If SA needs to hit the big red button and shut down rooftop solar installed after 28 September 2020, SMA inverters can comply – at no extra cost to the owner.

On Thursday I was invited to a webinar on SMA’s response to South Australia’s new solar inverter requirements.  It seems that SMA — the maker of Sunny Boy inverters — was on the ball as all their residential inverters are on SA’s approved installation list. [Read more…]

Yesterday in SA, solar met 100% of demand for a short period. Hence the need for remote curtailment of new solar. SolarEdge inverters can meet this requirement. Image: Rob Morris

Update 14th December 2020:  Good news!  SolarEdge has informed me they no longer charge an additional $165 to cover the cost of meeting South Australia’s new inverter requirements.  SolarEdge instead now absorbs the cost, which is obviously good news for anyone thinking of getting a SolarEdge system in SA.

On Thursday at 3:58 pm I was invited to a SolarEdge webinar that started at 4:00 pm.  I was glad to get the invite, but the lack of notice meant I missed out on the first 5 minutes because I didn’t have time to set up my laptop/internet properly beforehand.  This was very appropriate because the webinar was about how SolarEdge had responded to new South Australian solar inverter requirements that were rushed in before the industry had time to properly prepare.  [Read more…]

Friends, it’s arrived: the Australian Energy Market Operator has published its standard low voltage ride-through test procedure for inverters. [Read more…]

Thanks to a deficit of trust in government, people are rightly worried when they hear that ‘the government wants to be able to switch off their solar systems’.

On the 30th of April the AEMO or — as it’s known by the long-winded — Australian Energy Market Operator, published a significant report called Renewable Integration Study 1.  A few people read the summary and then wrote articles on how the grid wants to take control of people’s solar inverters; switching them on and off as they desire. [Read more…]

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…]