Solar PV: Can We Eliminate the Inverter?

Over the years, I’ve reviewed many thousands of ideas in cleantech and renewable energy more specifically, and I wish I had a dollar for every time I’ve had to tell someone: “Is this physically possible?  Yes.  Is it potentially of any practical worth?  Sorry, not in a million years.”  I know I haven’t won many friends with this phrase, but I know I’ve kept lots of good people from wasting money developing something of no value.

Here’s the “poster child” for this concept.  The inventor wants to replace the inverter (the yellow box in the picture) that converts the direct current from a solar PV array to alternating current. This piece of electronics represents typically about 6% of the total system cost, and reduces the effective power by about 5% due to efficiency loss.  But if you watch the video, you’ll see his work-around: he’s created a Rube Goldberg device to do this; it will reduce the efficiency of the panels by some enormous amount that I haven’t taken the time to calculate–and it’s made even worse by a peculiarity of PV: a shadow of 1% of a panel’s area will reduce its output by up to 30%.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.