Micro solar inverter is the revolutionary development of the pv industry

In recent years, solar power has become completely modular, that is good news for potential system owner. In ancient times, it is necessary not only to buy a solar cell module, but the battery is good. This greatly increases the cost of your basic system. In 1991, First Solar SMA Solar Technology (the world's largest solar energy equipment company) production of "grid inverter." 

Solar inverter is still the key, all the solar projects. Due to many reasons, Chinese PV industry has been in a cold winter. For this, Chinese government has published many detailed policies and regulations. Chinese PV plants have sprung up. As the main part of the photovoltaic plants, PV inverter, especially the micro inverter, due to their large power amount, longer life and easy installation, have been favored by PV companies.

The DC main transit of micro inverter is to exchange from a single solar module and every single solar panel module has equipped with inverter and converter function. Every module can do Separate current conversion so as called micro inverter. Micro inverter can achieve the maximum MPPT, which is the advantage superior to central inverter. Then, the output power can adjust by the output power monitored by modules to maximize the output power.

As before, many inverter suppliers have to spend much time explaining the advantages of micro inverters and they also recognized, but many customers still beat a retreat due to the policies. With the publishment of national policies, the market of micro inverter has a good market prospect.

Speaking of centralized inverter, many domestic customers have realized of it. The centralized inverter has few advantages in distributed power projects. And the shortcoming, such as small power amount, short life and inconvenient maintenance, will heavily affect the system stability, which may cause the benefit loss of investors.

During the tough time of PV industry, the relevant companies will be like Phoenix Nirvana and the micro inverter may bring the whole industry a rebirth. The time to Ignore the power generation, power plant life, malicious competition from cheap has gone. This is the great fortune of the photovoltaic industry.

The price and manufacturers in solar inverter market

There are two main solar inverters in the market now, independent solar inverters and Grid tied solar inverter: independent solar inverters are used in the system, rather than to grid. Inverter absorb energy from the solar power source. Many independent inverter is attached batteries.

Grid tied solar inverter is a plurality of solar inverter is designed to be connected to the utility grid, and does not operate in that they do not detect the presence of the grid. They contain special circuitry to precisely match the voltage and frequency of the grid. Grid-tie inverter is designed to automatically shut down in the city lost, for security reasons. They are not practical outages.

In the solar inverter market is seeing price competition and even solar panels have begun to stabilize increasing pressure. The solar inverter solar module manufacturers is not much room to reduce, as most panel makers still a loss and gross margin remained close to double-digit levels low price.

But in the past few years, the dominant player in the inverter, such as SMA Solar have seen their share and profitability of Chinese enterprises to enter the field. Relatively slow to enter the competition, but with the increasing importance of the Asian market, lower-cost Chinese enterprises to rapidly increase its market share. This leads to a consolidation of the western solar inverter industry, such as the company's Power-One company was acquired by ABB bankruptcy and smaller inverter manufacturers. Even larger, such as SMA Solar are not spared.

SMA Solar, Germany's largest solar company lost market share to the new solar inverter manufacturers in the United States and China. SMA Solar held a dominant 40% of the global solar inverter market share in 2010, compared with none of the management of more than 10% market share in the solar panel manufacturer. However, SMA Solar feel the heat of competition, solar prices continue to decline steadily. Chinese solar inverter business has captured the global market share of large-scale block, because foreign companies have a tough time competing in China.

This will become increasingly difficult solar inverter business, with 2013 revenue is expected to shrink due to a substantial erosion of the average price of solar inverter. Even in the amount of the increase, prices have come down overall revenue erosion means that the following formula: Volume X Price = revenue IHS report, the solar inverter revenue fell 9 percent this year, the average selling price of utilities have in frequency market fell sharply. 

The price of solar inverter utility market is 12C / W, in Western markets, they are 50% lower in India and China, such as low-cost market. This shows that the pain will continue for the solar inverter company, we may see more bankruptcies in the Western world, companies can not compete in this price. Western companies will bring the best service by moving its Asia-Pacific manufacturing center, otherwise it will reach the same fate as the solar module companies, such as Q-Cells and Solarworld's company. This will also help them to better serve customers, the largest solar markets, such as Japan and China. SMA Solar has purchased a Chinese solar inverter company, but it remains to be seen if it can be completely on their own transition to a targeted strategy in Asia.

Solar inverter sales for a wide range depending on the quality, brand and the features. In general European solar inverter SMA, Xantrex company sold a higher price than from China makers. The Chinese solar inverter is the cheapest price you can buy a five kilowatts of solar inverter $ 1,500 compared to $ 5,000 from SMA. Power a premium solar inverter falls in between, it provides better quality and reliability compared to China and sales at a lower price as well.

Development of the new solar cells

On Wednesday, Aquion Energy, a startup headquartered in Pittsburgh, so that such a battery, announced that the technology will allow small solar power to run around the clock in Hawaii. Conventional batteries would be too expensive or unreliable for grid scale storage. New battery materials and manufacturing processes for online use, not only reduce costs, but also should allow them to last for decades.

Several new batteries, each able to cost-effectively store energy from wind or solar farm output, finally hooked up to the grid. The grid batteries may burst through the elimination of the problem that, when there is no sun or the wind does not blow renewable energy generation costs decrease.

Similar projects are off the grid battery, California, by design, in order to adapt to the new rules go for renewable energy transition. Last month, the Ambri, headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which makes starting batteries out of the molten metal, announced that its batteries later this year in a series of pilot projects in Massachusetts, New York connected to the grid for the first time Hawaii and Alaska.

This new battery technology has not selected gas plant than current technologies cheaper backup renewable energy, in all cases. This is mainly because the battery is in low volume production.

But being the Ambri Aquion and for the professional market. Particularly high electricity prices in Hawaii, making the battery backup for wind and solar power more valuable. Hawaii microgrid will serve as a backup for 176 kilowatts of solar panel arrays, more than 40 medium-sized homes large enough, and will store up to 1,000 kilowatt hours of electricity, enough for a typical American family more than a month supply. Aquion plant can provide 200 per year such projects.

Ambri goal of the pilot project is slightly different, namely to reduce peak power demand of electricity is very important. If the customer can be stored in some of the electricity spot, they can reduce the power draw at a critical time, thereby greatly reducing the electricity bill.

Ambri pilot project which can also help solve New York City, where the import of electricity into the city line sometimes strained almost to the pole of a key issue. The company's battery can reduce demand, and to reduce the need for additional power supply line. They can also be used as the backup power supply interruption, the said Philip Guidice, right Ambri CEO. The latter is for the city, which has been plagued by a strong weather, such as super storm Sandy, a key issue in recent years. You can know more about solar energy from here: http://www.omnik-solar.com/ .