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The cost of solar power is around $3.50 per watt of energy. This isn’t necessarily cheap enough for many businesses to justify paying exorbitant solar panel prices and solar power installation costs. However, if solar panels were able to extract energy more effectively, the overall price of solar power would go down, and it’s safe to assume that more companies would adopt solar technology. ArrayPower, a small solar power company based in Sunnyvale, California, has been trying to figure out how to lower the solar power average cost for a few years, and now they’ve come up with the solution: a solar inverter that could reduce the costs of solar power by 10% or 35 cents a watt.

The solar inverter designed by ArrayPower is mounted to each and every solar panel in a solar array. Most solar inverters are connected to but not attached to the solar panels in a solar array. Typically, electricity is generated from solar panels in what’s called a central solar inverter. In this situation, electricity has to travel from a series of solar panels to this central solar inverter. Unfortunately, using this type of central solar inverter means that if one panel is producing a weak current of power, the central solar converter’s overall production of electricity is dramatically reduced. ArrayPower’s solar inverter increases solar panel efficiency by collecting power from each panel and instantaneously converting that power into electricity we can use.

This revolutionary kind of solar inverter works in the same way that microinverters work. Micoinverters are small inverters that you can attach to individual solar panels. The parts used to produce microinverters usually cost quite a bit of money, and very few people actually use them because of this. ArrayPower’s solar inverter will cost less than microinverters and still dramatically increase the efficiency of solar panels, thereby reducing the overall cost of solar power.

ArrayPower is still working out some of the kinks in their solar inverter. So, it’s not quite ready to be sold on a wide scale. However, we can be sure that this advancement in the solar energy field is an indication that the overall price of solar power will be on the steady decline in the upcoming years.