Guide · Equipment

Hybrid inverter or grid-tied inverter?

The inverter is the part that converts the direct current from the panels into current you can use at home: without it, nothing works. The debate between hybrid and grid-tied may seem technical, but it comes down to a single question: do you store the energy, yes or no?

The hybrid inverter (Deye)

The hybrid is the inverter that knows how to manage a battery. The Deye units (single-phase and three-phase, from 5 to 30 kW) drive the panels and the storage at once, with built-in CAN BMS management. Their appeal is twofold: shifting energy from the day to the evening, and keeping the power on during an outage — something a grid-tied inverter never does (see just below why). That versatility has a cost — you have to add the battery itself — and a storage inverter converts energy with one more step than a plain grid-coupling inverter.

The grid-tied inverter (Huawei SUN2000)

The grid-tied inverter does one thing, but does it very well: send solar production to your appliances and the grid, with no storage to amortise. The Huawei SUN2000 units (string type) are built for this direct self-consumption, from homes to commercial rooftops. Less hardware, fewer conversions, fewer things that can fail: it's the simplest, most efficient solution as long as your consumption follows the sun. The downside is well known — no back-up during an outage (the exact reason why is in our on-grid, off-grid or hybrid guide), and nothing to offer in the evening beyond what the panels produce in that instant.

The surplus you inject into the grid is worth little next to the retail tariff anyway — the current figures (20% cap, ANRE buy-back tariff) are kept up to date in our Law 82-21 explained simply guide. That reinforces the logic of both inverters: on a daytime profile, the grid-tied unit already captures most of that value through direct self-consumption; on an evening profile, it's the hybrid that recovers what exporting would barely pay for, by shifting it into your peak hours.

How we choose

The choice of inverter is therefore not the first, it's the last: it follows from the decision on storage, which itself follows from your consumption profile and the stability of your grid. We work back up the chain in the right order — your bill and your consumption hours first, the hardware after — instead of starting from a model decided in advance.