Advanced inverters

Optimizing power quality, system reliability, and ratepayer economics

Advanced inverters will increasingly be required for distributed solar generators across the country. The Clean Coalition is working to ensure that advanced inverters are treated as a cost-effective tool to optimize power quality, system reliability, and ratepayer economics through distributed voltage regulation.

Silhouette of a power plant and electricity pylons against an orange sunset sky.

Enhancing power system reliability

While there is clear recognition that advanced inverters offer grid benefits, how to fairly allocate their costs and compensate their benefits is a topic of hot debate. Objective experts recognize that advanced inverters enhance overall power system reliability. The reactive power capabilities of advanced inverters enable distributed voltage control, which significantly outperforms centralized voltage control. Reactive power suffers far greater line losses than real power, and those losses increase as a line is more heavily loaded. Distributed reactive power from advanced inverters improves power system efficiency by minimizing reactive power line losses and reducing line congestion.

Clean Coalition on advanced inverters

Recovering Costs and Compensating Benefits

This Clean Coalition article from 2013, published on SolarServer, is still a definitive resource making the case for advanced inverters.

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24th Annual LABC’s Mayoral Housing, Transportation, and Jobs Summit – 24 April 2026

The Clean Coalition was a partner organization for the 24th Annual Mayoral Housing, Transportation & Jobs Summit, which took place at the UCLA Meyer & Renee Luskin Conference Center on 24 April 2026 in Los Angeles, CA.

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California Clean Energy Summit – 14-16 April 2026

The Clean Coalition was a supporting organization for the 2026 California Clean Energy Summit, which took place in San Diego, California at the Hyatt Regency La Jolla on 14-16 April 2026. 

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