec2 instance where I'm attempting to bower install my dependencies. Everything is working fine locally, and though bower install works on the local project, I get

Error: Unknown encoding
at Buffer.write (buffer.js:382:13)
at new Buffer (buffer.js:261:26)
at Object.fs.writeFileSync (evalmachine.<anonymous>:758:12)
at Object.create.all.set (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/bower/node_modules/configstore/index.js:64:8)
at Object.Configstore (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/bower/node_modules/configstore/index.js:27:11)
at readCachedConfig (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/bower/lib/config.js:22:23)
at defaultConfig (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/bower/lib/config.js:11:24)
at Object.<anonymous> (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/bower/lib/index.js:40:32)
at Module._compile (module.js:449:26)
at Object.Module._extensions..js (module.js:467:10)

When trying to run it on the ec2 instance. The bower.json file looks fairly typical:

{
  "name": "package",
  "version": "0.0.1",
  "homepage": "#",
  "description": "my package",
  "main": "src/index.html",
  "moduleType": [
    "globals",
    "node"
  ],
  "keywords": [
    "none"
  ],
  "authors": [
    "nikk wong"
  ],
  "license": "MIT",
  "ignore": [
    "**/.*",
    "node_modules",
    "bower_components",
    "test",
    "tests"
  ],
  "dependencies": {
    "angular-bootstrap-colorpicker": "~3.0.14",
    "angular-material": "~0.10.0",
    "angular-ui-router": "~0.2.14",
    "angular-animate": "~1.3.15",
    "angular-aria": "~1.3.15",
    "angular": "~1.3.15",
    "angular-base64-upload": "~0.1.11",
    "ng-file-upload": "~5.0.6",
    "material-design-icons": "~2.0.0"
  },
  "devDependencies": {
    "ui-router-extras": "~0.0.13"
  }
}

In fact, no bower commands work at all. running bower returns the same error. I'm running npm 3.1.2. Has anyone encountered this?

Thanks.

Solution

fixed by updating node to the lastest version.

sudo npm cache clean -f
sudo npm install -g n
sudo n stable