SMART HOUSE

 

HYBRID INVERTER

Hybrid inverter is the youngest solar power technology to date. Combining the advantages of the on-grid solar inverter and the off-grid inverter, the hybrid solar unit makes use of solar production in the most efficient way while intelligently managing the solar battery. There’s no longer need to install multiple solar system components as the “all in one” hybrid solar inverter houses an equivalent of skilfully combined grid-tie inverter coupled with a battery charger.

The operation of a hybrid unit is intuitive: the energy generated by the PV panels is used to, in the first place, supply the loads. This assures that when the site requires solar power, it is delivered through the shortest path, with high efficiency of an on-grid inverter. If there is a surplus of PV production, the surplus is used to charge the batteries. This guarantees that the batteries are used only when they are really needed, unlike in case of the off-grid inverter which cycled the storage virtually all the time. If the batteries are full, the surplus can (but doesn’t have to) be exported to grid.

This operation is possible since the modern hybrid solar inverters are installed in a similar way to on-grid inverter, measuring and compensating the real-time consumption of electricity from the grid while charging the surplus production to the batteries. The hybrid inverters come equipped with a separate output for essential loads, which means that in case of a grid outage, they can continue their operation and keep supplying the essential loads with power coming from the solar panels, supplemented with power stored in the battery.

The advantages of hybrid systems are not limited to grid connected sites, the most relevant solutions on the market allow the installer to replace the grid supply with a diesel generator, which can be controlled (start / stop) by the inverter. Nowadays there are several all-in-one hybrid inverters on the market, but the most advanced is the hybrid inverter from Imeon Energy.

 

 

Below is a schematic of a solar installation using Hybrid systems :