Over the past few days, we have been examining the TIGO – TS4 optimiser and implementing it in real-world conditions. The fluctuating weather patterns of the UK have made it challenging to find consistent sunlight exposure, but we are halfway through the evaluation, and it appears that the results may not be positive.
lets take a look at the charts.
What you looking at?
What we are looking at is a chart showing voltage, elevation and watts. as you can see its creeping up
lets look at the voltage. we can see the VOC on the array around 142v, there is shade across the leading panel, then the panel with the tigo, and then two unshaded panels = all on the same plain.
We see that the voltage drops as there is part shade which is not on the tigo, this clears, and then we have a rise and then we come to the tigo panel. and a drop in voltage. and a small raise.
we can see the watts are climbing and we can see the corresponding drop in voltage and power.
Looking again we can see the clouds causing variation in the solar output. however we can see there is a regular climb in the all of the measures ( they are not in the same order as before).
The main concern here was the voltage drop, this should happen with the tigo, but it also happens with out it. what I did notice was around 9V difference.
Here is the shading on the tigo panel. ( back panel) the darker area is the shadow and the general area across the two is just a reflection due to the angle.
Our view So far.
In this scenario, I must concur with other reviewers that the Tigo is not worth the trouble and additional expense. From my observations, the Tigo merely consumed a few watts without providing any benefits. I questioned whether it smoothed the transition, but its impact appears to be equivalent to using diodes alone.
Typically, I would expect a voltage drop (VD) to around 90V; here, we were slightly better off, which could indicate a marginal improvement in performance. However, the series of cells that were shaded on the near side were not “well shaded,” which might explain this discrepancy, although the voltage was incorrect. This could also explain other drops associated with diode VD.
I have been under the impression that Tigos generally do not work, except in certain scenarios.
Next week, we plan to remove it from the array and conduct some tests on the same array. Additionally, we will create a split array configured in series to test the “Tigo claims” and my understanding of their use case in the mentioned scenario.
While this is not the company’s stated use case, it is a solution I have devised based from my memory while investigating them before. Typically, I do not install them and have never encountered the unusual and specific installations where they would be effective. However this is not always a “edge case” to have this type of installation. So we will have to see if they would work or not or are a waste of time and money.
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