New Inverter Technological Costs Are Reduced

Meeting the needs for electricity in remote parts of the world is an endeavor that is a labor of love for those intimately involved with saving animals that have no voice.   Part of that labor of love involves corporations and individuals who see to it that shipments of solar electricity systems, which include a variety of different types of power inverters, are shipped to field agents.   Ten different conservation projects in 7 different countries are making great strides thanks to electrical systems that are able to operate with the aid of off-grid, solar-powered inverters.

Inverter R&D has focused on two areas. The first is incremental changes in the existing string/central inverter,the second recent inverter development is a move toward decentralized architectures.

The new solar micro inverter is instead of having one large inverter that handles all of the conversion from DC current to AC current for the home, these new solar panels have a solar micro inverter installed in each of them that does this conversion in the panel.  This solar micro inverter takes the DC current generated by the solar panel, and converts it directly to AC current before leaving the panel.  This way you have a complete solution within the solar panel that can produce the exact power your home needs to operate.  Because higher voltage AC electricity has a lot less loss over the long wire run into your house, you get a more efficient conversion and can use a larger portion of the power you are generating with your solar panels.  This also makes expanding your solar power system each year easier as well since you can simply buy more panels and add them to your homes wiring.  There is never a need to worry about having to upgrade your inverter.  Even though these new solar panels are a little more expensive than the older ones, eliminating the cost of the larger inverter makes the total system cost about the same.

Solar inverter prices have not decreased significantly in the past few years, and with module prices falling, inverters represent a greater portion of the total cost of a solar installation. As mentioned, inverter technology can also have a significant impact on BOS and labor costs. For example, higher-capacity central inverters reduce the number of inverters that need to be installed in very large systems, thereby reducing labor costs. This is offset to some extent by the wider distribution of DC wiring and the need for bulky and expensive DC combiners and DC circuit overcurrent protection.

New inverter technologies also have the potential to reduce solar array operating costs. Microinverter technologies make the array less prone to performance degradation from dust and debris, meaning less frequent washing. Normal soiling of modules can easily reduce power output by 5 or 6%. Also, inverters based on a distributed architecture allow for delayed maintenance. In this type of highly redundant system, if one module or inverter fails, the outage is limited to that module. The rest of the array will continue to operate normally. System owners and operators can have a plan of scheduled maintenance rather than emergency maintenance. Furthermore, maintenance costs are lower because microinverters can be swapped out quickly and easily, and by less-skilled staff—compared to large central inverters, which require expert diagnosis, repair, removal, and replacement. Finally, systems that include inverter communication and per module monitoring dramatically reduce the time required to troubleshoot the PV array.