once you decide on the capacity of your solar power inverter (you can read the article on how to choose the correct solar power system for your home office), your next task will be choosing an inverter which is the main component of solar power generation.
There are many types of solar inverters made by various companies, we are only discussing OFF-Grid Solar Inverters in this article. When choosing an Off-Grid Inverter there are some technical words that you need to know. the main technical terms will be Low PV and High PV – other than that – there are many things you will have to know or must discuss with your solar power system solution provider. (contact us to get your solar power solution installed)
If you are already using a solar power inverter please give your rating and feedback at Reviewsrilanka.com
High-PV / Low-PV
A Solar Inverter is made for 2 requirements and they are listed below
- to be used as backup systems to be run when main electricity is out
- to be used to fully power up a home / office – OFF-GRID
High-PV Inverter
PV is the abbreviation of Photo-Voltic – which means “generate power from light”, a HIGH PV inverter will need a high voltage to operate. This in layman’s terms can be described as needing a lot of solar panels to start a high-PV-Inverter solar power system. Which means the initial cost of the system will be higher.
The Advantage of a High-PV system is that you can expand the number of solar panels with your power requirement. Most inverters have high solar input and can provide high load using multiple parallel units. Also High if the battery and solar panel load is low than the electricity needed by the premise it can cover the only needed electricity load from the grid electricity. and most Hi-PV inverters can operate without a battery by using solar and grid electricity but at night it will get the whole electricity load from the grid.
Low-PV Inverter
A Low-PV Solar inverter can operate with fewer solar panels. This feature helps to reduce the initial cost of a solar power system. There are 2 types of Low-PV inverters as mentioned above. Most Low-PV inverters are made to be used as backup power systems. Some Low-PV Inverters are made to be operated as full-OFF-Grid power generation systems.
usually, Low PV inverters cannot combine the electricity power of the grid with solar because it will supply the whole load from the grid when the solar and battery are not sufficient to power the load.
How to choose the correct Low PV Inverter
when choosing a Low-PV solar power Inverter – you must always look at the Solar Charger section in the specifications of the inverter unit. This will give you a clear idea of how much solar-generated electrical power can be accepted by the inverter. Let’s take a look at the Solar Charger Details below.
This is a 3kW Solar Inverter, this can only take 1500w of solar-generated electrical power. This means, if you install this to a home/office which has a daytime electrical power requirement of 2500W – on a very sunny day, the solar panels will generate only 1500w of electrical power and the remaining electrical power of 1000w must be taken from the power backup/battery.
With this system installed, you will be happy with using one or two appliances, but when your electrical power requirement grows, you will be limited with the solar-power input capacity of your inverter.
Always Read the Solar Charger section of your Solar power inverter and make sure that it can accept more than 50% of the rated electrical power of your inverter. this way solar panels will generate the most power and let the Battery contribute only when needed.
Eg: 3000w Inverter must accept more than 1500w of PV-Array-power
