With the depleting resources and the ever-growing high prices, the encouragement towards the use of natural and unending resources like solar energy has also grown much. Therefore, people are today installing solar systems at their homes as well. A solar system includes solar panel(s), battery and an inverter (solar inverter). An inverter is the device that converts DC to AC. The reason being that the solar system generates a Direct Current, whereas the home appliances use an Alternative Current.
Types of Solar Inverters
A solar inverter is of three types, namely:
1. An Off-grid Solar inverter-
An off-grid solar inverter is based on PWM (pulse width modulation) and MPPT (maximum power point tracking) that varies from 700VA to 10 KW. They can also be customised and be used anywhere. An off-grid solar inverter cannot work without a battery, as this battery stores the produced energy that can be used later.
2. An On-grid Solar inverter-
An on-grid inverter works parallelly with a grid and if 50Hz electricity is synchronized with it. And because it works without a battery, it cannot store any energy and be used when needed.
3. Hybrid Solar inverter-
A hybrid solar inverter is a combination an off-grid and an on-grid inverter that is based on both, a battery and grid.
Which solar inverter is the best for home?
But the question is- which solar inverter is the best for home? Normally, an off-grid solar inverter is considered the best as it allows one to store the energy and use it later or whenever required. Well, to determine this, there are in particular five major parameters to keep in mind.
a) Efficiency-
An MPPT based off-grid solar inverter is considered 96% efficient. This means that if 100W of energy is produced from a solar panel, 96% of it will be stored in the battery passing through the inverter. Whereas, an off-grid solar inverter based on PWM allows 70-75% of this electricity.
b) Service & warranty-
Where a solar panel(s) and a battery don’t need much of maintenance, an inverter does. Therefore, an inverter that can be provided proper service and has a warranty from the company is very important to be kept in mind.
c) Brand-
A brand that is trustworthy and provides proper maintenance, service and network is another thing to be kept in mind to not make a fool out of oneself.
d) Customer-
A way to make sure that solar inverter that one is buying is actually a nice one or not and whether the company is genuine or not is to go through the online reviews for the product, customer testimonials to check the rate of success and failure of the solar inverter and the company.
e) Price-
The price of the product that one is to buy is always in the mind of a customer. Same is the case with an off-grid solar inverter. The general price of an off-grid solar inverter ranges from Rs 4,000 to Rs 500,000.
A solar inverter today also comes with a number of benefits like being an IOT based, wall mounted, transformer-less, etc. The kind of an off-grid solar inverter needed majorly depends on the load that the bears. Most of the times, a small off-grid solar inverter that ranges from 500W to 100KW to 250KW is enough. While buying an off-grid solar inverter, it should have twice the capacity than that of the load of the house.
