Plug in solar

Microinverters sync to the grid, no grid frequency detected and the inverter shuts down.

Who is going to stop you? Sure they won't pay for export but just use it all?

If you already have solar and battery, how does this kind of set up work? I assume that it is a stand alone system that doesnt interact with the main solar?

If the plug in solar is supplying power, does the main solar just "recognise" that there is no load, or does the main solar take priority to supply background load( fridge,TV etc)?

Great !!.

I'm new to all this.

So, in theory, I can install 3 or 4 small(ish) panels with a micro inverter on each( or can they all be connected to one inverter). If they are generating, say, 600w and I am only using 400w, the excess goes back to the grid?. How does this effect ESBN, or will they even know that you are generating from a stand alone system?

Does it all need to be done by an electrician or is it DIYable?

MIcroinverter into a 3 pin plug. Solar panels into the microinverter. Sun shine. That's it :)

AC side they usually come with either a short cable and plug attached or just cable and empty wires at the "plug" end. The connector to the micro inverter for AC depends on the inverter vendor, it's usually a odd standard. The dc side is the industry standard MC4. They are usually meant to be connected to the panel so they get connected immediately and have outside air cooling them.

In this case someone might have put a ip65 rated waterproof connector on the end of the supplied pigtail and ran some 1.5mm outdoor pond cable to the inverter to a outside power point.

I'm not saying you shouldn't go ahead with this, but just want you to be aware that it's not currently approved to do this in ireland. The UK have a proposal to make it legal over the summer coming up, but I've heard nothing to the same in ireland.

Its somewhat questionable if they could detect you doing this if you already have an NC6 in place with an existing solar setup, but if you currently have nothing and then all of a sudden you start exporting…….it's EASILY detected if you have a smart meter. A simple SQL query would show up everyone in the country in like 5 seconds who are exporting and don't have an NC6 in place.

Just be warned.

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Actually I'm not sure that is true. NC6 doesn't have the concept of export limiting on the inverter side. There maybe inverters approved for NC6 which do have limiting, but it's not usual I think. So what will happen for most people is that your main inverter could be chugging along exporting (say) 5.5kw, and then you might have micro-inverters exporting an additional 1kw thereby "technically" exceeding the 5.6Kw limit of an NC6.

I should say, that the NC6 regulations aren't actually on the 5.6Kw export, although that's what it works out as. It's actually worded as "total amount of inverter capacity in the household (not the export amount)". So as weird as this sounds…..

• if you take a main inverter (5kw) and you hook up to 2kpw of panels and
• you have 4xmicro-inverters each with a 400w panel connected (so a total of 1.6Kwp)

technically, your actually breaking the NC6 regs even though you only have 3.6Kwp in panels, as you have 6.6kw of inverter capacity. Full regs are here.

Conditions Governing the Connection and Operation of Micro-Generation

By the way, I'm not trying to be Mr Doom-n-gloom , only educating people to what the rules are so that your not "caught out". If you already have solar, a few extra panels by a Micro-inverter is a nice boost I think.

If you don't have solar - I think I'd be wary of appearing on a ESB crap list. :-)