We are looking into putting a 6kwh system on our house, we are getting conflicting information as our house is wired up to be 2 Phase. One sales rep is saying it wont matter a single phase inverter will cover both phases usage as retailers bill as whole not each phase.
Another sales rep is saying we will loose out on our solar consumption as the inverter will only cover 1 phase. Has anyone had this problem?
Welcome back, I hope you are making some good progress on your solar buying journey.
There aren’t a lot of houses with 2 phase solar in Australia, which may confuse people.
My understanding is that if you use a single phase inverter, only appliances running in that phase will be able to use the solar electricity.
There are a few options for you around this, although the best person to help you wade through them should be your installer/ electrician. It’s a shame that you are getting conflicting info. Finding the right electrician will be very valuable for you in this situation.
My thoughts on your options, though I’m not an electrician and have limited understanding on phases:
- A 2 phase inverter. 2 phase inverters are hard to come by in Australia, although I believe they exist. They would allow even distribution of solar across phases.
- Two small systems, one on each phase. You could get clever with this and work out which appliances on each phase you use at different times of the year/day, and then optimise the solar systems position and size for better performance during these times of day/ year. I might be talking rubbish here, and again, the person to help with this is an electrician with a solar design certification.
- Micro inverters (like Enphase), I assume you could similarly to above wire up smaller systems on each phase.
- Lastly, and I guess this is obvious, you could just get a smaller system to cover the use of one of your phases.
I hope that helps, and doesn’t just confuse more. Hopefully someone with better electrical knowledge will respond to this one.
Cheers
Marty