Micro-Inverters vs String-Inverters for your system
Updated: May 28, 2021
A question which mostly a few technical potential customers ask us about the type of inverter to install in their system.
mers ask us is about which Inverter to go with for their home rooftop system. This blog will try to answer the question in the most simple manner possible.
Firstly, lets see what an Solar Inverter does for you. It is one of the most vital component of the system.
The solar panels installed on the rooftop produce DC power, while as you might be aware, all of the home appliances requires AC power input to run the instruments. Inverter does this exact same thing, it converts the DC power to AC power. While talking about conversion of energy from one form to another, there is always some efficiency factor related to the process.
When you hear about the multiple makes of solar inverters available in the market by any solar company you consult, they are generally talking about string inverters.
The simple reason being, those inverters are economical by a huge factor.
When you install a solar PV plant on your rooftop there would be multiple solar panels on the roof, the quantity depending upon the size of the system required for your consumption. All these solar panels are connected to each other via cables and then one or two cables combining from all the solar panels are connected to the inverter. The number of solar panels per connection to the inverter depends upon the diffrent parameters of the inverter, which the solar company calculates and then determines, for maximum efficiency. All the energy generated by the solar panels is converted to AC power by using a single inverter of appropriate rating.
In case of any of the single solar panel is in shadow, it will bring down the generation of the whole plant.
Coming to the micro-inverters, in this case all the solar panels installed on the rooftop have seperate inverters connected to them. The biggest advantage of this situation, any single solar panel not generating energy upto its peak do not hamper the generation of the remaining solar panels. Consider a condition, in which only one solar panel in the whole rooftop system is in partial shadow. Here if a single string inverter is used, then not only the perticular panels generation, but the overall solar plants generation is hampered. But in case of diffrent micro inverters used for each solar panel, only the particular solar panel in shadow's would be generation is low but the solar plant as a whole continues to generate at its peak.
