Are Solaredge Optimisers Always Worthwhile?

QrizB

As an aside, if anyone else wants to play with solar panels, I see that (after last year's shortage) used panels are once again for sale on the usual auction sites. I paid about £65 each for mine, 27p a watt.

ispookie666

Jonboy1889 said:

I wonder if that’s why shading affects it so much,
the age and technology of the panel. Has anyone else has done a similar test on their panels? I see the spec for mine says “Less shading effect”, whatever that means. It also says they each have 3 diodes which probably helps.

A few YouTube videos, albeit a bit long on these. 

Jonboy1889

ispookie666 said:

Jonboy1889 said:

I wonder if that’s why shading affects it so much,
the age and technology of the panel. Has anyone else has done a similar test on their panels? I see the spec for mine says “Less shading effect”, whatever that means. It also says they each have 3 diodes which probably helps.

A few YouTube videos, albeit a bit long on these. 

https://youtu.be/9GvhDhCSJgo

this one is quite interesting - and recent, as he covers bypass diodes and how they basically do a very good job of managing most shading, effectively doing a similar job to what optimisers do, just inside the panel rather than out (this is consistent with what I see- I only seem to lose the power output from part or all of the shaded panel, not the rest of the array), in fact he argues that optimisers only give a marginal gain and that is in just certain shading situations.

it shows how technology has come on a lot with solar which suggests optimisers are not as necessary as they once were. 

He also makes a point about a lot more points of failure vs just having solar panels which are very simple devices and unlikely to go wrong