•  The grid-tied solar power system  connects the solar panel installation with the main electricity grid.
• This system reduces dependency on the national grid and provides electricity for daily use – Reducing the monthly electrical bill.
• When legislation allows, you will be able to feed excess energy back into the grid through a special meter, and when legislation allows you will be financially rewarded.

This system is the basis system to build on towards energy self sufficiency.

Advantages of Grid-Tied Systems

1. Save money.

A grid-connection will allow you to save more money with solar panels through better efficiency rates, plus lower equipment and installation costs:

Batteries, and other stand-alone equipment, are required for a fully functional off-grid solar system and add to costs as well as maintenance. Grid-tied solar systems are therefore generally cheaper and simpler to install.

Your solar panels will often generate more electricity than what you are capable of consuming. With net metering, homeowners can put this excess electricity onto the utility grid instead of storing it themselves with batteries.

2. The utility grid is a virtual battery

Electricity has to be spent in real time. However, it can be temporarily stored as other forms of energy (e.g. chemical energy in batteries). Energy storage typically comes with significant losses.

The electric power grid is in many ways also a battery, without the need for maintenance or replacements, and with much better efficiency rates. In other words, more electricity (and more money) goes to waste with conventional battery systems.

Lead-acid batteries, which are commonly used with solar panels, are only 80-90% efficient at storing energy, and their performance degrades with time. Lead Crystal batteries are a major improvement in storage efficiency and performance with a lifetime of +- 6000 cycles. (i.e 15 – 20 years lifetime)

Additional perks of being grid-tied include access to backup power from the utility grid (in case your solar system stop generating electricity for one reason or another). At the same time you help to mitigate the utility company`s peak load. As a result, the efficiency of our electrical system as a whole goes up.

Equipment for Grid-Tied Solar Systems

There are a few key differences between the equipment needed for grid-tied, off-grid and hybrid solar systems. Standard grid-tied solar systems rely on the following components:

• Solar Array
• Grid-Tie Inverter (GTI)

What is the job of a solar inverter? They regulate the voltage and current received from your solar panels.Direct current (DC) from your solar panels is converted into alternating current (AC), which is the type of current that is utilized by the majority of electrical appliances.

In addition to this, grid-tie inverters, also known as grid-interactive or synchronous inverters, synchronize the phase and frequency of the current to fit the utility grid (nominally 50Hz).