Energy Matters

Enphase S280 mini-review, and the future of Enphase November 27, 2015

The S280; newer, cheaper and a lot cooler looking.

In spite of 2015 being the best year in PV’s history in terms of installs, including residential, Enphase is having a rough go of it.

As CEO Paul Nahi put it, “The fourth quarter of 2015 is more challenging than expected”.

But they’re fighting back with their new S series inverters, and have ambitious plans for the next two years. Lets take a look at both.

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Enphase joins the big leagues – a 2 MW micro-inverter system August 16, 2013

Not just functional, damn good looking too.

I’ve covered the topic of micro-inverters before, and it remains a popular topic here on the blog.

Generally speaking, micro’s offer a strong design argument on small systems, below about 5 kW. For larger systems their higher per-unit costs generally reduces their advantages, and above 10 kW they tend to be rare.

So I have to say I was a little surprised when I saw this story about a 2 MW Enphase system. It was even nicer to learn that it was just down the road from me.

The installers used the panels as the roofing, which left the back of the panels – and the inverters – open to easy maintenance. This kills the biggest complaint people aim at the micros, that you can easily service them from inside. Very clever, kudos on the design!

AC panels – smart panels are dumb May 5, 2013

Ever since microinverters and optimizers started hitting the market a few years ago, every one of these companies keeps talking about “AC panels”, also known as “module integration” or even “smart panels”.

The idea is that you put the inverter electronics right on the panel, so the installer doesn’t have to do two things at the construction site. Just install the panel, and AC power is coming out. Plug that into the breaker panel in the basement, presto, solar power system up and running.

This is a great idea, in theory. But non-standardization is dooming any possibility this will work. All of this would be trivial to fix, but I can’t find anyone in the industry that even sees the problem, let alone any reason to fix it.

So what exactly is the issue?

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Microinverter update May 1, 2013

Much to my surprise, my previous article on microinverters turns out to be the most popular one on this site. Now more that a year old, it continues to generate a stream of readers each and every day. I guess that means this is a topic of some interest out there on the interwebs.

Much has happened since I wrote that article, and much hasn’t. So here a little update for everyone on what’s been going on in the last year in the microinverter space.

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