Max inverter wattage

[electrofelon]

Of course you can We designed and manufactured larger/much larger units. That's why I questioned this statement:

Ok.

 

[ggunn]

We were doing a 2 MW PV project and the utility wanted the inverters "dialed down" a bit so their wattage didn't exceed the transformer size.

Why not just get an appropriately sized transformer?

 

[Besoeker3]

Why not just get an appropriately sized transformer?

Agreed.

 

[electrofelon]

Why not just get an appropriately sized transformer?

I wasn't involved with that aspect of it, but it was the utility's transformer and either the utility wouldn't provide a larger transformer or the client wasn't willing to pay for it.

 

[Supratachophobia]

Its the AC current that seems to be the "hard stop" on an inverter output. Take for example a sunny boy 7.0 which has a max voltage of 264V and current of 32A. Does that mean I can get 264x32=8448 watts out of it providing it doesnt need to thermally protect itself by restricting output? The manual doesnt give a "maximum power" value.

I've seen our SolarEdge "claim" 10.02kw when it's clipping which could just be a rounding error since it's a 10kw rated inverter. So I'd say in practice an inverter *should* only be doing what it's nameplate says. However, it does appear that you can downrate the output in the configuration, but not sure how that works in the real-world. For example, if you wanted to do a 40 amp backfeed on 200amp service, you could "de-rate" the inverter to 40amps instead of it's max 42.5. But how you communicate that to all parties and get it past permitting because it's just a software change, I have no idea.