Grid Tied Inverters

[calexanian]

I know this belongs more in the other section, but nobody goes there.

Any experiences on grid tied inverters? We are having people quote systems at work. Good situation. Flat unobstructed all around good sized roof. We have 3 big aircons and 7600 watts worth of flouro lights. that are on 8 hours a day every work day. Good solar application. I am not up to speed on the solar inverter companies. We have 208 voltage at the shop and I am thinking we will end up with a 10 to 20 KVA or so system. Any brands to recommend, or avoid?

[mtdoc]

For strict grid tie, Fronius and SMA Sunny Boy are the two top brands.

The NAWS forum is a good place to go for some informed opinions.

This SHOULD be in the Renewable Energy sub-forum and yes, people do go there

[dekra54]

PV-Installation is actually my main Job and we switched over to Benning or SolarEdge.
Mainly because of the quality of the service. SMA has become really picky about warranty things (At least here in Germany). Benning is mostly known for their meters but also makes big industry UPS for Telco and other high reliability stuff. Before we started to install them they invited us to visit their production facility and it looks top notch (Compared to SMA for example). They run a complete 5 hour full load test on the inverters not just individual board test like other manufacturers.

SolarEdge is great because of their module based power optimization. You can litterally throw the modules in east south and west direction on the roof connect them up all in series and the inverter makes the best of it. The SolarEdge systems make about 2-4kWh more than other systems per day. They also have a very good online monitoring system which is really esay to set up.

This doesn't mean i don't recommend SMA they still make very good inverters this is just a preference i devloped over the past 5 years and when you have to deal with the devicec nearly every day you start to look at other thing like ease of installation,support,weight,features 

Hopes this helps and greetings from Germany

Dennis

[calexanian]

Most of the companies quoting the system have specified SolarEdge.