No, it rarely is straight forward unfortunately, but this is a trickier installation than usual.
To be honest, it’s bloody confusing stuff, you would need a SolarEdge guru to guide you through this one. SolarEdge doesn’t seem to supply a clear guide as to when to use these different Optimisers publicly, I’m sure they have detailed training documents about it though. I’ve been reading through MC Electrical’s review of SolarEdge again, and toward the bottom he highlights how difficult it is to get this sort of installation right.
I would defer to MC Electrical for this install and go with the Tigo optimisers. MC states in the below article:
TIGO OPTIMISERS ARE BETTER IN SHADE
In my SolarEdge post, I showed how SolarEdge usually requires a minimum of 8 panels to operate efficiently. This is because the SolarEdge inverter requires a combined 360 volts from all the optimisers, and standard optimisers only boost to a maximum of 60 volts. If you have less than six panels un-bypassed, the inverter will go offline. In short, the SolarEdge system does not work well in heavy shade.
That’s right, it would need to be two separate strings, and just having the optimisers on the west roof is cost effective way of doing it.
I wouldn’t say it was overly important. Clenergy is a more premium option that Titan - the Clenergy racking system costs about 10% more. It’s a relatively small proportion of the overall cost, if you’ve got the choice, I’d suggest you might as well go with Clenergy.
Hope that helps.
Cheers
Marty