In order to achieve parity with coal, utility solar installations (let alone residential) needs a lot of cost reductions across the board and will likely need significant infrastructure upgrades (like Germany's) [1]. Better inverters (cheaper, smaller, longer life time) would help keep driving costs down on large scale PV installations while also giving us a lot more breathing room when upgrading our energy infrastructure to deal with these drastically different power sources.

[1] http://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/energy/the-smarter-grid/...

Soft costs dominate residential installations, but not utility or commercial installations, and it's only a matter of time until they fall away significantly (especially in the US, where the market doesn't seem to have shaken them out yet). Ultimately, you want solar to be significantly cheaper than the alternatives, and in order to do that, you have to drive down all aspects of the cost.

I agree, though, that it seems odd for all the existing interter manufacturers not to put the money in themselves, if there is an opportunity.

Ahh, thanks, that makes so much more sense! It seems that 5kW inverters have efficiencies around 97% which is pretty good. I wonder if they could print the micro-inverters as part of the panel manufacture and then just add the caps and inductors they need during packaging.

This might also be a good opportunity to add features like distributed power generation, so that for remote locations, a power grid could be setup with residential panels, but no central power station.

Inverters tend to die a lot quicker than panels, so it probably would not make sense to make them part of the panel itself.

A dead inverter would mean a dead panel that was otherwise just fine.