Can you plug in as many solar panels into a microinverter?

[ZappBragagain]

Can you plug in as many solar panels into a microinverter as long as you don't exceed the max watts and are within the volt range on the specs?


For example, if you had some panels facing east, some facing south and some facing west. The panels are not all going to be producing the max. Also if the panels are flat or almost flat mounted, they are not going to produce anywhere what they are rated for.

So if your microinverter can do 1600W of power, can you hook up as many panels to stay below that number at any one? Of course being within the volt range required for the inverter with a combination of series and parallel?

Thanks.

 

[timselectric]

You can connect as many as you want. Just don't exceed the voltage rating.
It's called overpaneling. But at some point it gets wasteful.

 

[ZappBragagain]

You can connect as many as you want. Just don't exceed the voltage rating.
It's called overpaneling. But at some point it gets wasteful.

How is it wasteful?

So I pretty much do the whole combining series and parallel thing to make sure the voltage is high enough not to be wasteful but does not exceed the specs for the microinverter?

 

[timselectric]

How is it wasteful?

The inverter can only use what it can use. If you connect more than it can ever use, that's wasting the panels.

Overpaneling is helpful for cloudy days and spreading the production throughout the day. But there's always times when the inverter can't use it all. More inverters gets all of the available production, all of the time.