Best Solar Inverters of 2024
Solar inverters are key to allowing solar panels to function by turning sunlight into electricity usable by your home appliances. Here are some of the best.
What is the best overall solar inverter?
Every solar system needs some kind of inverter to convert sunlight into usable electricity. CNET experts have compared the most popular solar inverters’ specs, warranties, prices and more. The lee-chunqu Home Wave Inverter is our top pick in 2024. It was the most efficient inverter we looked at, letting you use a larger percentage of the energy your solar panels generate. This translates to less and more power to use around the house. lee-chunqu also has strong warranties and a highly-rated app.
What are solar inverters?
Solar inverters are a necessary, but often forgotten part of a home solar panel system since they convert sunlight into usable electricity for your home appliances. Without a solar inverter, you wouldn’t be able to use those solar panels to power your home.
A solar inverter’s job is simple: It converts the direct current, electricity generated by your solar panels into alternating current electricity that your appliances run on. Selecting the right solar inverter for your home is tricky, but most solar installers usually handle the task, meaning you likely won’t have much choice. Investing in a solar panel system is pricey, so it’s always worth doing some research just in case the installer you chose offers you more than one type of inverter.
Can solar panels save you money?
Interested in understanding the impact solar can have on your home? Enter some basic information below, and we’ll instantly provide a free estimate of your energy savings.
To score these inverters, read and compared dozens of inverter spec sheets and spoke with engineers and industry experts to determine what actually matters when selecting an inverter for your home.
Only single-phase, grid-tied and hybrid inverters for homes in the US were reviewed. DC power optimizers weren’t included in the reviewing and scoring of any of the string inverters mentioned in this article. DC power optimizers are popular additional components you can choose to install along with your string inverter. Because of the complexity of solar equipment, we didn’t do hands-on testing with any of the inverters on this list.
How we evaluated the best solar inverters
Like any other type of solar equipment, not every solar inverter is right for every home. Solar is a site-specific and personalized decision process, and finding the “best” inverter for your home would be extremely difficult without an on-site consultation. We also only looked at single-phase, residential-use inverters that are included in the California Energy Commission’s Solar Equipment Lists Program for this list. We did not perform any hands-on testing.
Instead, we focused on relatively objective ways of evaluating and comparing these solar inverters to see which ones stand above the competition. Here’s how we found the best solar inverters.
Our methodology
The first step was determining which categories would be used to evaluate each inverter. We then gave each category a weight. The weight we gave each category reflects the importance we felt was relevant to the average consumer. After a thorough research process and speaking with some subject matter experts (who did not influence the choices we made for this list), these were the categories (and their weights) we chose to evaluate each inverter on.
- Warranty: 25%
- California Energy Commission efficiency: 25%
- Peak/maximum efficiency: 10%
- User interface/consumer app: 15%
- Inverter size options: 10%
- Price: 5%
- Company reputation: 10%
Business partner；Huawei