Choice of Inverter ?

travellerboy

I have a proposal for the installation of 12 x sunpower E20 PV Panels. Anyone have experience of a troublefree Inverter to use with this system. Not too keen on the Samil Solar River since is has a cooling fan, which will probably become noisy in years to come. Anyone have knowledge of Eltec ?

Martyn1981

Hiya TB. I don't profess to know much about inverters, but a quick check of the specs seems to suggest that the Eltek Theia range do have fans, or at least they have a fault code for fan failure:

http://www.swithenbanks.co.uk/product_uploads/13890948752.pdf

page 51 - "Fan failure (W/A – E16)"

However the Samil Solar River TL-D range are promoted as:

"• No fan design for higher reliability and lower noise"

http://www.swithenbanks.co.uk/product_uploads/13480626191.pdf

Hope this helps, as that has exhausted my current knowledge on those two makes, and the subject. Hopefully somebody else will be along to help.

Mart.

travellerboy

The Eltec THEIA HE-t has no fan it is convection cooled. The Samil 3680 according to the data sheet has a fan. the Samil 4000TL is convection cooled.
Think I will go with the SMA- Sunnyboy 4000 as it is made specifically for Sunpower panels and has good reviews - any comments ??

Fred56

Just don't buy and Eversolar, Zeversolar or any associated inverter. They are owned by SMA. Ours died at 2 years old and a bit of research in the web shows they fail at around 2 years. Our original supplier has given up on them, too much trouble. Getting it sorted out under warranty looks like it is turning into a saga. Short term junk this this should never be certified by MCS.

unicell

Connecting your inverter to the home network, internet and viewing portal is an important consideration. You can see if the PV Panels are working and receive status alerts. Like most inverters, the Theia can be connected, although very good network / IT skills are needed.
The Theia inverter can send hourly data emails to any graphing portal ready to receive them. Theia do not offer their clients this service yet.
I've built this function into a larger commercial utilities management portal.

On offer is life-time free usage for single household PV systems with a Theia inverter. Read how to connect a Thiea inverter to the home network and the internet.