Solar Inverters

Solar inverters are based on PV (Photovoltaic) Solar technology. This technology is used to convert sunlight into electricity. This technology is useful mainly because it uses solar energy which is an abundantly available resource. Secondly, it is benign in nature. This is because it does not produce any noise or harmful emissions and does not require water for generating electricity.

Solar Inverter Design Requirements

Solar Inverters comes with simplistic electrical requirements; specific performance requirements; and protection functions. Although there are few thermal requirements that require greater attention like the inverter system and related components cannot attain temperature beyond a specific value to avoid risk of fire, overheating or damage of insulation; temperature of switching devices should be maintained below certain specified value; due to inverters installation outdoors, they should be capable of handling extreme temperature fluctuations like -40 to 50 degree Celsius; and the like.

Major challenges

The major challenges of using these inverters include thermal management; robust performance; attaining a targeted reasonable price in the coming years and attaining an inverter lifetime greater than 15 years.

Future Advancements

Few of the possible future developments are listed below:

• Development of micro grids to achieve better grid quality and greater reliability
• Creative innovative topologies to generate more power and better efficiency
• Developing HALT (Highly Accelerated Life Testing) and HASS (Highly Accelerated Stress Screening) can help improve the quality and reliability of inverters
• Use of highly improved system components to improve the lifespan of inverters
• Building the inverters with equal efficiency by using lesser components

Conclusion

From the above discussion, we may conclude that there is a need to make changes in the inverter design to improve the efficiency, reliability and life-span; and reduce the cost. Also, manufacturing and testing side is also required to improve to further upgrade the quality of the inverter. Furthermore, researchers need to develop advanced robust control techniques to upgrade the performance of inverter so as to lower the inverter downtime and to remove costly sensor components.

Nevertheless, solar inverters have a lot to offer to our growing solar power industry and they should be exploited for the same.