Hi. A few people have asked me after I installed my new uh N phase five kilowatt solar system. Which is this, uh, video down the bottom here. I've now got a total of an eight, uh, kilowatt nominal uh system, a new five kilowatt end phase system with 14 of these, um, funky little micro inverters, uh, behind every one of my 14 new panels.

That's a five kilowatt system. And I've also got my existing three kilowatt system which I installed a long, long time ago and I moved that to the other side of the roof over there. And it's not performing terrifically. but you know it's paid for itself.

I've done. yeah, there it is. The five-year solar Payback video and everything else. So that's the old system.

It's paid for itself. But anyway, I quite I'll link these videos in if you haven't seen them. But anyway, quite a few people have asked many questions about these micro inverter um systems. and one of them was I did a whole video on.

this is, uh, why I'm using 295 watt rated micro inverter on a with a 370 watt uh rated panel and I've done a whole video on that linkedin. Um, and that's an interesting uh question. There's sort of like pros and cons, uh, both ways. but anyway, that uh, explains that and all about solar shading and stuff.

I've done lots of solar videos now. Anyway, quite a few people have asked, um, do these micro inverters how much power do they actually draw at night time when they're switched off And it's an interesting question And it has to do with the way that these things are are designed in internally and also apparent power. So we're gonna get Um into this now. This is A.

I originally did shoot a video on this but it wasn't that clear. So I'm simply I'm rer. this is a new one. I'm re-recording it from scratch to make it clearer.

Now I've got a Solar Analytics Uh system here. I've done a video, uh, installing that. It's very cool. Uh system which monitors as well as the end phase system.

I've done videos on showing all the data you can extract from that. It's one of the advantage of the micro inverters. Here is that, um, yeah. it's like I've got the end phase Envoy system which communicates over the mains, uh, wiring and we might discuss that, uh, later.

And yeah, it can get data out of these things And we can. I can log individual panel data. It's really, uh, quite cool. But one thing this thing doesn't.

Uh, tell tell me which is what this solar analytics system is because I've got clamps. so voltage. It can measure the voltage course and I've got current clamps going over. It can measure not only how much energy my solar system is producing during the day, but also how much power it's drawing during the night.

So we can see this. and if I go into live it shows me this is what is drawing at the moment. So this is live. This is what's happening right now.

But if I go into what what they call long energy um I can actually look at both the power, the current, the reactive power, the reactive energy, and the apparent power and the power factor. Because when you measure the voltage and the when you measure n log the voltage and p and current of a system, then if you know you can work out the phase of this and of course this is all in my Ac Basics tutorial series. I talk about uh, you know, capacitors and inductors leading and lang lagging and how in an ideal capacitor which is what we'll get into. there's no power dissipation in and ideal uh, capacitor when you're connected across the mains for example and that will come in um, very important shortly.

So this really won't be a like a proper tutorial on reactive energy and apparent power. I'm assuming that you've got the concepts, but we'll We'll basically go over the pros and cons of the this reactive power. So anyway, we're able to measure this so I'll go back to June 12th here and you can see this yellow curve here. It's a nice perfect day.

Okay, so you know there's no shading or anything like that and it's You know it's so. the sun starts at about uh, 8 a.m Something like that, it jumps up and then because of like shading the afternoon from the house next door. Because it's winter time here in Australia. Remember this.

for my eight kilowatt, um system. Look at this. I'm only getting 3.8 kilowatts out of it. That's the downside of wintertime here.

and my panels aren't on ideal roofs either. especially my old three kilowatt uh system. So yeah. anyway, so at around about uh yeah, three o'clock something like that, it starts to die off, die off, die off.

But the good thing is, we can measure the power. the current, the reactive power, the reactive energy, the voltage, the mains voltage here. Um, if you want to know I'm I'm at at home, you can go up to like and get up to like. Look at that.

248 volts. It's normally like 245 volts. Something like that. I think you can get down to as low as 240..

So it varies between 240 volts and like 248 volts at absolute maximum. Um, but anyway, the apparent power is something that we can measure. Now, because I've actually got a current clamp log in the data coming to and from my solar system, we can actually answer the question, how much power do these uh, micro inverters? Remember, I've got 14 of them all in parallel micro inverters. I also do have the old Sunny Boy inverter uh there as well, which is a 3000 Tl Sunny boy inverter it's but I've checked the data sheet for that and it only has um, one watt, uh reel.

It specifies one what real standby power? I don't know what that is in apparent uh power, but we'll just like eliminate that because it's only one compared to 14 of my micro inverters. Now interestingly, end phase do not tell you anywhere on the data sheet anywhere in the website and I've talked to them in this about it. and yet they do not mention this standby power. They mention the standby power of the Envoy system which they say is 5 watts I think it is.

but they don't say the Va for it the apparent power because we'll go into the architecture of this uh later on in the video. So stick around and I'll show you uh, exactly how it works inside. at least normally from a block diagram point of view. This Ac port backfeed current here.

This is like a fault current thing. It has to do with fault conditions and stuff like that. We won't go into it, but that's not the standby power so we can't get any of this from the data sheet so we have to actually measure it. And of course, one of the things about the Um in phase inverters is that they have active power factor correction.

Um, so it's it will. when it's on and generating, it'll be a power factor of 1.0 and it can actually correct. Um. adjustable from 0.5 You can actually adjust it I believe when you set it up or something.

I don't know the install details and things like that, but yeah, very cool. During the day we don't know how much power these things take, but it doesn't matter. I'll show you the architecture. It's actually powered from the Dc side, not from the Ac side so it you know and that's not the question.

But at night time here look the the you can't see the yellow curve in there and sorry I can't zoom in on this but you can see the answer up the top. Here you can see yellow minus 7.6 9.1 Let's say 8 watts something like that. Let's say 8 watts. So that's 8 watts.

Real power, not apparent power. Real power. Standby power for the Uh in Fa for the 14 micro inverters, but that will. also.

as I said, that will also include the Sunny Boy 3000 Tl which is one watt, uh, real power that's what it says in the data sheet and the Um in phase um Envoy system which is the monitoring box as well. Apparently that's pun intended. I'm here a week. apparently that's also across.

uh, the same wiring as well. So yeah, so I think that one might be in there as well. In post editing, Dave here I just got some info from I'll have more at the end stick around, but I just got a info from Enfays that the actual power consumption of the en phase inverters is 15 microamps. This is like it's it's essentially zero.

So this is the real power consumption. This is the real measured power consumption. It's basically zero. So all of this eight watts here? Um, well.

We know that one watt is apparently coming from my Sunny Boy inverter and I guess the others, the Envoy system and the Iq relays as well on there. Um, so yeah, that's but basically virtually zero of that is the en phase micro inverters. But as you can see, they basically draws Naf all at night. Real power.

Okay, but that's not apparent power. So this is the interesting bit. if you've got, if we go over to the current over here, we'll see something very different and this is where it becomes confusing and interesting. So if we go over current here, look at night time: 1.1 amps.

Why are we getting 1.1 amps? Yes, there is actually 1.81 amps of current flowing at night into these end phase micro inverters. If you get your confuser out 1.1 times 245 volts. that's 270 watts. Why isn't it showing 270 watts over here, right? It should be showing negative 270 watts? That's it's you know.

standby power. No, this is because it is apparent power. It is reactive power. and if we go in here like this, we'll see that it actually tells us the reactive power which is va volts times amps r which r That's why it says var above There volts Amps reactive.

The reactive power is The out of phase uh power calculated based on the current that's actually been drawn and the voltage. But this is not real power. So 280 var there 280 var. And if we go over to apparent power, it's going to be the same thing There we go.

minus 280 va. There, we don't have reactive anymore. Apparent power is reactive power plus real power. So in this particular case, we can actually look at the power factor and the power factor is absolutely terrible.

Look at the yellow graph here right. It's absolutely like it's it's rounded down to zero. Okay, because it's that low. I mean, on on the graph, it's like 0.03 or something like that.

It's essentially zero. Okay, there's measurement resolution on this thing. It's basically a power factor of zero and we'll go into the architecture shortly about how these in phase micro inverters actually work, but it's basically an entire capacitive load. That's why.

uh, we're getting a negative Va there. if it was an inductive load like we're seeing the purple one here. the purple one is the fridges. Okay, they're my fridges.

I've got two fridges, basically assuming just ignoring all the other Phantom power devices in the house At night, this is mostly the fridges, so you can see the actual compressors turning off and on right for the fridges. And it's yeah, it's drawing 530 va, 640 va. something like that. But if you go into uh, real power at night, if you're powering these from a battery pack, of what you're paying for is only 130, 200 watts.

Something like that, right? So my fridges and freezers, um, draw 240 200 odd watts during the day and I'm looking at getting shortly. Um, like an independent, uh, battery backup solution just for the fridges. So that could make for some interesting videos. So stick around for that one.

So just to be very clear, residential customers like myself, and like or practically everyone else. Please, if there is an exception, leave it in the comments down below. But end phase don't seem I've talked end phase about this. They don't seem to think that there's an exemption to this, which is why they don't mention at all on their data sheet or anything else.

They they don't mention the apparent power because it's not something that the customer gets charged for. It's not something that they need to care about. Um, it's You Know, it isn't an issue at all, right? So you don't get charged for that. I don't get charged for that.

I only get charged for that eight watts. That's all I'm getting charged for. Okay, and if I had a battery system technically, that's all that. It would take overnight from the battery system as well.

But we'll get into that because that's an interesting story. But yeah, you've got to know the difference between. If you put a clamp meter on there, you will actually measure 1.1 amps, right? I will measure 1.8 amps for the 14 micro inverters. And as I showed in the previous video, there's another forum.

Other people have confirmed this and end phase have confirmed this as well and will go through the calculations. So this is the confusing part when you say apparent power or reactive power. Okay, the word power is in there. Okay, but this is not real power if you've got capacitance like we have here.

capacitance across the line. Capacitors Ideal capacitors do not draw any power at all, but they will cause these currents to flow right. They will cause quite large currents to flow. So you get I squared R, copper losses and any, uh, converter efficiency switching losses as well.

So we go into that in a diagram in a minute of how all this stuff works. But yeah, um, so don't confuse apparent power right? Which, which is a calculation of 280 Va. Don't confuse that with the actual real power that you're being charged for and that will be taken from a grid connected battery system. Yeah, so this is a really cool you can see here right? that, um, at night time when the micro inverters are switched off because there's no sunlight hitting the panels at all, all the circuitry is switched off.

All you've got is the filter capacitors on the output and that's what we're seeing here is the filter capacitors on the output. I show you the exact values in a minute, But and then as soon as sunlight starts to hit, it turns on the active electronics in the end phase microinverter. and Boom. It switches from negative, reactive apparent power to positive like power.

And now it's generating right? So now you don't care about it. It's not an issue at all. So yeah, and then it starts generating power. And at night you can see there's still some sun.

Still some sun, Still some sun. And even though it's not really generating much of you know, hardly any real power. uh, from the panels. And then it switches off.

and we start drawing capacitive power because the inverters the micro inverters are switched off. These things are switched off, but they still have large capacitors on the output which are connected across the mains, which causes this apparent power flow. So anyway, I hope that that's answered the question. Uh, many people have asked how much what is the standby power of these micro inverters and does it make a difference? Well, the answer is what you're paying for.

Not nothing, but it is interesting to note that they do draw 280 Va because of the capacitors on the output. This isn't just an N facing you. almost certainly get this with any other micro inverter or any other inverter on the market. If they're switched off, they've still got filter capacitors on the output.

So unless you actually disconnect them using a relay, then the capacitor is going to be across the mains. But hey, that's a good thing. Now it's a good thing in two ways, because you'll notice that My Fri the purple one here. This is the consume graph.

These are my fridges and freezers turning off and on, right? This is the reactive energy. Or we can go over to the reactive, uh, power here, right? they're gonna. The graphs are gonna look the same. Power and energy is gonna look exactly the same.

It's just the numbers are different and you'll notice that the yellow one, which is the capacitors inside the micro inverters are one direction and the purple ones in the other direction. Because there's those. fridges and freezers are primarily inductive loads. So the So in this case, having a whole lot of these micro inverters on here, can actually be beneficial locally to your system if you've got inductive loads like fridges and freezers and this because it can cancel it out.

And that's why we're not drawing much real, uh, power here, right? The Real: The real power that we're actually, uh, consuming tonight is, you know, is, is not much. So um, yeah. so they're having capacitors across the mains. It's effectively doing some power factor correction against an inductive load.

If you don't have those inductive loads, well, you're not going to get the benefit there. But guess what? you get with every inverter that you put on your system at night time, you get a free energy saver. Yes, these these ridiculous energy saver scams which I've done videos on these are a capacitor in a box, right? And there's all marketing wank behind these. They're a capacitor in a box.

Um, and I've done videos busting these here. it is. Here's one of the ones there. it is.

there's the capacitor. can't remember what value it is, you know it might even be a couple of mike right that they put across the mains and they they think this is going to save you energy. So I've done. and there's a digital version of these.

and yeah, these are just it's just a capacitor in a box. Okay, so we've got the same thing going on here. Um, these have capacitors in the output. so let's have a look at the block diagram and see how this is all kind of working.

All right. So let's have a look at what's going on here. Um, I don't know the exact circuit inside, uh, the end phase micro inverter, but this has been confirmed by end phase that the output filter capacitors are 3 330 nano farad capacitors. So they're in here like this.

And by the way, these micro inverters are all potted so I can't like do a teardown of one. And uh, then of course it's going to have some switching. Like a switching, uh, transformery type thing in it. And the interesting thing is that all the active circuitry is actually powered from the Dc side coming from the panel.

So when at night time, when uh, the light vanishes, there's no more power for the internal circuitry. So all you're left with is essentially the filter capacities. Here, I'm not going to like do all the switching components and stuff like that doesn't matter. You know it's it's down in the drags.

we know the power factor is very close to zero. Okay, which means that it's almost entirely capacitive. So you can see that over here, right? That that yellow line for the power factor, it's bordering on zero. And when that's bordering on zero, then uh yeah, it's going to be in.

In this particular case, it's going to be entirely capacitive. So that's what we've got. We've got almost a nanofarad of capacitance there now. Of course, we have 14 of these micro inverters all in parallel, so that's actually quite a significant amount of capacitance that's always connected across your mains here.

Okay, but as I said, this may be beneficial if you've got lots of inductive loads. It's kind of like a power factor like correction. uh thing. So it can actually be beneficial.

But um, so let's see what these capacitors actually do. Okay, The capacitive uh, reactants here. Xc is one over two Pi Fc. I've done this in uh, my two Ac basics tutorial video.

so it's one over two Pi 50 Hertz here in Australia. Now that's 60 Hertz. Rubbish Times: 990 Nanofarads because we've got three in parallel. That gives us a a Uh reactance of 3215.

Ohms. Okay, and then because we've got 14 of those in parallel, That's what that symbol there parallel symbol 14 to those. It's actually 229 Ohms is the capacitive reactance for all of these micro inverters all in parallel here. And of course this will actually you have to charge up because it's Ac.

Remember this, it's cycling one way, the other. These capacitors every cycle are charging, discharging and capacitors. They this is real current that actually uh, flows. So if we get 245 volts which is my nominal voltage divided by 229 Ohms.

Oh, what a coincidence. There you go. 1.07 amps. let's round it to 1.1 What did we measure? Yep, 1.1 amps.

There you go. There's the yellow current there, so that's exactly where it comes from. It comes from the capacitive output filter of the micro inverters. This is nothing specific to the end phase.

any micro inverter or any other inverter. As I said, the Sunny Boy inverters will have this in. Any inverter will have an Ac output filter like this. So unless you physically put a relay in here to disconnect it and we'll talk about this in a minute at night time.

Yeah, you're going to have all those capacitors, um, across the mains and it will actually draw a current. And that's why my current clamp in here is actually measuring a real when. When I say real, okay, this is not an imaginary current. Okay, apparent power and reactive power.

These are called imaginary. Uh, powers, right? Because they're it's an imaginary pla. It's on the imaginary plane. You have to see my Ac basics, uh, series to understand all this.

But the current is real. The current. If you put a clamp meter or a, you know, a multimeter, a clamp meter, you will actually measure 1.91 amps rms in there actually flowing into into the microinverters at night. Because these capacitors.

because the cycle's changing, these capacitors must be charged and discharged every cycle. So this 1.1 amps is real. So there is a potential downside to having you know a ton of these micro inverters. In a series like this, you will get copper losses.

Okay, and so I squared Are copper losses in there, right? There's resistance in the wiring. It's very small. In fact, we can go in and we can actually calculate The copper losses are very small, but you will actually dissipate real power in the copper losses in here. But as we explained before, this is not real power.

Okay, so it's not real power dissipated, It's just reactive power. It's just currents flowing back and forth. There's no energy transfer from the grid to these inverters over here. But this is a real current, right? So it's got a flow.

But it has to do with other loads you have on the system. Power factor correction, all that sort of stuff. but you are only charged for real power so we're only charged for that seven watts. We're not charged for the 280, um, the apparent power that we're actually uh, drawing due to the capacitance and the lag in current caused by these capacitors.

But yes, at night time, the only losses in theory that you will have and you'll pay for is the copper losses in all of this copper running over here and the connections and stuff like that. There is no power. No real power at all dissipated in these capacitors here. So if you went out and got a thermal imaging camera and put it on those micro inverters at night in theory you wouldn't Even though it's 280 va.

apparent power, you will see no power dissipation in this micro inverter. You will see like in theory it's nothing and these capacitors are ideal. There's no other losses, power factors perfectly zero. Then yeah, you will see no losses.

Um, heat generation in this at all. You will in theory see a little bit of heating of the wires here due to the I squared R copper losses in there though. This is post editing Dave here because I just got a response from our end phase with more detail about how the micro inverter works and it's actually rather clever. Um, this is actually a bi-directional system.

Um, I I was originally, uh, told that the Uh that the end phase electronics was powered from the Dc panel, right? It's powered from the Dc side, so it only gets powered up when the solar panel uh, starts producing power. And that's true. The first time that you power it up, it's got to get that initial power, but once it's done that, Okay, then it's actually during the day it's powered from this, but at night time, it's actually able to take the Ac back out of here. Okay, and actually do uh, some processing.

Like end of day processing if there's any firmware updates at the end of the day. Apparently that's when a dad does it as well. But even though the sun's gone down on your panel here, um, it's completely bi-directional It can get uh, power from your mains because this is a grid connected dart, main system, or your battery. If it's a, you know, independent battery connected uh system, then it would.

It gets the power like that. And then during the night, it's actually still able to operate and this is, uh, it's completely programmable and what they can do as part of the advanced functionality in this thing is actually, uh, generate reactive currents. Um, to actually, uh, help the grid depending on what the Uh authorities want. Um, they can actually program the micro inverters to actually actively power factor control the grid.

Uh, but in a lot of cases they just go. Ah, no, we're we're just happy with, uh, the capacity. You don't need to do anything, but they actually have the capability at night to actively power factor correction. and they can even keep one inverter powered up.

the rest of them power down. and then that one inverter can compensate for the, um, the other inverters. But that's obviously not what's happening here because I'm getting 1.1 amps. It's not.

I don't think it's able to actually compensate for that because you've got 300 and you know you've got all these capacitance to compensate for. It's not that great, but it can actually do active power line compensation, which is pretty impressive. Um, other, uh, micro inverters might have this capability uh, as well. so leave it or other inverters doesn't have.

like. There's no real difference between a micro inverter and a regular inverter. it's just that you have an inverter per panel, really. But there's other functionality differences that you might get as well.

But essentially, it's just an inverter. so it can actually do bi-directional power transfer. And this is why if we go over here and have a look at their end phases own battery system come in late 2022. You can't buy.

I thought you could buy it already, but I don't know. Maybe delays? There's a Lithium shortage or something. isn't there? Anyway, if you go down here, you can see how these are the regular micro inverters. the same ones I've got.

They just plug in to here because you can actually get power direction both ways. They can charge the batteries and they can get energy back out. It's bi-directional power transfer. and of course, that's how other, uh, batteries.

battery inverters will operate as well. You've got their bi-directional power. Uh, transfer. but I didn't know that.

um, or I kind of. maybe I didn't I hadn't forgotten. But yeah, um, they're bi-directional because, uh, that's just the way that they've designed them. You don't need this bi-directional capability for a micro inverter that goes in the panel.

You could have just had it going into one direction, but they've tried. But they've thought ahead and gone. aha no. If we make it bidirectional, we can do lots of cool stuff in the future.

advanced grid control, power factor, reactive power correction, and all sorts of uh stuff. and then put them on our batteries and reuse the same inverter. So that's pretty cool. And we also got a figure for the standby power consumption: 15 microamps is the real, uh, measured by them.

Um, 15 microamps? So it's Nafl 15 microamps times? 245 volts? Yeah, that's only 3.6 milliwatts. Um, yeah, it's you. might as well round that down to zero. In fact, all the, uh, all of the micro inverters combined, even if I had 50 of these things, is going to be less than my Sunny Boy inverter at one watt.

Um, real power. So yeah, the answer to that question is the standby. The real standby power is zero, but the reactive current is still there because of the capacitance. so unless you physically disconnect them, you still got the capacitance there.

So this isn't a big deal. You can have as many micro inverters here as you like and well, you could argue about okay, where the actual Uh current is delivered from. and usually it's kind of like sort of locally. so it doesn't come from like the the the generator over here.

it doesn't come from the coal fire or wind fired or nuclear power plant over here, right? It doesn't come all the way in here. But but the utility, the company that owns the grid. they have to account for all this sort of stuff, right? Apparent power is a big deal. That's why big industrial customers with huge heavy equipment stuff like that.

Um, they might get charged for their apparent Uh power. So that's a complicated thing for residential customers. Um, they don't get charged for it. Um, but the the utilities will have to install like big capacitor banks like on here and stuff like that.

so you could argue. Oh yeah, you're doing them some good by having these micro inverters here, but it's a complex system argument which we won't go into. Okay, so the apparent power is not delivered right is not delivered right back from the generator over here. but it's delivered from somewhere.

So at at night time, if your system is grid connected okay, like this end phase. uh, sort of confirm this and they say it's going to come from the grid over here. And I tend to agree. So it's really the grid that's going to provide that current over here.

so it's not. If you've got a home battery storage system, it's not going to come from your battery here. This battery at night is only going to be delivering the real power. I.e that seven or eight watts that we, uh, saw.

I think it's still going to come from the grid over here. Leave it in the comments down below if you don't agree with that. But once again, it's a complex system thing. But the interesting thing is, if we disconnect from the grid, if you've got a grid independent system this 1.81 amps, this is real current.

It needs to be delivered from somewhere. and in this case, it has to be delivered from your battery, right? There's no saving you from the grid, Right? Because you're disconnected from the grid. Okay, but it is not real power being delivered. So it's not 280 watts that is coming out of this battery.

It's only going to be the real power. Which is that 8 watts or thereabouts? Um, or in theory, Nothing right. If these are all ideal capacitors, you can put as much capacitance on this line as as you want, right? It's not going to dissipate any energy. There's no energy transfer from the battery, all the grid, for that matter, to these capacitors.

Because these capacitors, if they're ideal, they don't dissipate any power at all. But the current must flow to charge and discharge them every cycle. And that must ultimately come from your battery here. So where you will see losses? Actual real power losses that must be delivered from the kilowatt hour capacity of your battery.

Here is is switching losses in your inverter. You've Got to generate that 1.1 amps. So you'll get switching losses in this, uh, inverter. so you know your inverter might be.

I don't know. 95 97 Efficient. Although if the characteristic graph of your converter is like this, I might see if I can find one right at high. If this is power level right and this is percentage efficiency, Okay, it you know it might be designed for a sweet spot.

over here. When it's delivering high amounts of power, it could be very efficient. You know it might be like 95 efficient. Like, right up here, but where you know at lower powers it might you know I might be 70 efficient.

Who knows. But anyway, you will have some real power loss due to the efficiency of your inverter over here that has to deliver that current. Even though there's no transfer energy transfer into the capacitors, you've got the I squared r losses in the cables all in here and you've got a little bit. you know a few percent five percent could be more 10 loss in your inverters here, so you don't get that for free.

So if you've got a grid disconnected, a grid independent battery storage system, and you're using micro inverters like this, it might be beneficial for you to put a relay in here at night and disconnected. But as I said, most people have a grid connected system, so it's actually connected through to the grid. in which case, you don't have to worry about this. It's a nothing burger.

In fact, it could be beneficial. As I said, because if you've got inductive loads, it can sort of. The capacitance can help cancel out. And here we go.

I just found um, this randomly from Penn State Department of Energy Mineral. Uh, the efficiency of inverters like these solar inverter things. There you go. And that's the graph that I showed you.

There's like a peak efficiency here. you know they claim like the data sheet will show. Oh yeah, our solar inverter is 98 efficient. Yeah yeah, it'll have a peak efficiency there.

So at night time if you're only, uh, have to supply the current. remember not not power, not real power, but the current. Um, you know the current's got to come from your inverter. It's got to come from your battery So you know your efficiency is go at low power levels is going to drop significantly, so you know you'll pay a bit of a penalty for that.

And if you've got a huge system with, you know, a ton of micro inverters, you know it. It could start to add up. So I'm just. you know, just be aware that, uh, that could be the case.

But that's really the only downside. If you have a grid disconnected system, a totally isolated independent battery storage system, then, yeah, um, the currents have to flow. So there you go. I hope you found that.

um, interesting. And yeah, this is why. um, you know there's a lot of people out there. A lot of people.

They install their solar system, they'll put a clamp meter on there at night time, and they'll measure. Oh, it's drawing amps, you know. And yeah, it is. Actually yeah, there's real current flowing in these wires.

So yeah, just be aware of that. Um, oh, I squared our copper losses. How much? Let's quantify it. We've got a Neil Copper at 20 degrees C.

We're doing it per meter. Okay, we've got a cross-sectional area 1.5 square millimeters. I do believe that's the size of the radial. It's called.

it's called a radial because it it's not looped. It radiates out from your junction box like that. And so yeah, it's only 11 milliohms per meter. But of course you have to double that.

So let's say about 22 milliohms. You know, 220 milliohms? something like that over a 10 meter run. So the losses are I squared r so I one amp, Um, you square that. it's still one conveniently, um, at times.

the uh resistance, which is 220, two two. So you're talking about 220 odd milliwatts. Real power loss for a 10 meter run at one amp, so you know it's It's not a lot, but you know once again, you've got the some connections in there as well and I wouldn't be at all. uh, concerned with the I squared R losses in here, but technically they are there.

Just be aware of that. But I think you'd probably get larger losses in your Uh battery inverter system at low efficiency levels when it's trying to, you know, generate this current and that's ultimately got to come from your battery, but only if you're disconnected from the grid. If you're connected to the grid and you've got your home battery storage solution, don't worry about it. I don't think the 1.1 amps is coming from your battery.

If you think otherwise, leave it in the comments. As I said, I think it's going to be coming from the grid, but it also depends on the load that you've got connected over here. And is it an inductive load and stuff like that? If it is, it's beneficial, blah blah blah. There you go, it's It's rather an interesting question.

What is the power draw of these things at night? And this is why end phase? don't bother to tell you on the data sheet of the website. It's just going to confuse you. Um, oh, by the way, realize so some people ask, why don't we just disconnect it here with a relay at night? Why not? Because on my system, I do actually have. Well, I've got two of these.

Oh look, look, they do actually tell you the power consumption here. Look at that 10 Va. That's interesting. I didn't see that before.

They they tell you, um, they. and they don't tell you it's apparent power either. They just say 10 Va. So anyway, I've got two of these things and my real power consumption is only eight watts total.

So yeah, it's it's going to be now four. But it's interesting that they tell you that on the Va and they don't tell you the Va on the micro um, inverters. So anyway, anyway, um yeah, so I actually have two of these things installed, which is apparently a legislative requirement here in Australia. To meet the Australian standards for solar installs, you Must have one of these intelligent relays uh, installed which can automatically.

This does some automatic fancy fancy stuff inside so that you know during fault conditions, over voltage, under voltage, and other it will automatically disconnect Um, your solar array because uh, you know the the utilities don't want Because we got a huge we got the largest solar uptake in the world. The home solar uptake in the world here. I think it's now 35 percent of homes or something in Australia have solar on their roof. So it's a big deal and it's a big deal for the grid can be beneficial and also can have downsides for the grid.

So during peak times um, they don't want everyone's solar pumping stuff on here. So if the voltage rises, this is the mechanism that they use. They can actually, um, sort of like force people's solar arrays to turn off. but I've never had.

I've never had any indication of mine ever being turned off. but it this is an automatic relay that actually does that. But this is technically this is also under software control. Like I could actually see this.

I can see I can see the serial number of this and that is physically connected in my end phase. Enlighten? Uh, system. See, here's my um. end phase system.

You can see at the top. I've got two Iq relays um, installed in there. so these are actually software controlled and these are in series with with the actual panels. Okay, so here's the Dc isolator boxes here.

and then there's two of these relays actually disconnecting. Um, yeah, because there's two separate circuits here. because I've got 14.. I think if I had like 10 or 12 or something, I'd only need the one relay and one Dc isolator.

But you know it's a larger system So they had to install the two isolators and the two Uh relays. But I can physically see those devices in there. Um, and the but I can't do anything with them. Okay, there's there's the Iq relays down there.

Um, you know they're operating normally. Uh, retire, replace? I do. I can't even get the can. I get the data on that anyway.

End phase, give you data out the white. The wazoo. Um, it's absolutely amazing. But um, yeah, there's all my individual uh, micro inverters, but I can't like.

In theory they could actually have a manual thing in here or an automatic timer based system to actually disconnect these. They did say it requires 300 seconds or something for the whole system to power back up. So if you did disconnect it at night, you would leave the um, the Envoy system running. which is the box.

The separate box that does all this logging that does all this stuff. This is the Envoy uh, gateway doing all this. Um, so yeah. and so in theory they they could actually software control these relays.

But I was just talking to Enphase and they said, er, not real. Like we don't want people around with that sort of stuff. really. You know? Um, it's just kind of like if you give them the tools, they'll hang themselves kind of thing.

You know, then they'll get support requests from people saying oh no, You know my solar system's turned off. Why? I don't know you were around with the settings I, you know, and stuff like that. So so they want to make it sort of like bulletproof. Um, so yeah, I guess I can't blame them.

but technically that's I think that's in theory, possible to actually disconnect that. It's all fascinating. So thank you for the people who have asked how much power do these micro inverters take at night? The answer is well, naf. All really, unless you've got an independent storage battery solution which is disconnected from the grid and then maybe you might have to think about yeah, these currents Because these reactive currents can flow.

You can't stop them. Um, so the currents are not imaginary, but the power is. Hmm. Catch you next time.