Tigo TS4-A-O Testing Optimization & Overview  

Very interesting results. Look forward to hearing what others think the problem is.

Thank you for a great test and review, it is much appreciated, Thank you again

This is what I've known for a while after setting up my array. The same thing is true of microinverters. I shaded my panels the same way you did. I have 15 panel strings so it was easy to get results quickly. I even shaded different strings. The results were the same. If I shaded half of 1 panel the output dropped by half a panel, not half a string. This is with and without optimizers. The only benefit of optimizers is that they clamp the panel voltage so the open circuit voltage stays at 35 volts.

It would be interesting to see the same test with micro inverters. 👍

WOW!!! Very Interesting! Great test man!!!

Fantastic thank you.

Is it possible that type of the inverter you have is not matching what you have chosen during the commissioning (Sol-Ark) and this is where your problem originates from?

You just saved me some money, panels I bought have some bypass diodes so optimizers are not needed

for me I want data from the panels not optimization, to be code rss compliant I will buy 2f and f tigo rss ones. Great test, saved me alot of wieghing options

great video. many tks

I would like to see more testing on this, preferably addressing some of the comments here. Due to losses, I've always been highly skeptical of these products...

As other commentators have mentioned optimizers only help with light shading because the solar panels have built-in diodes that will bypass when you have full shade so they don't need optimizers. Optimizer will also help if one panel is producing slightly less than others due to age. Basically anytime the diode does not kick in but the panel is producing slightly less power the optimizers will help the other panels keep full production. Another time they can help is sunrise or sunset when you don't have enough power for the panels to kick on the optimizers can make them work a bit earlier and later.

Modern solar panels have blocking diodes in them and dont need optimizers. Thanks for the test, I was hoping this would be the result! Rapid shutdown should be a DC Isolator?

I think you should shade whole panel. That would be real shading test. I have my install of 4kW on a car port and depending on the time of the year panels are shaded by the building. For example now half of 10 panels are shaded and I get around 0.5kW instead of 2kW. The limiting stops when last half panel is shaded. I wonder if Tigo optimizers would help in such situation.

I have now 16x 370w panels without tigos = 5.92 kWp 15 panels with tigos 10x410w, + 5 x 370w= 5,95 kWp ) Quite similar output power they make, my yard is full of neighbour house + trees shadows this time of year , hard to tell yet how tigos are performing. Now in november only about 2 kWh / day solar power produced here in Finland

Can you please do a video of full review of a Tigo system? This is really important for people to know. I checked your channel and other videos of systems you did afterwards had micro inverters on them. Did you stop using Tigo? Please let us know what happend.

Yes i concur with your results. Its taken a bit of time but im going to do some more reverse testing too. But they dont do anything. Ive a small array, one panel suffers with shading. The array acts the same as with ans without, the diodes function as they should i get the drop and the current is maintained in the array. If anything i think it may have been a bit smoother, for the diode to kick in. But that could be the tigo being a capacitor. Ive withdrawn it from sale from my website... I will be offering diode kits and back boxes which should cover people who have panels that are end of life or are using non diode panels to make an array. I had alwasy wondered if they were a bick coverter or a diode... Now i know.. Worthless I suspect the rapid shut down is a penny relay.

Did anything change with Tigo optimizers? Are you able to see the difference of full array production with or without Tigo to compare? Becouse I installed my system and feel like they slowing my system down.

I have seen the optimizers work in shade caused by trees and similar Shadows... They Will not work when you have a "hard shade" on the painel. They do work on difuse shading... (If i am explaining myself well 😉)

The other point at 7:18 just doesn't make sense. The panels look old and i'm not sure how many bypass diodes do the have and what it is cell organization. Total system power is 750Wp at perfect conditions. Without optimizers it is delivering whooping 678W which is 90% of the total Wp. Almost impossible? Without optimizers, one panel shading production drops to 600W, 80% of the total? With 2 panels shaded production is still 60% of the total? What is the panel diode configuration? Is this possible? Would be good to hear author and others comments. Maybe I miss understand something..... Может быть....

Hi everyone, i made a Solar installation with 20 pannels and inverter Growatt. But i don’t know How to start the optimizers, cause at the end of cable no DC voltage, just 1 volt. Thank you a lot, Alex

The shading with the papar board is not precise. If you are a bit uneaven so that only a smart portion of the left or right third of the panel is covered, it leads to kicking in of the bypass diode also for the outer parts of the panel. The point here is that the panels are hardly shaded, so that the current drops to 0. The optimizer bypass that panel and no bypass diode kicks in! This is the disadvantage of the optimizer. Therefore in this situation a half cut panel would work much better with the optimizer. There might be a problem with the optimizers or the setup. The point is, that the third uncovered panel should deliver more then the 40Ws while the other two are just bypassed by the optimizer. Did you check the monitoring in the Tigo App? The app should give you a good monitoring on the panel level.

My understanding is the MPPT needs to be compatible with the optimizers. Pretty sure yours is not on the approved list. I had the same problem with Victron MPPT but the Tigos work amazingly well with Sol-Ark.

Did Tigo comment on this? Did you contacted them about this? This is unfair to the customer. Tigo lowering initial output of the panels in full sun and then completly failing with partial shading.

very strange maybe the Tigo need to know the inverter cause of the minimum MPPT starting voltage - and they try to reach that 150V (just a guess for the SolArk) which could not be provided by the 3-Series-string? Would also be cool if you can repeat the test by shading horizontal over the panels (that will shut them completely down due to the bypass diods. How do the optimizers work on your roof?

I have seen some of the explanations below, but that doesn't explain the significant difference for all three panels unshaded.

у меня Deye 12k инвертер, с 8х550Вт панелями, стоят на гараже, сейчас зимой немного перекрывают друг друга тенью в нижней трети, купил систему с этими тиго - результат либо нулевой либо негативный, с ними пик мощности в начала ноября был 950Вт, без них на следующий день в тоже время - 980-1050Вт Лично пообщался с людьми с тиго по телефону, показывал фото и пр - не смог получить ни единого внятного ответа кроме как "надо подождать две недели", так же у них нет ни единого видео где показываются реальные сценарии как тут с тенями на панелях и результатв измерений с TS4-A-O и без них, что б можно было судить о каких то разницах в можности ... отправил все назад продавцу и вернул деньги.

I do wonder how people imagine that adding devices that use some energy to work and cannot be 100% efficient could improve anything.

I agree with other comments - that this test is not a fair test because of the way you do shading. The hard shading invokes 2/3 of the bypass diodes which bypass the panel, but the optimizer softened that, and made it worse. But if you do more realistic shading, or make the panels off-axis, then you'll see how the optimizers can improve things. Here you have created an artificially "unoptimizable" problem, which makes the optimizers look bad.

Very disappointing since Sol Ark has yet to release their announced micro inverters/optimizers, so we're stick with Tigo

@SolarEngineering nicely done video but I'm afraid the tested environment was not properly designed. The optimizer reduces the voltage of one / two panels so that the current of the whole loop can be maintained and the performance of the others is not degraded. The Tigo includes a DC to DC converter and works well in a proper circuit where the resulting voltage needs to be within the working voltage of the MPPT inverter. For this reason, the type of inverter is specified as well as the number of panels. See a simple video where Tigo optimizers get 2x more power than an installation without them. This is a lab in the garden. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-f9lyu5CGb3U.html

Trusted Global Solar Module Manufacturer Seeks Cooperation

it's good that there were no optimizers on sale. I won't buy them now, it's a waste of money.😀

This is odd since I just saw another video doing the SAME test with a carboard directly partially blocking. The results were as expected, the optimizers worked. Something must be up with the optimizers here, like they arent rated for those specific panels

So, optimizers are a gimmick? Everyone says to get them, but if these are the real results of using them ... why? I have a small setup, so I need everything I can get from them.

These backyard tests using 3 modules and cardboard crack me up. This is not how it works in the real world.

I think before writing off a product you need 3 other products to compare it against. Then you will realize that they are levels below rubbish, and rubbish isn't so bad when it does the basic things really well. The First thing you need to work out what is the efficiency of the Micro Grid Tie? Is your Unit 87% / 77% / 67%. Efficient? Next you need to work out what is the efficiency at different power levels, for example at 50% solar output is the Unit at 95% efficiency? These out puts will determine if you should connect 2 panels instead of 3 panels to a unit. You might be wasting 20% of your solar energy by connecting too many panels. That's more costly than just buying more micro grid ties. I have a Grid Tie that's only 55% efficient...That's a huge waist of power.

If your inverter needs a minimum Voltage from the panels to work you use optimizer to grant the range of voltage that is needed ... Only bypass and a lot of shadows ...voltage can decrease under the minimum stops the inverter

А можно на Русском? Короче перевёл Яндексом. Больше спасибо за видос. Наверное куплю 10 штук на 10 панелей.

so a yes or a no?? very little time showing and explaining the results and too much time showing the making of the rig??????????

Your shadow (paper) is to small!!

They are completely useless! I have 8 in a string with a lot of shadow and the result is the same as without! Sorry totally fail

Because my install is shaded 4 months of the year I spent £1000 on these same models after 2 years, adding 20 Tigo optimisers! And like you got very disappointing results! Wish I'd never bought them! My array is shaded in the winter, and in October and Feb it's part shaded. The optimisers made zero improvement to the output. As soon as one panel is part shaded the output crashes for that string to 10-15% of what it was doing unshaded when it should have only dropped by 1/7th (1 panel). For another string we had 3 panels on one side of the house and 7 on the other. After several visits my installer kindly let me pay the extra for a 2 string inverter so each side would act 100% independent. Emails to Tigo confirmed that the optimisers won't work when a certain percent of panels are shaded?! It seems what Tigo claim on their website in their marketing and what actually happens is totally different - the product is a load of rubbish. My install was done by a credited MCS installer with a decade of experience. If you have shading, ignore it, get micro-inverters, don't get Tigo!

In soviet russia, panels solar you