Micro inverters are on their way out
1. Poorer reliability and shorter life: Micro inverters are mounted in the most hostile location possible. On your hot roof underneath your solar panels where there is limited airflow. This environment dramatically increases the stress to micro inverter components resulted in shorter lfe expectencies.
2. Poorer productivity: Micro inverters typically offer lower efficiency ratings or lower power ratings resulting in poorer energy harvest.
3. Difficulty of installation: Micro inverters involve far more expensive, complex, cabling and connection points resulting in far more time on the roof..
4. Flexibility: Micro inverters score one point. Micro inverters can be installed in multiple orientations but SolarEdge offers this same flexibilty while offering much higher performance.
5. Increase in lifecycle costs: All inverters fail, micro inverters do not employ some sort of magic technology that makes them more reliable. Micro inverters won't all fail at the same time which will result dozens of service calls over the life of a typical micro inverter system. The micro inverter warranty does not pay for the labor of removing and replacing micro inverters so the customer will bear this expense. At $400 to $500 per micro inverter replacement, this will wipe out a micro inverter system owner's return on investment.
6. Increased heat underneath your solar panels: Micro inverters generate heat due to their lower efficiency. This heat will not only shorten the life of the micro inverter itself but may also decrease your solar panel's energy production due to the solar panel's temperature coefficient. Solar panels produce power from light not heat. In fact the hotter a solar panels gets, the poorer the solar panel will perform.
7. Loss of power output: Enphase's limited 215 watt rating can only output a maximum of 215 watts. So 250 watts in and only 215 watts out. Talk about wasted power. A much better solution than a micro inverter is SolarEdge which offers the highest efficiency rating on the market at 98.3 % peak, better shade mitigation, a high power rating, built in cabling at no addtional cost, built in Internet portal at no additional cost, built in arc fault protection and individual solar panel monitoring at a much lower price than a typical micro inverter system. Micro inverters are yesterday's technology and are on their way out.
