How much can you save over 10 years by choosing a higher efficiency solar inverter?

A solar inverter’s efficiency determines how much solar electricity will be lost on the short journey from your solar panels to your switchboard.

The efficiency of popular Australian residential solar inverters varies from 96.5% to 98%.  Higher efficiency lets a home squeeze more kilowatt-hours of generation out of its solar power system.  [Read more…]

The MIL-Solar Eclipse 5 kW inverter. Made in Australia and tough as a Toowoombian.

Are you in the market for a grid-tied 5 kilowatt solar inverter?  In that case there’s plenty of choice.  I can think of nine brands I can recommend off the top of my head, but every single one of them is manufactured overseas. [Read more…]

SMA’s ShadeFix doesn’t fix shade but reduces some of its secondary effects.

A couple of weeks go a reader asked me to write about ShadeFix.  ShadeFix is the software German manufacturer SMA include in their solar inverters.  This request made me feel a bit stupid because I had no idea what ShadeFix was. [Read more…]

A Brisbane researcher has alleged serious security vulnerabilities in a Sungrow inverter. Sungrow are not happy with him.

Update: patch available – see end of story

A few months after I wrote about security in the home renewables space, a Brisbane engineer bought a Sungrow SH5k-20 inverter, decided to “poke around”, and claims to have turned up a crop of serious security vulnerabilities. [Read more…]

How do you get an SMA inverter to talk to Tigo Optimisers? Sometimes with great difficulty it seems.

Update: see SMA response at end of story. It’s time to chase up another customer experience, courtesy of Sharon, who contacted us because her SMA-Tigo installation turned into a saga. [Read more…]

De-energising a solar system can be dangerous if done incorrectly.

Alliance Solar doesn’t seem to have a media manager, and that’s a problem, because we reckon a bit of crisis communications will be in order. SolarQuotes emailed the company at its only public address, the ubiquitous info@ format, because its website doesn’t mention a media contact.

Why? Because a solar power system owner has posted tales of exploding kit in their reviews of Alliance Solar. [Read more…]

If your inverter sees a grid voltage that is too high for too long, Australian Standards mandate it disconnects from the grid. Before the voltage is so high it disconnects, your inverter may also reduce its power output in response to high grid voltages.

There’s a lot of fear-mongering about how the rise of renewables threatens our power grids, but a real problem getting real attention from the industry is how voltage rises on our mostly old and inflexible infrastructure stops customers from getting the most out of their solar PV installations. [Read more…]

If you’ve been reading the tech press this week, you’ve probably noticed there’s a lot of noise about a security vulnerability in Bluetooth, known as “KNOB”, and I thought it gives us the chance to discuss Bluetooth security in the solar business. [Read more…]

Is your solar power system at risk of hacking?

Last week’s post about solar inverter security sparked a lot of interest and a few good questions I’d like to answer; starting with one from TJ that reminded me people are justifiably and genuinely worried. [Read more…]

Want your inverter to wirelessly control some smart plugs? It ain’t easy…

This week’s post was inspired by a question asked by Malcolm via e-mail:

“Do you know of any ‘Smart” home systems/software that can be used with a Fronius Inverter/Smart Meter to direct surplus solar power to home appliances and/or heaters via smart wifi plugs?”

It’s a good question, and one that doesn’t yet have very many good answers. [Read more…]