The products and technology of solar systems is evolving rapidly. Since our first solar system installation (75 W panels and marine batteries), the number, quality and efficiency of products have improved dramatically. Panels that are 600 W are now available. Inverters and charge controllers have 10-year warranties and some lithium-ion batteries have an expected lifetime of 21 years.

How do you make sure that the solar provided that you choose is offering you the best products and the best installation. Installing a solar system is not simple. It requires wiring expertise (including construction with conduits), detail understanding of how to configure inverters for the best performance, and maintenance protocols that keep the system operating a peak performance for its expected lifetime – or longer.

This week I had the opportunity to see training in real time at Innovacion Solar. A representative of Fronius, a well-known inverter company came to make a presentation on the different residential and commercial inverters available from their company. The presentation began with a history of the company from its start in 1945 to its entry into the solar market in 1992. The presenter went through the introduction of different inverters from the time until today. The audience was 21 members of the engineering and technical installation teams of Innovacion Solar. Given the nature of the audience, the history was just a background to discussing the actual features in detail of each of the current Fronius inverters on the market. The audience asked technical questions about the installation of the different inverters, which were reviewed in detail by the presented. He even drew out how the system worked on a white board. The installers at Innovacion Solar receive much more than a PowerPoint presentation. There is a training area in the warehouse where the installers are required to take apart and reinstall the different products that are recommended by the company.

While the technical installation team were receiving the training from Fronius, other members of the team, who are responsible for support the construction aspects of installation were receiving at training session on the new products available from Makita to make their work easier. This covered not only the products – their use and maintenance – but the battery systems used to allow work on off-the-grid installations.

Innovacion Solar had also just received a new battery management cabinet that contained 12 lithium-ion batteries (totally 60 kW of storage) with the inverter and charge controllers built into the cabinet.

With the speed of innovation in the solar field, constant training and updating is vital.