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TIL about micro-inverters which make it possible to track individual solar panels
(en.wikipedia.org)
this post was submitted on 13 Jul 2026
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The biggest advantage is knowing the status of each panel, which is what makes it outweigh the additional initial cost. So yea, you could do them without telemetry, but then the question would be why not just get a string inverter at that point?
Yeah but you can't do anything about it so what's the point? It sounds to me like they are selling pretty graphs.
It can alert to problems like a tree needing trimming, a dirty panel, or a panel going bad. All of which are actionable.
Networked panels are useful in several ways. First is that they let you track power generation, which is useful to know what return youre getting on your investment. It also helps you understand where to add or move panels for maximum output.
Second is that they can send data to batteries in order to charge them more efficiently in the case of weather events. Your controller sees a storm is coming tomarrow? Maybe it focuses on topping up batteries to 100% so you have max coverage in an outage.
Third is that you can sometimes participate in virtual power plants where you automatically sell you battery capacity to the grid with thousands of others as a way to prevent fossil fuel plants spinning up during peak demand. These programs can net thousands/year in income for solar owners if your power company supports them.
And a fourth is, if you have a dynamic energy contract, where prices can change as quick as every 5 minutes, your energy provider can stop your panels from delivering power to the grid when prices are negative. otherwise you'd pay for every watt delivered back.
You can do this manually (as in diy, you can automate it with eg home assistant of course) with modbus on a lot of inverters, but idk how that works with these micro-inverters.
Why are power companies giving away free energy?
That's how supply and demand works.
Energy suppliers have to buy their energy from the actual sources, of which there are a few here. They buy all the watts they think they'll need based on a weather forecast the day before. If this forecast was rainy but now turns out to be super sunny, meaning lots of solar which can support the grid, there may be massive excesses of energy that now no one wants to buy. But due to the way an electricity grid works, this electricity has to go somewhere, so they sell it at a loss.
That's how it works in the Netherlands, anyway.