We are about to add solar panels to our house that will provide about 50% of our electrical needs for our household but the direct current from the solar gain has to be changed to AC by an inverter before it can be used. Does that inverter or the long copper cable that ties the rooftop panels to our electric meter pick up or cause RFI or noise that my PS Audio P5 can’t handle?
If this conversion is going to cause issues with my music listening, I may have to rethink it, but getting renewal energy from the sun is pretty hard to deny as the wave of the future. Anyone had any experience with this?
I don’t know but I have wondered about it. The inverters used in computer grade UPSs can be pretty nasty but I have no idea about those used with solar panels. Power Plants are not completely insensitive to incoming power but in general they do an excellent job cleaning things up. Since Power Plants for from AC to DC back to AC maybe there’s a market opportunity for PS Audio–units to take the DC out of solar panels and convert it to high quality AC.
I had the same thought about the PP’s as a primary AC generator when I saw this post.
There is bound to be some EMI but whether it makes a difference or not is uncertain. You’ll have to let us know what you think after it is up and running. Can you shut off the AC inverter at will or is it out of your hands?
I don’t have direct experience in the solar aspect, but I know that most UPS systems (which similarly generate AC from a battery) do not care about the quality of the sinewave they produce. Some of them are so bad that a PowerPlant cannot find and sync to the waveform. In a situation like this we advise customers to shop for a ‘pure sine wave’ model. They cost more, but put out a good waveform.
I don’t think I can turn off the string inverter, the electricity that my household is not using will be sent back into the grid and the power company supposedly will reimburse us for the electricity we’re making for them.
I’ve asked our installer about the hash that could be a problem but he did not understand my concern. Audiophile “problems” are usually very rare air for normal people. He countered that he has computer servers and programmers using solar and they haven’t reported any problems.
So my wife and I have decided to go for it and have solar panels installed on our 115 year old house. I’ll post my experience when I’ve used it for awhile.
