While it seems counterintuitive - surely your solar panels and inverters should match in terms of the energy they can process, right? - the truth is a little more complicated. There are so many different factors to consider when installing solar panels, and this is one that we reckon is often overlooked.
Read on to discover what oversizing solar inverters actually entails, how it works, and whether it’s the right choice for your solar array installation.
An inverter is the heart of your solar installation. It’s a central component that makes it all work for you! The inverter is the part of your system that transforms the DC energy (Direct Current energy) created by your solar panels, into AC (Alternating Current energy) which powers your home or facility.
Without an inverter, there’s no way to utilise the energy that’s produced by your solar panels!
There’s a large range of solar inverters in the market, and they can be narrowed down to 3 main types of inverters. The type of inverter that works for your situation may not work for others, and vice versa, so it’s vital that you opt for an inverter that is suited to your specific needs.
Simply put, a solar array (or PV array) is the term used to describe a group of solar panels. When you’ve set up a solar system on your property, that’s a solar array! How many solar panels you need - and therefore the size of your array - will depend on your household or facility’s solar needs.
In addition to how you use the energy powered by solar panels, there is also consideration for how much sun you get during the day and how that impacts the average efficiency of solar panels. And that’s where inverter oversizing comes in!
As we mentioned further up, oversizing solar inverters refers to when you install a solar array (that’s a group of solar panels) with a higher capacity than the rated size of your inverter. Basically, you install more solar panels that your solar inverter capacity is meant to handle.
For example, say you have a 5kW Inverter. This is the most common size in Australia because most energy providers cap the electricity export for homes at 5kW. This means that at any period in time, your solar system can’t export more than 5kW of energy to the Grid. Exporting excess energy to the grid is what happens when you don’t self-consume the energy yourself.
In theory, it would make sense to match a 5kW Inverter with 5kW worth of panels - and many people do this. For such a setup, 5kW of panels will equal 15 panels at 330Watt each. But when you opt for inverter oversizing, you’re setting up more than 5kW worth of panels instead.
On the surface, this does seem a bit odd. Why ‘waste’ all that extra energy if you can’t use it or put it back into the Grid, right?
Well, we’ll tell you why it’s actually a good idea!
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