How do solar panel power optimisers help to overcome issues with roof shading?

Working up in the hills means dealing with a lot of trees and partly shaded sites. To tackle this issue, power optimisers are used as a good solution for these sites. With older houses and different roof angles, the use of power optimisers or micro inverters becomes essential to make the system work efficiently.

The key to designing the right system is to spend time with the customer and understand their electricity usage patterns. It's important to make the right decision on the size of the system, the type of inverter, and panels to ensure the system is fit for purpose. Without spending enough time with the customer, it's difficult to come up with a beneficial outcome.

We do quite a bit of work up in the hills, with the hills comes a lot of trees. So we do have a lot of partly shaded sites that we designed, so use of power optimisers with the panels worked very well. So we can have a partially saving site that still produces, where a string inverter wouldn't. Power optimisers is a good solution for these partly shaded sites. With older houses and different roof angles, the power optimisers or the micro inverters really come into effect because they open up the design for the property. We can make it work with the use of the either the power optimisers or micro inverters.

The designer at the end of the day will make a decision on what sized system, what inverter, what panels, to suit the customer. So if you get that wrong, you could have a system that is is not right or fit for purpose. With design it really comes down to spending time with the customer and going through all of the time of day which they're using the electricity. Spending that time with the customer, to get the best outcome for them. If you're not spending time with the customer and going through this, it's quite difficult to come up with an outcome that's going to be beneficial.