[RE-wrenches] Xslent?

[Mark Frye]

 I too spoke breifly with the CTO of Apparent who was kind enough to offer
to explain the technology to me in person if I were able to visit their
facility in the Bay Area.

When pushed to the detail he did say that it is false to claim that a
smaller PV array used with the Apparent inverter will produce the same
amount of energy and deliver the same economic benefit as a system using a
standard inverter with a larger array. He said the did not like it when he
heard that folk are out there making such claims. However, he did not seem
to show much concern when I asked him what his group was doing to counteract
the propogation of this mis-information within the marketplace.

Mark Frye
Berkeley Solar Electric Systems
303 Redbud Way
Nevada City,  CA 95959
(530) 401-8024
www.berkeleysolar.com 

-----Original Message-----
From: re-wrenches-bounces at lists.re-wrenches.org
[mailto:re-wrenches-bounces at lists.re-wrenches.org] On Behalf Of Dave Click
Sent: Monday, January 10, 2011 9:27 AM
To: RE-wrenches
Subject: Re: [RE-wrenches] Xslent?

Standard residential utility meters couldn't care less about power factor
and will ignore reactive power. Additional utility bill savings by using
these reactive-capable microinverters is $0.

Dan brought up a good point that adding too much capacitance also hurts
power factor- so even if a utility did start caring about residential power
factor, they wouldn't want these devices on every house because then their
feeders would become excessively capacitive when motors weren't running.
IMHO reactive power from these devices only makes sense if it's configurable
and dispatchable by either the utility or a building's energy management
system. And it doesn't seem to be.