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Enphase vs SolarEdge

Which one would you go with?

  • Enphase

    Votes: 24 46.2%
  • SolarEdge

    Votes: 28 53.8%

  • Total voters
    52
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I have two proposals from the same company. One uses SolarEdge with optimizers, at $2.50 per watt, and another uses Enphase IQ7 microinverters, at $2.80 per watt.

The installer says that Enphase IQ7 is more efficient and generally produces more power than SolarEdge. They also have a better warranty. And they might release the new IQ8 microinverter which may allow the system operate during the day without a battery.

Do you have any experiance with Enphase vs. SolarEdge? Is it true that one produces more energy than the other? Is there any other pros/cons?
 
I saw an enphase system at a house we rented for a week in St Croix. I guess it was working, but the monitoring gateway hadn't logged any data in 3 years. At my house, I have a solar edge system and it's been trouble free. They really seem to be pushing the envelope with their HDwave, their J1772 charger, and 350v lg chem battery backed 7.6kw inverter. I hate to sound like a fan boy of solar edge, but it's what I have good experience with.

I'd get the solar edge. Oh and make darned sure your installer logs the serial number of each of the power optimizers. There's an app for their smart phone that reads the bar code and creates a map of the panels on the roof. If one fails, it is easily identified.

I'm glad to hear enphase has a battery backed solution on the horizon.... off to do some reading!
 
ai4px, are you a ham? If so, you need to be very careful about inverter choices. Many of these units, esp solaredge have terrible RFI from the DC-DC converters that are in the optimizers. At least the older optimizers destroy everything between 40 meters and 15 meters. Older enphase equipment had similar issues, but I just tested a couple of iq7's and they were really quiet - no noise at all from AM up as far as I can tell.

I understand that some of the newer solaredge optimizers have had significant improvements from an RFI POV, but I haven't heard which units have the fixes in them.

thx
mike
 
Avoid microinverrers like the plague especially if your array is roof mounted. Having all the sensitive components in a small box sandwiches between hot panels and a hot roof is a recipie for failure. Using Solar Edge’s optimizers the sensitive parts are in the inverter on the shaded side of the house.

The other issue is monitoring reliability. Emphasis does provide monitoring for each panel but it’s transmitted to a receiver after the conversion to AC. It’s a lot more difficult to inject and reliably read a signal embedded into an AC flow vs a DC flow (SolarEdge). May explain why the house ai4px rented hadn’t logged data in 3 years.

Which SolarEdge inverters and optimizers did the quote specify? I have 3 SE6000 inverters on 56 panels. No failures yet and the array just recently crossed the 100MWh production benchmark.

8C62E6A2-999A-4130-86E4-D4E4B47D3148.jpeg
 
I have a 26 panel Enphase IQ7+ microinverter set up with 2 PowerWalls that have been running without a hitch since February. My panels are 355watt LG Neon Rs and the Enphases clip very little at peak solar during the day. I cannot imagine a more efficient system. The house the systems runs also has 2 central air systems with 4 ton variable capacity compressors and the system seldom during the day has to access grid power to run the AC. Indeed, it usually produces 3 kw/h in excess of house needs even with the AC running. My contractor, Asgard Energy in San Diego, had access to Enphase and SolarEdge, and thought the Enphase, especially for high output panels, was the better solution.
 
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ai4px, are you a ham? If so, you need to be very careful about inverter choices. Many of these units, esp solaredge have terrible RFI from the DC-DC converters that are in the optimizers. At least the older optimizers destroy everything between 40 meters and 15 meters. Older enphase equipment had similar issues, but I just tested a couple of iq7's and they were really quiet - no noise at all from AM up as far as I can tell.

I understand that some of the newer solaredge optimizers have had significant improvements from an RFI POV, but I haven't heard which units have the fixes in them.

thx
mike

THanks for the heads up... I haven't been active for a few years... Hmm..... damn. Hope I got the good (quiet) power optimizers.
 
I have had enphase since 2012. Roof mounted and no issues. It is nice to be be able to pull up on the net and see the production. If one panel goes out you will know which one. You can't do the same with a string set-up.

Incorrect. SolarEdge does provide individual panel monitoring using a string style setup. Web Portal access is free for life.
 
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I have two proposals from the same company. One uses SolarEdge with optimizers, at $2.50 per watt, and another uses Enphase IQ7 microinverters, at $2.80 per watt.

The installer says that Enphase IQ7 is more efficient and generally produces more power than SolarEdge. They also have a better warranty. And they might release the new IQ8 microinverter which may allow the system operate during the day without a battery.

Do you have any experiance with Enphase vs. SolarEdge? Is it true that one produces more energy than the other? Is there any other pros/cons?

Is there a reason you don't want a string inverter? In the incredibly unlikely event a panel dies it's not hard to troubleshoot which one it is. Module level monitoring is nice... it's just generally not worth the premium.
 
I have 50 LG Neon 320 panels with two SolarEdge Inverters with the optimizers and both consumption and production reporting. 20 months and going strong. As ai4px said, their new HDWave inverters are even higher efficiency (and smaller). Go take a look at their demo sites and you will see that the SolarEdge is head and shoulders above Enphase.

In addition, I wouldn't call Enphase the most financially stable company around. What good is a warranty if the company is out of business?

After having the X for a year now, have decided that I want to add another 15 panels to cover 100% of my needs.

Regards,
VectorX
 
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Is there a reason you don't want a string inverter? In the incredibly unlikely event a panel dies it's not hard to troubleshoot which one it is. Module level monitoring is nice... it's just generally not worth the premium.

If you have shading issues, string inverters may not be for you. Otherwise, the SMA Sunnyboy has a "Secure Power" mode that allows if to make 120v @ 2kw in an emergency when grid down. All other systems will be dead in water with grid down.
 
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Is there a reason you don't want a string inverter? In the incredibly unlikely event a panel dies it's not hard to troubleshoot which one it is. Module level monitoring is nice... it's just generally not worth the premium.

The main appeal of Enphase is the promise of higher efficiency, plus the promise that the new IQ8 microinverter will be able to run the system during the day without the need for battery storage.
 
If you have shading issues, string inverters may not be for you. Otherwise, the SMA Sunnyboy has a "Secure Power" mode that allows if to make 120v @ 2kw in an emergency when grid down. All other systems will be dead in water with grid down.

Even with shading issues if each string has its own MPPT you're fine. The only thing string inverters cannot do that micros can is have different orientations for the panels but as long as each string is facing the same way different strings can face different directions without losing performance as long as each is on an independent MPPT. That's what's really great about the new SMA inverters 2-3 MPPTs :).

The main appeal of Enphase is the promise of higher efficiency, plus the promise that the new IQ8 microinverter will be able to run the system during the day without the need for battery storage.

That's interesting... do you know how the system knows it's safe to re-energize if the grid is down? Is there a gateway at the main breaker?
 
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The main appeal of Enphase is the promise of higher efficiency, plus the promise that the new IQ8 microinverter will be able to run the system during the day without the need for battery storage.

My solar company put in Enphase. We don't get to pick. So what does it mean to run the system during the day without battery storage? I don't think I have battery storage, so to run it you mean to use the electricity from the solar without the grid? Like a Zombie Apocalypse scenario? I actually asked about that but decided to not bother with it.

I can't tell if our Enphase system has high efficiency. I have nothing to compare to. Right now all I could tell is for the last 2 weeks since it started running, I got just over 70 kWh per day according to Enlighten site for a 40 panels 12kW system. Not sure if that's good or not.
 
Here's my combo SMA Sunny boy (3800w) and Solar Edge (12kw) system... 60 275w panels. 35 SW facing, 25 SE facing, no shade around the house at all. Roof pitch is too shallow for my latitude / azimuth, so a 16.5kw system tops out at 13.8-14kw peak power. We tend to make >110kw / day in june. Right now, I've made about 85.5kw / day averaged over 7 days. So your 70kw / day is looking wonderful! eGauge Center .

One thing I never considered.... We prioritized the SW face of the house and biased more panels there. It never occured to me that the mornings are the clearest skies and we could up in the afternoon typically. I know it now.... shouldda put more panels on the SE face. Your local climate may vary.
 
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Even with shading issues if each string has its own MPPT you're fine. The only thing string inverters cannot do that micros can is have different orientations for the panels but as long as each string is facing the same way different strings can face different directions without losing performance as long as each is on an independent MPPT. That's what's really great about the new SMA inverters 2-3 MPPTs :).



That's interesting... do you know how the system knows it's safe to re-energize if the grid is down? Is there a gateway at the main breaker?

I think with SolarEdge there is also an issue that it requires a certain minimum voltage to operate the central inverter. This reduces the production during morning/evening/cloudy weather.

Yes, there should be a gateway switch with any system that is capable of islanding.
 
I think with SolarEdge there is also an issue that it requires a certain minimum voltage to operate the central inverter. This reduces the production during morning/evening/cloudy weather.

Yes, there should be a gateway switch with any system that is capable of islanding.

My Mom has a SolarEdge system... works fine in low light. Voltage is linear to temperature so there's generally enough voltage long before there's any energy worth collecting.

That is an interesting feature of the Enphase system... still not sure it's worth the premium. Straight string inverters are ~$0.20/w, Solar Edge is ~$0.40/w and Enphase is typically ~$0.60/w. So on a 10kW system that's a $4k premium over a string inverter...
 
I think with SolarEdge there is also an issue that it requires a certain minimum voltage to operate the central inverter. This reduces the production during morning/evening/cloudy weather.

Yes, there should be a gateway switch with any system that is capable of islanding.

Here's production on a clear sunset and the next morning's clear dawn.
2018-09-18 13_31_49-Johnston.png


The little "whoopie" after 6pm is some trees on the horizon way across a field. There is nothing on the east horizon, so it comes up to power pretty quickly and linearly.

Something to note...cooler panels make more power. See how the clouds cause all the spikes in production? But when a cloud goes away, it makes more power than expected due to the panels having cooled of, so you get little peaks above the expected power curve.

The sunny boy is a 600v dc input inverter and requires 125v on the input to even wake up. It has three MPPT input strings, which is great... and string inverters are really simple if you have no shading and / or put all panels in one string on teh same roof face. One caveat for them is that the newest electrical code requires a remote shutdown box on the roof and I think it's about $400 extra.... still cheaper than the microinverters.

As power companies change their net metering agreement terms, batteries start to get more interesting. SMA requires you have the Sunny Island (6.8kw 220v inverter, 48v batteries). Sunny Island only puts out 220v, so you need a split phase transformer to get the 120/240 in us breaker boxes... an added expense.

The SolarEdge "StorEdge" inverter is only available as 7.2kw as of now, but it can hook to up to 20kwh of LG chem 350v batteries. So if you are considering battery backup, this might be interesting. You may want to advise your solar installer to plan the system with 7.2kw solar edge inverters.... I think you pop off the top portion of the SE inverter and install the StorEdge inverter later on....or just get the StorEdge now but don't hook it to a battery. I'm not sure if you can parallel two StorEdge inverters??????