I was reading something interesting the other day.

I was reading something interesting the other day.

Large solar farms use three phase delta inverters, which have a big advantage over single phase inverters – they don’t require capacitors to store current over the zero crossing point. With a delta, all of the phases add up to 100% of the full voltage and current at all times.

This means that with a three phase inverter, they are bound to last a long time. Most electronics fail due to capacitor failures, which aren’t required by three phases systems in the delta configuration.

They try to get around this problem with a lot of single phase residential systems now with micro inverters on each panel, so they can use smaller film capacitors rather than failure prone electrolytic capacitors but nothing beats the simple elegance of a delta inverter.