Enphase PowerMatch
Enphase have demoed a new battery/inverter system and they are highlighting its low load efficiency. At the moment, a typical inverter unit contains a single inverter and it has to be able to provide power at anywhere between 0 and max ( anything between 5 and 11 kW ) output. The inverter needs to be optimized but this can only be done for one specific output power. It seems the Enphase system uses a parallel bank of smaller inverters and for low power outputs only one is used. This means that a low output powers, the single,small, active inverter is operating much more efficiently that a single large inverter. Our current house has an overnight baseload of under 200W and current monolithic inverters won't supply that very efficiently. On the other hand, we're not looking at every much power compared to total used each day. It does seem that Enphase's system is more efficient but only at low level so the savings may not be that great. Here's a Heatable YouTube video -...