Tune® reduces total harmonic distortion by more than 30% on hot phase wires and more than 45% on the neutral line.
With anecdotal reports of 10 to 15% savings from numerous installations in solar homes, Tune® jumped at the chance to get some hard data from a client’s off-the-grid solar home in rural South Carolina.
Powering 7,500 square feet of home, garages, workshops, and more is a Firefly Solar-designed system of 36 panels and four Tesla batteries. Using a sophisticated Power Sight 5000 Meter from Summit Technologies, data was collected with and without Tune® devices connected. As evident in the data below, Tune® dramatically reduced TDH and improved power quality.
Power Sight 5000 Data
Captured November 2022**
THD is Inherent in Solar Power.
Total Harmonic Distortion (THD) is any distortion on a sine wave.* In electrical systems, this is any frequency other than the 60Hz fundamental frequency. Solar systems create significant distortion because they depend on inverters. When inverters turn the DC (direct current) coming from the solar panels into useful AC (alternating current), they cannot produce the 60Hz frequency perfectly. The difference between the sine wave produced by the inverter and the 60Hz sine wave is the THD. While some inverters are better, none will produce a perfect 60Hz sine wave today.†
What’s So Bad About THD?
According to Gokce Capital, “When total harmonic distortion increases beyond a certain point, a host of issues can occur, including overheating of the equipment connected to it, disruption, and higher electric bills.”*
*Gokce Capital. Total Harmonic Distortion: 11 Things (2022) You Need to Know. gokcecapital.com. Retrieved November 29, 2022, from https://gokcecapital.com/total-harmonic-distortion/
**Details available on request.
†Solar Solution. (2021, July 19). Inverter Efficiency and THD: Total Harmonic Distortion [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlF8ZGQfgIg
