An interesting note from Intersolar

the solar market growing briskly With the solar market growing briskly, inverters are sharing the love. Greentech trf Media Reseach has estimated the 2009 inverter market at more than $2.5 billion. A ten-billion-dollar market is not too many years away, with inverters accounting for six percent to seven percent of solar industry revenues.

While solar panels have experienced extreme price pressure and rapidly falling ASPs, this trend has not impacted the inverter field. Power electronics and metals are a more mature industry and likely will not experience the same plummeting prices. Inverter prices and value could actually increase as the inverter becomes more "grid-aware" and absorbs some other system functions.

An interesting note from Intersolar: Rhodes did mention inverters integrated with trf a small amount (e.g., two minutes' worth) of lead-acid battery storage capacity.