Enphase vs Fronius |AC vs DC debate - Penrith Solar & MC Electrical! 

This is one of the friendliest discussions ever! good job Gents and I'm learning a ton.

so emphase was 20% more expensive for me, in fact it was cheaper to have dual 5kw gen 24 inverters.

13:39 no picture was put up 🤷‍♂️

Micro inverters are going to put solar companies out of business if they’re on the hook for the labor costs. I did the math, if he installs 100 systems per year, he should expect 52 repair jobs in year 11, and increasing more repair jobs the following years.

Very interesting and a conciliatory approach to competitors, well done fellas. I have a 10 kw Gen 24 plus and I'm very happy with it. From a consumers perspective I initially had some challenges understanding the difference between the 24 and 24 plus. In my opinion Fronius would be better off just marketing the 24 plus using a slogan that it's battery ready. If you can't afford the additional costs, buy a different brand. At the end of the day, quality costs a bit more. When I first had my system installed, I purchased 16 kw of panels and 3 x GE Grid Tied inverters (5 kw), but with the proviso that I could EASILY install batteries at a later time. (My system is 3 phase, though I don't run any 3 phase equipment.) As it turned out, when the time came, I had to ditch 2 x GE inverters and buy a Hybrid Gen 24 plus. As a result, I didn't use the people who initially installed the system, to sell me or install the new inverter, because I had lost confidence in them. I used a company that was very helpful and honest and did an amazing job. If Fronius had a bigger 3 phase Hybrid inverter, I would have removed all of the GE inverters. I purchased 33 Kw of BYD batteries. The end shot is that I am very happy with the current setup. It powers all of my home and has blackout protection and it all just works. The only minor irritation is that when the grid dies, there is a 20 second delay before the batteries kick in and though I understand why, it is annoying sometimes. This was overcome buy installing a couple of UPS's in some lighting circuits and on the wi-fi. This prevents any danger of being in the dark for 20 seconds while the system switches over. Perhaps you should both, set up business in South Australia. Great video fellas.

Blabla...shade..algorithm..blabla.. They forget something important, all panels are not egal vs shades....depending how there electric circuit is built. Whatever algorithm you got in a chain inverter would solve a shitty panel. So...contrary to their discussion, a chain inverter that work good with shades need many other parameters to be fullfilled. This is NOT the case with a micro inverter.

Enphase is better. We know this :) but good to have a discussion about both

very interesting debate. very good points from both installer. I spent some time looking at both Fronius & Enphase solutions. As a customer/self-installer I choose Enphase (for all the good points raised in this discussion) I just installed 15 PV with Enphase IQ8M and IQ8A installed on a flat roof easily accessible and will add soon one Encharge 3T.

What a debate between two professionals. I learned so much.

not a thousands dollars in it gets, on a 11kw system, it was still 3000 or more.

Keep in mind that with multiple devices the overall system reliability is the product of the individual reliabilities. If an microinverter is 10 times more reliable than a string inverter, but you have 20 microinverters for each string inverter, the overall likelihood of a failure is twice as high for the microinverter system. Now, the consequences of a string inverter failure is much greater…

Fronius is good with 4stk digital IO 12VDC outputs and PVPoint Backup... But don't have a "phase balance" :(... In Latvia we have a one grid provider with "each phase"calculation and not a summary...

Very good information. Recently installed my own roof mount solar. The more I learn, the more I am glad with installing an SMA inverter. SMA RSD's did increase costs about $40 per panel. Being a self installer I soon realized that this technology made it safe to install panels since each panel only outputs 1vdc until the inverter was enabled.

My Envoy started to play up 4 years into warranty. After raising it with my installer (not PSC) and Enphase, they moved the Envoy out of the meter box to its own enclosure to reduce interference. That did not entirely fix the problem and by this time it was out of warranty. However because I had then been complaining about it for 18 months, Enphase replaced the Envoy and the installer changed it over free of charge. The new one of course has no warranty, so we will see. So far, so good. I am coming up on 2 years and the only issue is that Enphase recently upgraded the firmware which degrades comms with my home automation system.

How much electrical noise did you have in your arc fault detection test?

went for a Fronius because i got a Victron battery system in the house

My feeling is that enphase is great when you have easy access to the roof and the panels.

It all depends and the likelihood of failure for a 20 x microinverter system versus a 10 kWp system is much higher and the easiest way to understand it is a picture: the usual string inverter comes with a 10 year warranty like enphase but if you think about it as a good point in time to replace the inverter for a good next 10 year warranty time than the enphase is screwed with the big amount of exchange work. And that is even cheap, cause imagine it would be a 20 kWp system and 40 microinverter you have to replace. We run Growatt inverter and simply replace them after 8 year within the warranty cause the used prices for Growatt are great and they do not use fans, just big cooland hats. So we run them quite cheaply even during the crisis. We lost for the first generation 0€ on 3 inverters when we had to replace the string inverters with a hybrid and a diy LFP battery we had build on our own from german made CATL cells. We have had the system running for 4 years and flipped the inverters with a loss of 0€ per 4,6 kW inverter cause we got what we had paid in 2019. We got new 3 ones and a big hybrid but still the good old SPH series with 48 V battery. And it has paid of fully, the used ones went with all the specs and video on sale on ebay and the owner is quite happy and we are happy too cause the new ones are a bit more efficient too. But we have not much shadow to care for which mean only in the morning and evening a bit of shading here and there does not cost us that much to invest money to reduce the losses. Enphase would be incredible expensive, same for solaredge we had been looking for 12 years ago or so. Regarding fronius: Different products are priced differently and why should they offer a product with hybrid for free if there is an additional value inside. Get a BMW and seatheating is in every car but you can not use it if you have no purchased it or if you do not rent that feature. The big advantage is the Fronius has the battery option while enphase needs a complete different solution. And to get a feature for 800€ years afterwards when you realise you need it is a cheaper option then selling the old and getting a new one I bet. Here we see in northern germany (not so hot, more windy and rainy) quite a lot micro inverter causing warranty cases with a lot of complaints from the installer cause they wait for the spare part and then need time for the preparation of the replacement mostly in the middle of the roof with a lot of preparations to get to the inverter that needes to be replaced. Usually it is not the inverter under modules on the edges, quite the opposite, and that causes the same troubles the solaredge optimizer do cause. But some people with serious shading inssues like an old family oak tree in the backyard 400 years old can fix their issue with any microinverter based system cause enphase is no longer alone and is attacked by many others also from products you might call hybrids too, where they have options to power 2 or 4 panels from 1 inverter like a micro string inverter which have the same shading situation which then lowers the cost. People get here 10 microinverters for 5 kWp and 3 or 4 mini inverters each 2 kWp for those panels outside the shading situation. Always hard to judge which will pay off better and usually a job for PV SOL Premium to prepare a decision in one direction or another - luckily we have the choice.

Thanks guys, great discussion.

Excellent discussion. Thanks gents

This was a fantastic positive discussion 😊

😚 "PromoSM"

17:40 is way off. There is a ~0.5% chance that any one of those 20 microinverters goes bad in that 10 year span if 500/1,000,00 micros go bad per year. Simple math

Fair discussion

Fronius 10 - enphase 0