If you happen to be considering installing a solar power system to use in your home, particularly if you are trying to do it yourself, you may want to understand just how the components, equipment, and solar power kit actually works.

One piece of equipment you will need to know about is called a solar inverter. Basically, this electrical device will change or invert DC electricity into AC electricity so that you house can use it. Solectria inverters are specifically made and designed for the practical solar power system you have.

Solar panels will take sunlight and generate DC electricity with it. However, DC electricity works great for incandescent lamps and charging batteries, but you will need an inverter to power appliances, gadgets, and fluorescent lamps.

Solar inverters come mainly in two types, according to the kind of solar power system you have.

The first kind that we will discuss is an inverter for standalone solar power systems. This is a very simple type of inverter that is not connected at all to your local utility grid. Inverters like this will often come with an integrated battery charger. As the solar panels are generating DC currents, the inveterate will the transform it to AC electricity, while it charges the batteries. When nighttime arrives, bad weather occurs, causing the sun to be blocked, the inverter will then take that stored energy from the batteries and turn it into AC electricity.

The second type is for grid-tied solar power system. The usual practice nowadays is to connect solar power systems to local electricity network or grid without the expensive battery. During the day, the electricity generated by the system may either be used immediately or be sold to the utility company. When the system does not produce electricity in the evening, power is taken from the grid. The grid, therefore, acts as the storage, and the system does not need a battery. This type of system calls for an inverter with more sophisticated designs. Inverter of this type is called grid-interactive inverter or GTI.

Whenever the grid crashes, the GTI will employ a feature known as anti-islanding protection, which will disconnect you from the grid system automatically. GTI’s are required to have this feature for the safety of the line workers who are trying to repair the utility grid.

Another thing a GTI will do is match the AC output will match the AC of the grid within a single degree. Due to this, the GTI is also known as a synchronous inverter. A GTI also needs to have its voltage output equal to the utility grids voltage. A grid-interactive inverter can do all of these important functions because it is a computerized system of circuitry that detects and monitors the utility grid waveform.

GTI’s can be designer for either big or small power transformers. The first conventional design will invert a low-voltage DC input to a low AC voltage, and then will use a large power transformer to bump it up to around 120 V. The second design has a much different concept in which small high frequency transformers are used to allow a pushing up of voltage in multiple steps.

The second design is more efficient and obviously has the lesser weight. But its drawback is that, unlike the first design, it cannot be grounded without interfering on its operation. Although the NEC code requirement of negative grounding for solar power system was suspended after 2005, the absence of the isolation of DC and AC circuits due to the absence of power transformer could allow dangerous DC faults to pass to the AC side.