Photovoltaic panels and micro inverters

Unlike centralized string inverters, which are typically responsible for an entire solar panel system, microinverters are installed at the individual solar panel site. Most solar panel systems with microinverters include one microinverter on every panel, but it's not uncommon for one microinverter to connect to a handful of panels.

Without microinverters, you'd need two string inverters, and you wouldn't be able to monitor every panel. Larger solar panel systems naturally have a higher chance of one of their panels underperforming, so these can particularly benefit from having microinverters.

There are two main types of inverters used in solar panel systems - traditional string inverters (also sometimes called central inverters) and newer microinverters. As their name implies, a string inverter is designed to manage and convert the power from groups of solar panels, that may be fed to the inverter via a series of strings.

Traditional inverters connect to an entire solar array or string, which can be anywhere from a couple to hundreds of individual solar panels. On the contrary, microinverters are connected to each solar module and are usually mounted on the racking system. Traditional inverters are bigger and bulkier, making them difficult to carry and install.

Compared with the entire system using a solar inverter, each solar panel in the system is equipped with a micro inverter, which will once again improve the conversion efficiency of the entire system. The main advantage of the micro-inverter topology is that even if one of the inverters fails, energy conversion can still be performed.

Microinverters are typically designed to handle one solar panel each. For context, a 24-solar-panel system would need 24 microinverters. However, nowadays, some manufacturers are producing quad microinverters capable of connecting to four solar panels.