Solar Inverters in Kenya

The inverter is the part of the system that decides what your power actually behaves like. It converts DC from the panels and battery into the 240V AC your building runs on, and in a hybrid or off-grid system it also manages the battery and the changeover between solar, battery and grid.

What we stock

1 product, KES 48,000 to KES 48,000. Prices exclude installation.

Sizing the inverter

An inverter is sized on simultaneous load, not on total appliance count. Add up what can realistically run at the same moment — fridge, lights, TV, laptops, pump, iron — and add headroom for motor starting current, which for a fridge or borehole pump is several times its running figure. A 3.5kW inverter comfortably runs a typical three-bedroom household provided the high-draw appliances are not all on at once.

Undersizing shows up as nuisance shutdowns under load. Oversizing costs money and, on some units, reduces efficiency at low load. This is the component most worth getting a survey for.

Pure sine wave and MPPT

Our LIVOLTEK units produce a pure sine wave output, which is what fridges, pumps, motors and sensitive electronics require. Modified sine wave inverters are cheaper and cause motor heating and audible interference; we do not supply them.

MPPT charge control tracks the array's maximum power point as irradiance and temperature change through the day, and recovers materially more energy than a PWM controller over a year, particularly in the cooler, brighter conditions of a Nairobi morning.

Grid-tied, hybrid and off-grid

Off-grid inverters run independently of KPLC. Hybrid inverters do the same but can also draw from the grid to top up the battery when solar has been short, which is the usual choice for a Nairobi home that has a KPLC connection and wants backup through outages. If you intend to export surplus to the grid under net metering, the inverter must include anti-islanding and voltage/frequency protection and be accepted by KPLC at interconnection.

Questions