Smart-performance

DREKLY

Hi, anyone else had a cold call from this company ?
They phoned me today, following up a lead from a solar quote
that I had done about 4 years ago..... :rotfl:

need I say more ?

anyway, the claim is that they can save you money (!)
by redirecting the excess production over 3.68 Kw to
"protect" from panel degradation....

(Martyn, can I see you rolling on the floor? )

Martyn1981

:rotfl: I had a little roll just for you.

Looked at their site (I assume) which talks about smart PV, but other than claims to increase performance it doesn't actually give any info .... whatsoever!

So I'm guessing entirely based on what you've posted. Now there are systems which some DNO's accept that limit export to 3.68kW rather than generation. This allows for a bigger system, but only really of interest to those that would have thought about this in advance, and have high energy consumption (so that will always reduce generation before export) or have some form of storage.

But for 4kWp systems, the capping from a 3.68kW inverter will be next to nothing over a year. In the summer heat will drop performance to 90% or less within a minute, and very cold weather performance, say in Apr & Oct may benefit, but not enough to worry about.

Over the years, but particularly recently with some very helpful posts on here, I've been surprised at just how little (if any) capping/losses have been suffered by systems with 'undersized' inverters.

So, nope, don't really know what this is about, but would be extremely skeptical given the lack of losses, and the already high efficiency of most current inverters (95%-98%). Even my old tech small 1.2kW inverter is 92% efficient.

Also confused about the panel degradation bit. As far as I know PV panels can be compared (loosely) to a battery, the inverter can take what it needs, it doesn't have to take it all*, never heard that such a thing affects degradation, I thought that was simply a function of time. And perversely, as panels degrade, they will generate less, so there will be less and less capping over time as the effective rating of the PV system falls - say 4% over 10 years from 4,000Wp to 3,840Wp as an example.

*I realised the benefit of this from reading posts from off-gridders on other forums. They love PV as the charger/batts simply take what they need, whereas with wind generation, when the blades are spinning you get leccy and it HAS to go somewhere. So for high winds/storms or full batts, they need to lower turbines, apply brakes (before they get up to speed) or switch on 'dump loads' such as electric bar fires, just to get rid of the excess.

Mart.