# Solar PV inverter and optimisers

> String inverters and panel-level optimisers switch at kilohertz to tens of kilohertz and are wired into the building's supply, so they can raise both magnetic fields near the DC and AC runs and conducted harmonics throughout the house.

- Canonical URL: https://emfbase.com/emitters/solar-pv-inverter
- Collection: Sources & emitters
- Record id: `emitters:solar-pv-inverter`
- Status: provisional
- Last verified: 2026-08-12
- JSON: https://emfbase.com/api/emitters/solar-pv-inverter
- Also known as: string inverter, microinverter, solar EMF

## Key values

- **Category:** dirty electricity
- **Emission bands:** Power frequency; Switching harmonics
- **Environments:** home, workplace
- **Duty cycle:** Daylight hours, proportional to generation; some units also have a night-time standby carrier.

## Field strength by distance


## Mitigations, most effective first

- **Site the inverter on a garage or exterior wall, away from bedrooms, and keep DC and AC runs out of occupied wall cavities.** — Addresses the dominant magnetic-field contribution at the design stage, when it is nearly free.
- **Specify optimisers or microinverters that do not use power-line communication, or that can have it disabled.** — Power-line communication deliberately injects a carrier onto house wiring.
- **Measure conducted harmonics before and after commissioning to attribute changes correctly.** — Provides a baseline; without one, every later reading is unattributable.

## Why no value is published at 1 m

Depends on inverter topology, cable routing and whether panel-level electronics use power-line communication. Measure at the inverter, along the DC and AC runs, and on circuits inside the house.

## Measure with

- ELF gaussmeter (power-frequency magnetic field)
- Dirty-electricity (line harmonics) meter

## Related records

- [Dimmer switch and phase-cutting controls](https://emfbase.com/emitters/dimmer-switch): Phase-cutting dimmers chop the mains waveform and inject harmonics from a few kilohertz up to about 1 MHz onto the building wiring — the classic source of what practitioners call dirty electricity.
- [ELF magnetic field survey](https://emfbase.com/protocols/elf-magnetic-survey): A source-finding walkthrough plus a 24-hour log, because power-frequency magnetic fields track electrical load and a spot reading answers almost nothing.

## Sources

- `sbm-2024` Institut für Baubiologie + Nachhaltigkeit (IBN) (2024). *Building Biology Evaluation Guidelines for Sleeping Areas (SBM-2024)*. https://buildingbiology.com/site/downloads/SBM-2024_EVALUATION_GUIDELINES_EN.pdf — ngo, link checked 2026-08-12
- `icnirp-2010` International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection (2010). *Guidelines for Limiting Exposure to Time-Varying Electric and Magnetic Fields (1 Hz to 100 kHz)*. https://www.icnirp.org/en/publications/article/lf-guidelines-2010.html — guideline, link checked 2026-08-12

Data licence: CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Dataset version 2026.08.1. Retrieved from EMFBase, https://emfbase.com.

This record is reference data, not medical or legal advice. Regulatory limits, scientific guidelines and precautionary values are labelled separately and answer different questions.