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SolarEdge Optimisers


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I've just been going over my invoice for our solar PV array and have seen that we've been quoted and invoiced for SolarEdge optimisers.

 

Can someone please tell me what an optimiser is and how do I know whether they have been installed (or not)?

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4 minutes ago, Home Farm said:

I've just been going over my invoice for our solar PV array and have seen that we've been quoted and invoiced for SolarEdge optimisers.

 

Can someone please tell me what an optimiser is and how do I know whether they have been installed (or not)?

 

 

They are fitted to installations where panels might be subject to some shading, as a way to optimise the output from each panel under shading conditions.  They don't really do much that's useful for a system that doesn't have any shading issues.  You can't easily see if they've been installed, as they will be underneath the panels, most probably.  They are just a small DC-DC converter module, that has a maximum power point tracker on the DC input side from the panel.

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If you have SolarEdge inverter, when you power it up it should go through some procedure where it turns the optimizers on one-by-one and reports back their status, look for P_OK x/y on the display I think this is saying x out of y optimizers are activated. See page 40 of https://www.solaredge.com/sites/default/files/se-inverter-installation-guide.pdf

 

If you have a non-SolarEdge inverter, I think you need to have a SolarEdge Safety & Montoring interface (between the inverter and the panels) to activate their optimizers

https://www.solaredge.com/sites/default/files/se_installation_guide_safety_monitoring.pdf

 

If you have their online monitoring platform, I think you must have optimizers installed for it to work https://www.solaredge.com/uk/products/pv-monitoring#/

 

The final way to know is to shut down the system and then put a DC voltmeter across the DC connections into the inverter (outputs of the panel strings) -- if they have optimizers the voltage read should be exactly 1V per panel in the string, however if you don't have optimizers this could be a dangerous experiment to perform (esp on a very sunny day) so I wouldn't recommend it.

 

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Thanks guys. Your feedback and explanations are massively appreciated. 
 

On an unrelated note, how much should I potentially be paying for a Victron battery charger/inverter? i just need an idea for the inverter itself.

 

It would work in conjunction with three Phantom S batteries.

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Not just useful if you have shading issues, but also if you have panels facing in different directions. We have East, South and West facing panels, and also have minor shading on different panels at different times of the day/year. We have SolarEdge inverter and optimisers and the SolarEdge app clearly demonstrates the benefit in so much that it shows each panel's generation within each 'string'. For example, the west facing string contains 7 panels and the difference between the best and worst performing panel is circa 7% (almost certainly due to shading). Without optimisers the whole string would be limited to the output of the lowest performing panel.

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5 minutes ago, NSS said:

Not just useful if you have shading issues, but also if you have panels facing in different directions. We have East, South and West facing panels, and also have minor shading on different panels at different times of the day/year. We have SolarEdge inverter and optimisers and the SolarEdge app clearly demonstrates the benefit in so much that it shows each panel's generation within each 'string'. For example, the west facing string contains 7 panels and the difference between the best and worst performing panel is circa 7% (almost certainly due to shading). Without optimisers the whole string would be limited to the output of the lowest performing panel.

 

 

Good point, although I guess that a West facing panels will effectively be in shade early in the morning, and East facing panels will be shaded in the evening, just from the position of the sun.  It's just a different cause of shade, perhaps.  Bit like our whole array (which faces a bit West of South) being in shade until part way through the morning, when the sun swings around a bit.

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9 minutes ago, JSHarris said:

 

 

Good point, although I guess that a West facing panels will effectively be in shade early in the morning, and East facing panels will be shaded in the evening, just from the position of the sun.  It's just a different cause of shade, perhaps.  Bit like our whole array (which faces a bit West of South) being in shade until part way through the morning, when the sun swings around a bit.

Of course, but I was talking about the 7 panels in the west facing string alone. Those panels are arranged four over three and the lower row of panels fall into shade earlier than the upper row.

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7 hours ago, Home Farm said:

how much should I potentially be paying for a Victron battery charger/inverter? i just need an idea for the inverter itself.

Depends entirely on the model and capacity of the charger/inverter in question.

 

Fwiw victron is great gear, had one of their charge controllers on my old caravan in California, but generally seems overkill for a home installation. It's really in its element with marine applications where regularly switching between ropey shore power of varying voltage and frequency, a spluttering engine alternator, a dodgy old lead acid battery bank and an under specified solar array.

 

Edited by joth
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14 hours ago, Home Farm said:

I've just been going over my invoice for our solar PV array and have seen that we've been quoted and invoiced for SolarEdge optimisers.

 

Can someone please tell me what an optimiser is and how do I know whether they have been installed (or not)?

 

I have Solaredge on all my panels (I think), though only about 28 had a real shade risk, and they have me a couple of spare panels and optimiser when I asked nicely the day before signing the order.

 

in extremis I can probably find one in the garage and take a photo, though at present it will interesting finding things.

 

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We have Enphase microinverters (per-panel DC-AC inverters, rather than DC-DC converters like SolarEdge), which offer similar advantages in shaded situations.

 

Another advantage microinverters offer is better generation in low light. In a conventional inverter string, the string as a whole needs to generate a certain amount of voltage before the inverter starts working. With microinverters, each panel needs to generate a minimum voltage. In low light conditions - early morning and late afternoon, for example - a microinverter-based system will start generating earlier and continue generating later than a conventional string inverter.

 

I don't know how much this adds over a year, say, but I seem to recall it was good a few percent. Worth looking into whether optimisers do something similar.

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4 hours ago, SteamyTea said:

Does your solar array actually have a shading issue?

 

No (other than the shading described by JS in early morning and late afternoons). 

 

My current exercise is to see whether the installers have actually fitted everything they've mentioned in our estimate/invoice.

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 24/10/2019 at 08:22, jack said:

We have Enphase microinverters (per-panel DC-AC inverters, rather than DC-DC converters like SolarEdge), which offer similar advantages in shaded situations.

 

I was just looking at these again, as it's an elegant idea in several ways, not least of which is avoiding the problem of where we would hide the main inverters with a conventional  system design.

 

Snag is the Enphase appear to cap out at 250Wp output? The SolarEdge optimizers start at 320W and go up to above 500W per panel. This is a problem for us, as we were aiming for 340W panels, not just because fewer panels means fewer optimizers (and hence cost savings) but also because fewer/bigger panels means fewer joints and a cleaner overall look (IMHO. it'll be very visible on the house so deserves a bit of consideration)

 

 

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