Enphase

Information technology (IT) was hardly a common concept 20 years ago, but oday it's hard to imagine doing business without it. Yet for most of its existence, the energy industry has made little use of IT and that's been the case with the clean energy industry as well. Enphase Energy is trying to change that paradigm. The start-up provides a solar energy management system, which uses special micro-inverters designed to significantly boost the efficiency of any solar set up. Normally, solar installations contain a number of solar panels, but the entire installation shares one inverter, which converts the electricity generated by all the panels for use in our homes and businesses. If there's a fault in one panel, the entire system can slow down just like a chain of Christmas lights goes out if one bulb malfunctions. Enphase puts micro-inverters on each individual panel in an installation, which boosts overall productivity. Even better, Enphase's micro-inverters communicate via the Internet, allowing the company to track the performance of every solar panel during every minute of every day. "It's a blending of information technology and power," says Paul Nahi, Enphase's CEO. "We make sure every system performs to its maximum."







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