Solar & Clean Energy

At Galkam Solar, we aim to support Australia's clean energy transition through cutting-edge solar technology and compliance-driven design. Our flagship product, the DCMax Smart Solar Combiner, is AS/NZS 5033 compliant and allows system designers to oversize solar arrays while still claiming STC credits

Learn about the DCMax: Product Document

Comparing DCMax Rated array with conventional string

Solving Australias Solar Over-Supply Issue

We have also supplied a companion document A Resiliant Broadcast Mechanism for the Proposed PV Export Signal. We go one step further and actually propose the delivery mechanism for the broadcast signal. This approach is a secure and robust solution that can be easily implemented by the Market operator and easily supported by solar manufacturers. Most PV systems already do everything that is required, so there should be no reason why this proposal couldn't be up and running in months and fully operational in just a few years. No major infrastructure projects required!

DCMax News - End of Year 2025

December 2025: Half year production Results are in!

Here are the End Of year Results for 2025. We are comparing the 2022 base results with our 2025 DCMax system fitted mid June. In 2022 the system was upgraded by adding a 6kW Fonius Gen24 with 16kWh BYD battery. The existing Fronius Primo 6 was exchanged for a Fronius 4 in order to comply with DNPS Inverter limits. This gave us a total of for a total of 10kW of inverter capacity and around 12kW of panels. In June 2025, we changed to a Full Roof DCMax Partial DCU configuration with 29kW of panels total and 3 DCMAx units on 3 of the available Inverter MPPTs. These are the same inverters and panels from 2022, we just reconfigured them and added more panels (some rescued from landfill). The results for the half year ending in December puts the year total at 20MWh production and as we planned, the winter slump is virtually eliminated!

With the DCMax fitted, we can expect the JUNE 2026 result to be at between 1200 and 1300Wh mark - very similar to the March result in previous years. This should provide sufficient energy for heating and EV charging eliminating the winter bill almost entirely.

Negative FiT Curtailment hides the true system capacity.

Our trial site uses Amber Electric as the electricty retailer. This retailer works a little differently than most customers are used to because Amber customers pay wholesale electricty prices . This sounds great, but in reality it is a double edged sword. You can usually buy electricity at less than 20c per kWh, often as low a 5c, but there is always a risk that the wholesale price can spike to several dollars per kWh. This also goes for solar exports: if the wholesale price spikes, customers can get paid several dollars for solar exports. However, the solar export cost during summer is almost always negative during the day. That means Amber customers have to pay for every kWh you export onto the grid when the Feed-In-Price is negative. That makes its necessary to store and use as much solar power as possible with heating/cooling, batteries, hot water, EV and pool heaters and pumps. Anything that isnt used needs to be stopped - not generated - so it wont get exported. This is called Negative FiT Curtailment.

For our DCMax system this means that we curtail a lot of production that could otherwise have been exported. With other electricity providers, they pay a (often very low) feed in price even when the grid does not need it and have to make up the difference by charging higher prices to their customers for imports. These customers wont experience the reduction in FiT costs, but they will still experience the Export limit - where the inverter needs to limit production to not exceed the export limit. Here is our best calculation of how much engergy we had to leave uncollected due to the two limitations imposed:

• Export Limit The maximum amount of power that can be exported onto the grid at any moment is typicallly 5kW. This is a network limitation imposed by the DNSP to protect the wires and transformers bringing grid power to your home. If many rooftop systems start exporting as much as they can, then this will damage the infrastructure - remember our grid was not designed to carry power out of the home. This limits total exports to the grid to theoretical maximum of around 50kWh to 60kWh per day. This is generally fine for most systems, but is far too low for the average DCMax and larger standard systems.
• Negative FiT When the feed-in-price to the grid is Negative, we dont export because the grid does not need it and it costs money

As negative feed in prices begin to bite, and the days lengthen, the amount of curtailment increases significantly. Look at the November column: negative feed-in prices have a significant effect on total production. While only producing 1822kWh of energy (that is still pretty impressive) but its lower than October's result. The reason is that over 450kWh of production was curtailed due to negative FiT, and a further 160kWh was wasted due to the inability to export all of the capacity to the grid (export limited).

End of Year results: Summary

The DCMax system demonstrated that it out-performs conventional systems in winter by a factor of 2 (doubling your winter result). In summer the performace increase is lower due mostly to the inability to consume all the power available. This is particularly the case for sites where negative FiT restricts the summer time production. We also demonstrated that recycled panels and upgrading, rather than removing, existing panels provides a very economic upgrade to the sytem. Typical DCMax systems should be able to provide sufficient energy to move forward with the energy transition and full electrification. No more fossil fuel bills, no need to compromise.

December 2025: 2 More Record Production Days

Another 2 record days 103kWh and 105kWh on December 17th and 18th. We still didn't get it all (some clouds around midday). We finished the month with a total 2065Wh (thats just over 2MWh!) and a total of just under 20GWh for 2025. An outstanding result!

DCMax News - October 2025

October 29th 2025: New Record 100kWh in One Day!

We did it: We BROKE THE TON! - 102.37kWh in a single day (with some left still left on the table). With two days left to go, October is shaping up for a 1900kWh month. The forecast is for one sunny day with long negative feed-in and one rainy day remaining in October, so we probably wont break the August record - but it will be close! Update! - Well yep we did it, beat the August result by 50kWh!

October 15th 2025: New Record Production Day

We had a new record production day on October 15th - lovely blue sky day at around 25C. We managed to capture over 96kWh of energy - going mostly into the BYD Battery, Hot Water battery and the EV but helped by shorter negative Feed-In Tarrif (FiT) that started around 8am and ended at 4pm. You can see we still didn't capture it all - so we predict it wont be long before we hit that 100kWh in a single day milestone. So far in October we have produced 923kWh: on track for a 3 month average of 1800kWh per month.

September 2025 - Negative Feed-In hits production

This months production is down over August due to Negative FiT (but still higher than Summer)

As the test site is on Amber's wholesale plan, when solar is not needed on the grid, Feed In Tarrif (FiT), the price paid to the customer when they export, goes negative. In other words, you have to PAY to get rid of any excess production. We use the VOLTELLO monitoring tool from Village Energy to monitor the Amber FiT. When this is negative, it tells the inverter to just cover the household usage (including any vehicle or battery charging). What this means is that valuable production is simply lost and we wont be charged for excess solar. We estimate the true production would have been very close to 2MWh for September: accounting for the lost production, this is a further increase over 2022 of 175%

August 2025 - Production OUT OF SIGHT!

DCMax achieved incredible results in August. More than 200% above the 2022 Value.

At the end of 2022, I looked at my Solar results for the year. WOW! The winter months are a killer. In that moment, the idea for the DCMax was born.

Here are the real world numbers for our test site (in blue):

We are showing this years results against the 2022 year results for a comparison. The blue section indicates how much more the DCMax test site produced in 2025 over the 2022 results. Remember we have not changed the inverter or the rated value of the system. 10kW is the max inverter capacity allowed for single phase by the grid operator and the standard limits the oversizing to 13.33kW.

You can see why we are so happy with this result. The July 2022 result was 807kWh. This year we achived 1482kWh. That is 184% of the 2022 result! (and getting close to double). The August numbers 1918kWh: out performing the best summer result ever by almost 130kWh. In August 2022 we only managed 925kWh, this year we MORE than doubled this result with 207% above the 2022 result. September 2025, affected by Negative FiT, still achieved 1785kWh and including the lost FiT production, this is 175% over 2022 results.

Coming soon:

Our V2L2H (Vehicle-to-Load-to-Home) product, enabling integration of EVs, solar, and home energy systems with AS/NZS 4777.2 compliance.

Configure Your DCMax (coming soon): DCMax calcultor