SolarEdge or Enphase... Which is better?

Optimized Solar Systems or Micro Inverter Solar Systems ... Which is better?

Hey everyone Dale here with Pacific Sun Technologies. I feel that I’ve talked a lot on battery storage options and solar panel manufactures in recent weeks, but I haven’t talked about solar inverter options because with that you can’t convert the DC power of your solar panels to AC power that everything in your home runs off of.

So, todays video is an important one and it’ll help you decide which is best for your situation and wallet. But before I get into it, please be sure to subscribe to the channel, it only takes a second to click that button down below and while you’re at it hit that bell icon too. That way you’ll receive notifications on future videos like this one. And if you’re someone that’s in our area of Southern California don’t forget to visit us online to receive a free solar quote, you could be over paying for your energy, and a competing bid never hurts.

Now, let’s talk solar inverters, because there are a lot of different manufactures out there, and I’ve done a video previously on the benefits of a micro-inverter system versus a string inverter system.

That video didn’t compare the two leading solar inverter options SolarEdge and Enphase. But before we talk about the pros and cons of each let me fill you in on how the two differ.

Enphase is a micro-inverter system which means a small inverter is attached to each panel, while SolarEdge uses a solar panel optimizer attached to each panel and they connect to a single inverter.

To understand the pros and cons for each you have to understand how they both work. So let’s start with SolarEdge because this is our most popular choice.

SolarEdge is a global leader in the solar inverter industry, with nearly 15-years of cutting-edge technology. SolarEdge is traded on the NASDAQ and has shown continous growth in revenue and gross margins. The company’s financial strength and stability, combined with its cutting-edge technology, makes SolarEdge the preferred partner for installers like Pacific Sun Technologies.

Globally, SolarEdge has shipped over 14.6 gigawatts of power with over 1.3 million systems activated. So they’re not just any inverter manufacturer, they’re number one.

Its important for consumers to know this information because what good is a product if the manufacture goes out of business? Not very good.

So here’s what makes SolarEdge so unique:

They were the first solar inverter manufacture to develop a solar panel optimizer to work in conjunction with their solar inverter.

What this allowed for is module level monitoring and voltage regulation.

This means you can see the power output of each panel on your roof and if one is under producing for any reason like shading, the rest of the modules are unaffected. This is the same for Enphase micro-inverter systems but with one significant difference being that a SolarEdge optimizer sends the solar power to the one inverter, whereas an Enphase micro-inverter converts the DC energy from the solar panel to AC immediately on the roof.

The SolarEdge optimizer allows you to produce the most amount of power day in and day out. And if an optimizer goes down completely, that’s okay, because the solar optimizer is covered under a 25-year warranty, and like I said a minute ago, it will not affect the other solar panels or optimizers it’s connected to.