Advanced solar microinverters lay groundwork for smart grid

摘要

In the span of a few years, the photovoltaic (PV) microinverter has evolved from an intriguing and potentially disruptive technological advancement to a market-leading product category in the residential and commercial solar installation market. Millions of devices have been deployed and have already helped generate terawatt-hours of electricity from hundreds of thousands of rooftop- and ground-mounted PV systems. Although microinverters in and of themselves are not a new idea, the key to their recent success is a scalable electronic topology rooted in a silicon-based digital architecture. An adaptive ASIC-based approach yields improved efficiency and reliability, plus reduced cost. Combined with a bidirectional communications hub and sophisticated monitoring software platform, microinverters offer several advantages over the more established string inverter systems.