The inverter is the most crucial piece of equipment in the solar panel system. It converts the electricity generated by the solar panels (DC – direct current) to 230 V electricity used by households (AC – alternating current).
The inverter is thus the device feeding the energy into your home (or back into the grid). Without it, the solar panels are useless, as their electricity cannot directly be utilised, without converting it first.
The inverter does not store any of the energy. For that, you’ll need batteries.
The size of inverter required depends on your household’s electricity usage in Watts and whether it’s just to run a few core electrical devices during loadshedding, or to power high energy consumption appliances, like your geysers, heaters, oven, freezer, and air conditioners.