Microinverter Market

Inverters are electronic devices that accompany every solar energy system. They convert the direct current from the solar panels into alternating current for use onsite (at home or business) or for feeding into the grid. Microinverters are so named because they are much smaller than the centralized inverters that dominate the market today. A centralized inverter is larger and sits near the edge of a solar energy system and converts all the electricity flowing from the solar panels.

A microinverter, which is roughly the size of a half-piece of paper, is attached to each solar panel instead. It’s a design that enables close monitoring of each solar panel’s performance and circumvents the tendency of a solar array to drop its power output collectively even if only a few solar panels aren’t able to perform optimally because of, say, shading or debris that blocks the sunlight from hitting the cells inside the panels.

“Our microinverters are generating more power than you would with a centralized inverter. That’s just physics,” Nahi said.

Enphase executives say they’ve carved out a market for a type of technology that couldn’t take off before Enphase’s arrival, primarily because it was too expensive, inefficient, unreliable and lacked communication functions to effectively monitor performance. The company sells not only the microinverter but also software and services for monitoring the power production of each system. Both installers and system owners can check on the performance of each solar panel by logging into an Enphase portal, and the microinverters will alert them of significant drop in power production.

Microinverters have no shortage of critics, who contend that microinverters haven’t proven their staying power because they are new to the market. They also argue that installing a bunch of microinverters could lead to frequent repairs and replacement. Microinverter advocates have countered that the failure of a centralized inverter will cripple the production of an entire solar array, whereas problems with a few microinverters will only handicap the performance of those few solar panels.

Author: Zhejiang Haining Tiange Solar Energy Science Technology Co., Ltd.
website:www.sunnyrainsolar.com
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