Power Inverter

Your inverter is simply the heart of your system as this is what converts the
dc voltage stored by your batteries into AC voltage that can now be used by
your home appliances.

Inverters are divided into 3

1.Square wave inverter

2.Modified sine wave inverter

3.Pure sine wave inverters

Square Wave Inverter

These are the least expensive and also the worst type of inverter to invest your money in. Don't consider buying it as the square wave it produces is inefficient and is usually very hard on many types of equipment you try to run on them

Modified Sinewave Inverter

These are the most commonly found inverters in the market today, although more expensive than the square wave inverters, they are still far more cheaper as compared to the pure sine wave inverter.
Almost all equipment's and gadgets will run relatively well on a modified sine-wave inverter exception of gadgets with motor speed controls or gadgets using timers. considering that more and more gadgets are beginning to have motor speed and timer controls, the modified sinewave inverter may not really be a good candidate Especially for people considering to run all home appliances from an alternative source other than the public utility grid.

Pure Sinewave Inverter

  The wave form generated by this type of inverters are almost pure sine wave in nature.
the pure sinewave inverter will run practically any appliance and in many cases produces
a cleaner power than the utility company itself. The Pure Sinewave inverter are the most
expensive inverters in the market and are almost twice the price of a modified sinewave
inverter. Regardless of the cost, they still remain the most efficient and most recommended
inverters worth investing your money in especially if you have plans of completely going of
the grid in the future.

Here is The wave form for Pure Sinewave, Modified Sinewave And square wave inverters

 Inverters have different  voltage systems ranging from 12, 24, 48 and even 96 volts, the higher the voltage, the lower the current and subsequently the more efficient your system would be because, there would be minimal energy losses, since the current would be considerable low as compared to the voltage.

Determining which voltage System to Use

The distance of your solar panels from batteries will determine the voltage system you are going to be using.
this means that the farther away your solar panels are from your batteries, the higher the voltage of your system has to be.

Inverter Stacking

Inverters can be stacked ether in series or in parallel, when stacked in series, the voltage across the board is increased, e.g you can stack two 120 volts inverters to give you a combined voltage of 240 volts.

But when in parallel  the current across the board is increased which also increases the current across the board and subsequently the overall power of your system.of your system. e.g if you stack two 1000Watts inverters together, you'll have a combined power of 2000Watts.

One advantage with stacking of inverters is the fact that its possible for your home to be running on one of them while the other one does the charging of you batteries.

You also get to have a backup such that if one of your inverters went bad, you wont be thrown in total darkness, while your faulty inverter is being fixed.

Please note that not all inverters are stackable, so u'll have to check with the manufacturer oem manuals for whatever brand you're installing so as to know what steps need to be taken for
proper and safe stacking,as well as the accessories that are needed to achieve this. This is so that you don't
endanger yourself and your property.

Inverter battery charging vs charge controller battery charging

New inverters this days are also capable of charging your batteries too, this can be especially useful assuming you are not fully dependent on the energy harvested from your panels or you you haven't yet purchased a solar panel and rely of the public power supply to charge you batteries.

But the problem with charging solely with your inverter is that some of them don't fully charge your batteries and usually just take your batteries to about 85 percent charge or there about, so the charge controller would usually be the one to take your batteries all the way up to 100%.

Secondly, when it comes to charging your batteries using your power inverter, you have to be careful and make sure the your inverter uses a 3 stage charging system to charge your batteries these are the Bulk, Absorption and the Float stages. But if your inverter just has the basic on and off charging system, be rest assured that you deep circle batteries will soon get damaged because they are not meant to be charged that way.

Some Brand Names of Inverters in the market today are: sukam. Luminous, cyber power, nexus e.t.c

Hybrid Solar Charging System

A hybrid system is simply one in which youu have more than one power source for charging your Batteries.
E.g, wind, solar and probably your public power supply (Utility Grid).

 What this does is to reduce your over dependence on your panels to solely charge your batteries
and also reduces the time ordinarily needed to fully charge your batteries to the brim.

Assuming your inverter which is connected to the public power supply is outputting, 30 amps and your charge controller recieving charge from your solar panels is  also outputting 30 amps, that will add up to 60 amps total, and what this will do is to slash down charging time to half.

 Please note that contrary to what people think, one charging source will not interfere with  the other, they only work together to bring the battery to full charge faster.