Comments

As a dealer and installer of solar energy systems, I want to bury the rumor that the Enphase micro-inverters are "way too expensive" or even "pretty expensive". After deducting the costs of DC combiner boxes, expensive wire & conduit, and time spent fiddling with string design, the cost is ABOUT THE SAME to install a PV system using Enphase inverters. We're talking a difference of a few hundred bucks for a $30k-$40k system, plus the customer gets the communications unit and a year free of monitoring. If you add in a year of Fat Spaniel monitoring to a system with a regular inverter, it may actually be more expensive than the same Enphase system. The main drawback I see right now is that they are not compatible with enough solar modules. While we're happy to see the new M200 inverter working with Sanyo HIP 200W modules, it'd be nice to see some more compatibility with other high performance modules. Another drawback is that they have not been tested, and are therefore not guaranteed, to work with battery back-up systems.