Interesting discussion. I don’t tend to label inverters as Tier 1 or Tier 2 based on price or origin. I think it’s important not just to match the inverter to the panels but also to the customer.
Some customers will always be driven by price and will think that the inverter choice is unimportant. The logic being that all the datasheets show an efficiency of 95+% so all inverters must be equally good so why should they fork out extra for something that does the same job? It can be difficult to reason with such people and justify a more expensive inverter.
Some customers will have done their research and make sensible suggestions about what they want. We proposed a Power One for a customer a while ago and he responded by asking for the equivalent SMA which we were happy to fit at a higher price.
Most people on here would probably consider Power One as a decent brand but we’ve heard disappointing reports on this forum recently about their responsiveness to faults and general aftercare. I’d also wager that there are several other installers who’ve had similar issues. Adding that to the RISO issue (which seems to occur more with P1 inverters although it may not be the manufacturer’s fault) makes me wonder whether this brand is so amazing after all.
In my experience some of the cheaper Chinese inverters perform very well on non-complex installations. I’m off to China next month where I’m going to visit an inverter factory which should be fascinating. The manufacturer has sent me a free sample to test on my own house. It looks like a solid piece of kit, performs ok on PV-Sol and seems to have all the required certs.
I think many of the Chinese inverter brands are actually sub-divisions of larger companies which are involved in multiple sectors just as Hyundai, Panasonic, Mitsubishi, LG, Bosch, BP, Sharp, etc got involved in PV. But, some of these panel producers have exited the industry and finding replacements might be tricky. At least with an inverter it’s possible to swap for a different brand without much difficulty and without the stress of aesthetics.
