Comment by londons_explore
1 year ago
I think future designs of panels might be designed in such a way an electrician isn't required. All foolproof plug'n'play connectors and designed in such a way you cannot plug them in in an unsafe way.
You don't call an electrician every time you plug in a hairdryer, and a hairdryer is typically higher voltages and currents than a single panel.
Higher voltage than a single panel, but a string of panels easily hits hundreds of volts. Even worse they can be hard to make safe, since as long as the sun is shining they are generating energy and roof installers don't like working at night.
You can avoid this by using microinverters, but they're a pretty substantial premium on each panel and an added point of failure.
There is lot of tech around solar panels that is being effectively obsoleted by the plummeting costs of the panels themselves. Why bother trying to squeeze out the last few percentage from each panel when it's so much cheaper to just install a couple more panels to make up the difference? This is the big difference between countries like the US where solar installs are still expensive at $3-$6/watt and countries like Australia where home solar installs are under $1/watt.