Fronius Fix Makes Winter Solar Worthwhile In WA

For years the West has been a sorry state in solar terms. The only networks in town have draconian 5kW limits on inverters, and it makes the rest of Australia give them side eye. Why do the western weirdos hate sunshine?

Thanks to Austrian manufacturer Fronius though, there is now a 10kW inverter option available in WA, all you need is a well-trained installer.Fronius has run a 12-month testing program to present a well-researched case to Western Power authorities for using 10kW single-phase inverters.

What they’ve proven is that a 10kW inverter with a 13.33kW solar array will yield between 32% and 99% more energy, compared to a standard 5kW inverter with 6.6kW solar array.

The larger array will get to full 5kW output earlier, and continue later into the afternoon, but Western Power’s 5kW limit is basically useless in winter. What’s more beneficial to you and the network is the near doubling of output across the low season.

When everyone is scratching for energy in winter, your Fronius system is working twice as hard.

As time-of-use pricing becomes the norm, having solar available to use earlier and later in the day becomes more valuable.

5kW Is Still The Limit, Until It Isn’t

Western Power has decided an Absolute Generation Limit¹ of 5kW is still in order, but they’ve been persuaded by the boffins at Fronius to allow the 10kW Primo Gen24 to be commissioned via a special manual approval, for which your installer needs training before they apply.

It’s similar to the Tesla Powerwall 3 — what could be an 11kW machine is limited to 5kW, so Western Australian commissioning effectively gives you a Powerwall 2½.

However Fronius has gone one step better. If you add a battery, the 10kW Gen24 will operate at a full 10kW capacity when there’s a grid outage.

When installing a battery, you’ll need a “gateway” device which can be bought prebuilt or integrated into your switchboard.

It’s Not What You Know, But Who

Installers in the west have a vital resource with sales engineer Shane Arnold organising the kind of support that quashes problems before they arise. He insists that service issues are raised via the online support tool Fronius SOS, but he’s there on the phone backing it up.

As an 80-year-old international company, Fronius has excellent web resources, but the sheer volume of documents is equally a curse. Again thanks to Shane and his curated Whatsapp group, Australian installers can find Australian support material without wading through the Italian, Polish or American dross.

This Isn’t An Advertorial

The sceptical reader might wonder, but to be honest, I just like seeing quality products on the wall.

Cheap customers deserve what they get to some extent, but after years of trouble-free service, I find it a bit disturbing when people are keen on chintzy battery hybrids that can’t talk to legacy equipment.

I have equally advocated for saving good equipment from the streams of e-waste we create. Fronius build inverters that are retro-compatible with new network company requirements, so adding more solar doesn’t render them obsolete.

When I installed this new Gen24 beside the Snap, both units talked to the internet, but we had to wait for firmware to make them talk to each other.

Roaring Success

Yes, I’m a Fronius fanboi… which is a bit of an in-joke because Fronius inverters perform better as they have fans to keep them cool.

While some of the Snap-inverter range had two or three fans, which were described by disgruntled customers as roaring jet engines, I preferred to think of them as a statement of purpose. At full noise they were making lots of power.

Comparisons of active and passive cooling

In response to these complaints, the Gen24 series inverter got a bigger heat sink and bigger fan that runs much slower, so it makes a fraction of the noise.

“For every 10°C increase in temperature, the life expectancy of an electronic component is halved.”

Others marketed against this noise, with passive cooled heat sinks that were supposedly silent. However, they would suffer lower yield and in some cases be forced to add temperature warning stickers because they ran so hot.

So I find it amusing that the 15kW Sungrow 3-phase inverter I installed last year does have a sneaky little fan on the back, despite what the salespeople say about their smaller, quieter units.

A lovely piece of form and function, it’s almost a shame these fins get covered up

Being Left Behind?

I’ve spoken to installers who are all in on Sungrow, because they are great products, have a solid history and good support.

Many really rate GoodWe as a great value proposition with a well-integrated EV charger, something Sungrow has only just released.

Others are telling me Sigenergy are now the undisputed champion of installation speed, features and aesthetics.

Still, nobody else I’m aware of is offering a backup supply without a battery, like the Fronius PV Point does.

PV point will run 3kW of load provided it’s sunny. Great for charging devices and keeping the internet on in an emergency.

Tall Poppy Syndrome

I field complaints that Fronius just aren’t leading with innovation anymore, they’ve only got two input channels, they’re too expensive, the BYD batteries aren’t big enough, the WiFi is flakey, the commissioning process is too hard.

Still when I speak to those running the networks, the people at SAPN, Ausnet, Powercor and the like, they all say the same thing. Fronius are solid and their engineering team is great, “we don’t have worries with them” (like we do other inverter makers).

And I have to point out that Fronius doesn’t use the customers for beta testing, nor the installers as donkeys to carry it out.

All these competing technologies are better managed under one ecosystem

Lightweight Hybrids Are Not Off Grid

Fronius are still running their inverters at high frequency to knock off other solar you might have running during an outage. It would be nice to see them offering larger units, able to work in parallel, but stepping back to a rational distance, I can see why they maintain a conservative position.

Grid hybrid machines aren’t designed to do what a proper remote area system does.

Fronius don’t warrant them for that service. If you want to treat the grid with contempt, then you want a different solution.

Fronius Gen24 Primo

Prepare For The Future

If you’re in the West and you have a hankering for lower power bills, solar is a no brainer.

For 17 years the only consistent complaint I’ve heard from solar owners is “geez I wish we had more”.

If you don’t have a budget for a battery right now, then the 10kW Fronius Gen24 Primo can get you 13.33W of solar power, with an option to install a battery later.

However it’s worth investigating the WAGov $10,000 interest-free loan scheme for batteries too. This can be worth more to you than their up-front incentive. There’s also the WA battery rebate scheme that launched this week — just be aware that it requires joining a VPP.

Either way you can get some quotes by clicking here.  Just make sure you add some notes at the end, requesting 10kW Fronius goodness.