Will a home battery work with my inverter?

Most people research this question backwards. They start by identifying the inverter on the garage wall, then go looking for a battery that matches it. For twelve of the seventeen batteries we track, that work was wasted: the battery brings its own inverter and connects on the AC side, and your existing inverter is not part of the decision.

For the other five, the inverter on your wall is the whole decision, and getting it wrong is a quote that collapses at the site visit.

Here is the split, taken from the coupling and compatibility rows the manufacturers publish. Every figure below is a datasheet claim recorded against its source. We have not tested any of these products.

The five that need your inverter's permission

These ship without an inverter. The battery is a DC module, and its real backup power is whatever the paired inverter delivers.

Sources: SolarEdge Home Battery 400V datasheet, Jan 2026; EG4 PowerPro WallMount spec sheet v1.0.1; BYD Battery-Box Premium HVS/HVM datasheet v1.7; Fortress eVault Max 18.5 technical datasheet; Qcells Q.HOME CORE datasheet, May 2025. All verified 2026-07-01.

Two of those rows are worth reading twice.

SolarEdge publishes a compatibility list with one brand on it. If your array already runs on a SolarEdge Home Hub inverter, this is the cleanest retrofit in the set. If it runs on anything else, this product is an inverter replacement wearing a battery's price tag.

EG4 publishes the longest list in the set, and it is the one to check against your own hardware. Schneider, Sol-Ark, Victron, Growatt, Megarevo, Luxpower and Deye all appear by name. That list is the reason a DC retrofit is possible on a lot of owner-built and off-grid-leaning systems that no mainstream battery will touch.

The twelve that do not care what you own

These carry an inverter inside. They connect on the AC side of your existing solar inverter, consume and produce 240 V AC at the panel, and are indifferent to what made that AC: string inverter, microinverters, optimisers.

Tesla Powerwall 3 and Powerwall 2, FranklinWH aPower 2, Enphase IQ Battery 5P and 10C, Panasonic EverVolt 2, LG Home 8, Generac PWRcell, sonnen sonnenCore+, Anker SOLIX X1, Savant Power Storage, and the discontinued SunPower SunVault.

"Indifferent to your inverter" is very nearly true here, and the exception matters.

Generac publishes a compatibility list anyway. Its spec guide carries a row reading "Compatible Solar Inverters: Generac PWRmicro and Enphase IQ8", plus a separate line capping backed-up PV at 15 kW AC. That is a two-entry compatibility list on an AC-coupled product, which is not what the brochure leads you to expect. Source: Generac PWRcell 2 spec guide, Jul 2025.

Tesla's Powerwall 3 is a third case entirely. It has a solar inverter inside it, so it can take the array over rather than sit alongside it: Tesla publishes a 20 kW maximum solar STC input, a 60 to 550 V DC input range, six MPPTs and 15 A per MPPT. On an array whose string inverter is near end of warranty, that is one box instead of two. On a microinverter array there is no central inverter to replace, so the path does not exist. Source: Tesla Powerwall 3 datasheet.

If you have a grid-tie inverter and nothing else

A plain grid-tie string inverter has no battery port and no charge control. You cannot wire a battery to it directly, and no amount of hardware in between changes that.

The two things that do work:

1. An AC-coupled battery. It has its own inverter, sits beside your grid-tie inverter, and never touches it. This is the answer for the large majority of existing arrays.

2. Replacing the grid-tie inverter with a hybrid inverter that has a battery port, then adding a DC battery from the list above. Price this as an inverter replacement plus a battery, because that is what it is.

The brands nobody publishes an answer for

This is the part most pages skip. Compatibility lists are short, and absence from one is not the same as incompatibility, but it is not compatibility either.

Huawei appears on no published list in our set, and we do not track a Huawei battery. If you have a Huawei inverter, no manufacturer we cite has published a statement in either direction. The DC-coupled path is therefore unverified for you, and the AC-coupled path works because it does not ask the question. Treat a verbal "yes, that'll work" on DC coupling as unsupported until someone hands you the compatibility row in writing.

The same logic covers any inverter brand not named on a list: SMA, Fronius, and the older Chinese string inverters on a lot of 2015-era arrays. AC coupling is the route that does not depend on a manufacturer's blessing.

The four rows to find before anyone quotes

Retrofits fail on published compatibility statements far more often than on physics.

• Coupling. AC, DC, or configurable. This single row tells you whether your existing inverter is in the conversation at all.
• Compatible inverters, where a list exists. SolarEdge, EG4 and Generac all publish one. Where no list exists, ask for the statement in writing rather than accepting a verbal yes.
• Supported islanding devices. Every AC system in our set needs one, separate from the battery: Tesla's Gateway 3, Backup Switch or Backup Gateway 2; Enphase's IQ System Controller; Generac's Smart Disconnect Switch; FranklinWH's aGate; Anker's Backup Controller 200-H. On a retrofit that is an extra box on your wall, and the dimensions guide has the published sizes.
• Units per inverter or per controller. The ceilings range from 3 to 20 across this set. Read it before the first unit, not before the second.

Everything above is a manufacturer datasheet claim recorded against its source and verified 2026-07-01. None of it is a measurement we made, and none of it replaces a design drawn against your own as-built system by a licensed installer.