Romy,
If
you didn't have children I'd suggest a new forum topic devoted to solar power
quality and Audio.
There
are lots of technical papers on solar inverter output quality, especially
related to harmonic distortion levels (additive in the case of individual panel
microinverters) excessive EMI and square wave forms affecting voltage, and how
these problems can limit the amount of solar that can be acceptable in a single
distribution system. There are, of course, as many inverter quality levels as
there are solar providers. In such a competitive market cost is primary - thus
quality is secondary. Solar buyers are not usually aware that such a thing as
power quality exists - so they don't take the care you did in looking at
inverter specs.
A
lot of this is poor filter design. Inverters have more than one frequency to
deal with (PWM carrier wave frequency, IGBT switching frequency) - along with
EMI. They need carefully designed LC filtering and snubbers to deliver
reasonable levels of noise and THD.
I
read one ad from one of the better solar inverter suppliers touting their THD
levels as "comparable" with some UPS systems - not a promising claim.
We
recently installed 3 PurePower 3000's in a solar powered home with in-panel 240
volt micro-inverters with good results and no problems. Our recent experience with our unhappy audiophile is no doubt a resonance problem between a high THD solar installation
and our input EMI filter coil - not a component we ever hear from in the normal
world. In fact in 14 years of PurePower installations we have never had a case of
input filter noise. All past instances of reported coil noise involved output
filters and were load dependent.
It
is pretty clear that many, if not most, solar installations result in poor
power quality that would detract from audio system performance. In my
humble opinion there is a simple remedy. A PurePower regenerator will cure the
low voltage, high THD and noise while delivering more instantaneous current and
better dynamics from the audio system and thanks to recent experience, we can
avoid any resonance problems.>>
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