Abstract Today the expenses related to all the other components in a photovoltaic (PV) plant beside the PV modules are higher than the PV module cost itself. Thus more attention is paid to inverters, mounting structures and planning aspects as well as operation and maintenance costs (O&M) to further reduce the total costs of PV electricity production. In the last two decades, the PV inverter markets focused on high efficiency values above 97% with longer guarantee periods to optimize costs. With the changes in customer needs additional features of PV inverters have called for the control of charging a battery. These complex PV systems installed in a building will become a basic function of PV inverters and thus will support the integration of fluctuating PV electricity into the distribution grid.