Habits are hard to break. They become our comfort zones with immense gravitational power that keeps us grounded to them. It’s true in every content. Take inverters, for example. Solar buyers continue to buy string inverters because they are the oldest products in the business. It doesn’t matter that they are prone to issues, have a low lifespan, have short warranties, and even reduce your solar system’s performance. People keep buying them because they tend to be on the cheaper side.
However, speak to any modern solar company with a verifiable track record of outstanding customer satisfaction in Easton, and they’ll plead you to go with microinverters, which are also known as panel-level inverters.
So, what makes microinverters such a favored choice of solar installers? Let’s find out.
Maximize Power Generation
Generally, there are minor differences in the power outputs between your solar panels. These differences, otherwise negligible, become significant when there’s partial shading on your roof or when one of the solar panels or its electrical wiring is not working properly. In such instances, the affected solar panels could produce less than optimum energy.
String inverters, as centralized systems, must manage power outputs from all the solar panels simultaneously. They do this by reducing the power output of all solar panels down to the level of the least performing solar panel. If one of the solar panels affected by shading produces only 50% of its optimum power generation capacity, then the entire solar system’s output would be reduced by 50%.
Microinverters do not share this issue. Each solar panel gets a dedicated microinverter, which maximizes its power output. So, irrespective of shading or solar panel issues, your system will continue to produce the maximum power it can produce under sunlight conditions.
Panel-level Monitoring
With microinverters, you can monitor the performance of each solar panel at the panel level. Green Power Energy offers an app that helps you track and discover issues immediately, and pinpoint their location easily. That saves so much time in troubleshooting and repairs.
Low Maintenance
If a string inverter goes down, your entire system shuts down. If a microinverter goes down, only the power output from its attached solar panel is cut off. You can easily repair or replace the malfunctioning microinverter and continue enjoying uninterrupted power.
Durability
Microinverters do not malfunction easily. And, some of the products like Enphase Microinverters offer 25-year warranties, unlike string inverters that generally have only 10-year warranties attached to them.
So, even if you save on the price of string inverters, in the beginning, you may end up replacing them once or twice throughout the life of your solar system. Factor those costs in your calculation.
A New Favorite
For these reasons and many more, microinverters are slowly becoming the default choice of modern solar contractors.
