Why you must consider “overclocking” the solar inverter when installing roof panels

It could be the best risk-free investment you will ever make!

The solar inverter is the box which takes the DC electricity your solar panels generate and turns it into AC electricity that can be used in your house or fed into the grid. Just over a year ago we installed a solar roof panel system on our roof. The system was 9.86 kw of panels with an inverter for 8.2 kw. That means we installed 1.7kw of panels above the maximum capacity of the inverter. Known as overclocking the inverter.

We received a series of quotes that varied quite a lot in price. In the end we settled on the system above. After rebates, the cost per kw of panel was A$1,155 fully installed including the inverter. The price for a set of panels that fitted the inverter size was A$1,244 per kw for 8.16 kw of panels. This means that the cost of the extra 1.7 kw of panels was A$729 per kw or 58.9% of the cost per kw for the first 8.16kw of panels. This reduction of cost is because there is no inverter cost involved and the installation of an extra 1kw of panels is cheaper than the installation of the first 8 kw because all the sales cost, travel costs, etc have already been covered.

The question is whether at this reduced cost per kw of panel is it worth it because the extra panels will not be fully utilised if the energy produced by all the panels exceeds the limit of the inverter?