When answering the question, “How does solar energy work?” it’s important to highlight what happens to solar energy after it’s collected. Solar energy is captured as direct current (DC) electricity, but it still needs to be converted into alternating current (AC) electricity in order to power the appliances, lights, and other electronics that are used in your home. This energy conversion is done by the solar inverter and is a critical step in the process of converting solar energy to electricity.
There are three main types of solar inverters that help convert solar power to electrical energy: string inverters, string inverters with power optimizers, and microinverters.
String inverters, also known as “central” inverters, are the simplest type of inverter, and most small-scale solar energy systems rely on them. With a string inverter, each individual solar panel is wired together into a “string”, and then multiple strings can be connected to the central inverter.
String inverters with power optimizers are a step up from the basic string inverter, and use a power optimizer that’s located next to each panel to “condition” the DC electricity and make it a constant voltage before it’s sent down to the main string inverter to be converted into AC electricity.
Microinverters offer the highest performance, and as a result, they are usually the highest cost solar inverter technology as well. With microinverters, each individual solar panel has its own small inverter located next to the panel. With this distributed system, microinverters convert DC electricity to AC electricity right on the roof, so they can adapt to more complicated system designs or even roofs with uneven shading where one panel might get more sunlight than its neighbor.
In addition to converting solar energy into electricity, you can also think of an inverter as the gatekeeper of the solar power system. How does solar power create electricity? Inverters convert DC electricity to AC electricity, but they also provide ground fault protection and system stats such as voltage and energy production.