Inverters

China’s Huawei has been named the world’s biggest inverter supplier for the seventh year in a row, followed by Sungrow and Growatt, according to Wood Mackenzie.

The US multinational will expand the solar and battery energy storage manufacturing capacity at its factory in Tamil Nadu to 9 GW per annum by the end of 2022. The factory manufactures FlexInverter power conversion solution and FlexReservoir utility-scale energy storage solution.

The S5-EO1P(4-5)K-48 series off-grid PV inverter has an efficiency of 96.7% and supports parallel operation of up to 10 units, which allows for a system capacity of up to 50 kW. According to the manufacturer, the device is compatible with all top-tier brands of lithium-ion and lead-acid batteries.

US-based energy tech company Enphase Energy appears to have overcome the adversity it faced in the mid-2010s, when it was grappling with competition from string inverters and slower growth in the residential segment. Now that rooftop solar is hot again, Enphase’s co-founder and chief product officer, Raghu Belur, sat down with Tristan Rayner to discuss the microinverter pioneer’s approach to quality in a time of rapid change and the growing utility of connected devices.

New research has categorized all existing fault detection and localization strategies for grid-connected PV inverters. The overview also provides a classification of various component failure modes and their potential causes in a tabular form.

SMA is offering a new line of four inverters with power ratings of 12kW, 15kW, 20kW and 25kW, for use in rooftop PV systems up to 135kW in size. It claims the inverters provide grid-compliant power control of entire systems and enable over-dimensioning of PV arrays by up to 150%.

The Chinese solar inverter manufacturer, which established its factory in India in 2018, has expanded the India fab capacity to 10GW/annum to serve different customer segments, including residential, commercial & industrial, and utility-scale—both locally and globally. 

Luminous’ Li-ON series 1250 inverter with integrated lithium-ion battery is a compact, safe, efficient power backup solution for retail and domestic applications. Its lithium battery has three times longer life than conventional batteries.

Silicon carbide (SiC) has promised inverter makers higher power density, higher efficiency, and a total bill of materials that comes in closer to its more established rival in silicon. Has SiC finally arrived? Tristan Rayner spoke to the people at the forefront of the wider-bandgap material to find out the back story and what’s next.

SMA’s new hybrid inverter reaches a maximum efficiency of 98.2% and a maximum European efficiency of 97.5%. It is compatible with DC-coupled high-voltage lithium-ion batteries from leading suppliers, according to the manufacturer.