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New Solar Install
- Thread starter woferry
- Start date
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- Solar Roof
I'm pretty sure the installers mentioned that mine was the second generation when the project started, but I was going to email the roofing lead and ask just to double-check. I'd heard the version 3 reference at the autonomy day presentation on Monday, so I've been curious since then (and what's actually different between the two if I really am gen 2).
Totally, but it would be my luck with the way everything has gone. No, I want to be there when the switches are flipped, to make sure nothing bursts into flame or such.
Even if I got PTO tomorrow, while I'd consider racing home to give it a try I'm not sure I'd leave things on without being able to watch it more closely (I would like to get the PW above the 0.008% SOE it's reporting right now, however). So at least one more week of paying for electricity consumption. 
hodad66
Member
Well, my luck turned for the better and I got the PTO email from PG&E this afternoon! Flipped all of the switches when I got home at 5, managed to produce around 5kWh before the sun went down, all of which either powered the house or the PW, brought it up to 25% so at least it won't be sitting at 0 any longer. I did switch everything off, so it will be a few days before I get a full day of testing out of it.
Turns out the installer had made two mistakes on the CTs (so all 4 had issues), when the inverters first came online the gateway still showed no solar or Powerwall, and instead my household consumption more than doubled (0.6kW -> 1.6kW), while my meter was running backwards. One of the two inverters (presumably the bigger one) was looped backwards through the solar CTs, so it must have looked like consumption to the gateway and it ignored it. Once I fixed that it then showed ~4kW coming from the solar, ~1.7kW going to the PW, and 3.3kW coming from the grid to power my home at 5.6kW (mind you I hadn't turned anything on compared to the ~600W "idle" house state, and the meter was still running backwards). Turns out there was a problem with the grid CTs as well, because the meter and original service panel share a box with no place to put the CTs for a proper "grid" measurement, the two breakers that remain in that panel were passed through the CT (so the 100A to the gateway and the 30A from one of the two inverters). Everything looked good when I switched that inverter off, so I turned its wires around in the grid CTs and suddenly everything was reporting properly (also started putting all of the solar that wasn't going to the house into the PW). So I stopped exporting anything, but at least stored some more energy to bleed-off over the next few days.
But all of the "paperwork" is finally behind me, now to actually start producing energy! Oh, and now I officially feel like I can start challenging all of those people calling Solar Roof "vaporware".
Turns out the installer had made two mistakes on the CTs (so all 4 had issues), when the inverters first came online the gateway still showed no solar or Powerwall, and instead my household consumption more than doubled (0.6kW -> 1.6kW), while my meter was running backwards. One of the two inverters (presumably the bigger one) was looped backwards through the solar CTs, so it must have looked like consumption to the gateway and it ignored it. Once I fixed that it then showed ~4kW coming from the solar, ~1.7kW going to the PW, and 3.3kW coming from the grid to power my home at 5.6kW (mind you I hadn't turned anything on compared to the ~600W "idle" house state, and the meter was still running backwards). Turns out there was a problem with the grid CTs as well, because the meter and original service panel share a box with no place to put the CTs for a proper "grid" measurement, the two breakers that remain in that panel were passed through the CT (so the 100A to the gateway and the 30A from one of the two inverters). Everything looked good when I switched that inverter off, so I turned its wires around in the grid CTs and suddenly everything was reporting properly (also started putting all of the solar that wasn't going to the house into the PW). So I stopped exporting anything, but at least stored some more energy to bleed-off over the next few days.
But all of the "paperwork" is finally behind me, now to actually start producing energy! Oh, and now I officially feel like I can start challenging all of those people calling Solar Roof "vaporware".
Well, my luck turned for the better and I got the PTO email from PG&E this afternoon! Flipped all of the switches when I got home at 5, managed to produce around 5kWh before the sun went down, all of which either powered the house or the PW, brought it up to 25% so at least it won't be sitting at 0 any longer. I did switch everything off, so it will be a few days before I get a full day of testing out of it.
Turns out the installer had made two mistakes on the CTs (so all 4 had issues), when the inverters first came online the gateway still showed no solar or Powerwall, and instead my household consumption more than doubled (0.6kW -> 1.6kW), while my meter was running backwards. One of the two inverters (presumably the bigger one) was looped backwards through the solar CTs, so it must have looked like consumption to the gateway and it ignored it. Once I fixed that it then showed ~4kW coming from the solar, ~1.7kW going to the PW, and 3.3kW coming from the grid to power my home at 5.6kW (mind you I hadn't turned anything on compared to the ~600W "idle" house state, and the meter was still running backwards). Turns out there was a problem with the grid CTs as well, because the meter and original service panel share a box with no place to put the CTs for a proper "grid" measurement, the two breakers that remain in that panel were passed through the CT (so the 100A to the gateway and the 30A from one of the two inverters). Everything looked good when I switched that inverter off, so I turned its wires around in the grid CTs and suddenly everything was reporting properly (also started putting all of the solar that wasn't going to the house into the PW). So I stopped exporting anything, but at least stored some more energy to bleed-off over the next few days.
But all of the "paperwork" is finally behind me, now to actually start producing energy! Oh, and now I officially feel like I can start challenging all of those people calling Solar Roof "vaporware".
Congrat, btw I sent you a DM. If you can take a look please
boriszima
Member
Lucky you. Congrats. It made sense for you to flip the switch as I see you had to make some changes. You moved electrical wires yourself?Totally, but it would be my luck with the way everything has gone. No, I want to be there when the switches are flipped, to make sure nothing bursts into flame or such.
I'm an electrical engineer, so it's not foreign territory to me. The CT's are simply hall-effect current sensors which I use in DC circuits frequently. But the wires need to pass-through in the right direction or you get an additive effect instead of subtractive (or vice-versa). There was enough slack in the raceway wiring to turn around the ones that needed to be turned around without disconnecting at either end, so it just took a few seconds to fix without having to de-energize any circuits, etc. Figuring out the grid-side problem took longer as I was convinced the direction things were passing through was correct (made sense to me [as well as the installer, it seems] that the inverter should go through in the opposite direction of the gateway, but when you consider that you want to subtract the inverter from the gateway it eventually became clear that it was wrong, plus the fact that if I just killed that one breaker everything else was reporting properly, clearly that pair of wires had to be the issue, so at first it was swap-and-see, then the moment of realization why that was the right answer). Seems like these should have been caught during commissioning, but I guess they don't actually check the app output or something.
I had also discovered a wiring issue in one of the PV strings, so I've been double-checking their work throughout the process.
That one I couldn't fix myself as it required replacing MC4 connectors, so I just reported that one to them.
ElectricTundra
P85D AP1
Great news. Interesting about the CT's but I can see myself getting that last one backwards (I also once installed a clutch plate backwards right before a race - that was interesting).
Looking forward to seeing how it works for you.
Looking forward to seeing how it works for you.
We have been all electric in Western NY for quite a few years. Geothermal costs us about 150/month for 2800 sf and cathedral ceilings. Hybrid water heater (heat pump) and superheater in the geothermal costs 90/year (not month) on which I put a meter.
The problem is w hybrid heater: NOONE can fix it from Buffalo to Syracuse. (Rheem) I checked w GE and the same issue. Lowe’s now sells AO Smith but they don’t know anyone who can fix it. My Rheem made a funny noise, so after getting referred to at least 6 repair people who were clueless, the HD warranty people paid me the cost of my unit, which still works fine.
So buyer beware.
Geothermal I would install in a heartbeat. Particularly in new construction.
Well, the system has been online for almost 2 weeks now, and I couldn't be happier (well, I would be a bit happier if I was getting direct data from my Solivia units, I started another thread for that). I'm putting data on pvoutput here, though it's not live data yet but a daily upload, still need to do some work on my publishing scripts before it will be truly "live". Last Saturday's data (5/11) looks bad because of the grid outage testing I was doing, I need to re-assemble that day as my grid-side inverter was still connected to the grid (and not in the Gateway's CT loops), so since the Gateway wasn't seeing any of that inverter's production it's missing from my initial upload. But I have the data from my Rainforest Eagle that shows what went to the grid during that time, just need to combine the data and re-submit it.
But the short story is beyond what seems to be some minor measurement error in the CT data (I seem to be seeing a pretty constant ~18W offset in both the solar and grid data) I haven't consumed any power from the grid since I flipped the switches for good. The single PW has kept my house powered between solar production periods, even on the past few overcast/rainy days, and with typical (for me) cooking/cleaning/laundry loads. PG&E has left me a bit frustrated, the PTO email said I'd be getting a welcome packet from them explaining the net metering, etc, 3 weeks later I still haven't received anything. And my PG&E dashboard won't tell me what my current metering plan is (seems to be blank where that information should be), so I'm not sure whether I'm now on TOU-A or TOU-B or if they didn't change it at all (when I downloaded my hourly billing data it suggested I was still paying a fixed rate). My bill period should have closed on the 12th, but since San Jose switched to a CCA in February it seems to take PG&E much longer to actually publish the bill than they used to (used to be online a day or two later, now seems to take at least a week), hopefully I'll see it in the next few days. So I'll be really curious to see this first bill and what they're actually doing.
It's funny, I'd guess most people go through it especially when they look at a daily production graph, but clouds are officially my new enemy. And normally they're pretty rare in a Bay Area summer (at least other than the morning marine layer, which I used to like because it generally meant a cooler day), but this has been an unusual week. I've joked through the whole thing that doing a roof seems to be a very effective rain-dance, and I guess that's continuing. So if you were tired of CA's droughts, you're welcome.
But so far I have a daily routine of capturing several views of the Tesla app to get all of its data, here are a few of the composites, the best day so far, worst, and yesterday (rainy in the morning).
But the short story is beyond what seems to be some minor measurement error in the CT data (I seem to be seeing a pretty constant ~18W offset in both the solar and grid data) I haven't consumed any power from the grid since I flipped the switches for good. The single PW has kept my house powered between solar production periods, even on the past few overcast/rainy days, and with typical (for me) cooking/cleaning/laundry loads. PG&E has left me a bit frustrated, the PTO email said I'd be getting a welcome packet from them explaining the net metering, etc, 3 weeks later I still haven't received anything. And my PG&E dashboard won't tell me what my current metering plan is (seems to be blank where that information should be), so I'm not sure whether I'm now on TOU-A or TOU-B or if they didn't change it at all (when I downloaded my hourly billing data it suggested I was still paying a fixed rate). My bill period should have closed on the 12th, but since San Jose switched to a CCA in February it seems to take PG&E much longer to actually publish the bill than they used to (used to be online a day or two later, now seems to take at least a week), hopefully I'll see it in the next few days. So I'll be really curious to see this first bill and what they're actually doing.
It's funny, I'd guess most people go through it especially when they look at a daily production graph, but clouds are officially my new enemy.
And normally they're pretty rare in a Bay Area summer (at least other than the morning marine layer, which I used to like because it generally meant a cooler day), but this has been an unusual week. I've joked through the whole thing that doing a roof seems to be a very effective rain-dance, and I guess that's continuing. So if you were tired of CA's droughts, you're welcome. But so far I have a daily routine of capturing several views of the Tesla app to get all of its data, here are a few of the composites, the best day so far, worst, and yesterday (rainy in the morning).
As an overview, since I think I'd only described this in text earlier, here's how the system is split up:
The sun basically rises from the top-right corner, and sets along the bottom, close to the bottom-left corner. The grid-side inverter has the "I1" and "I2" strings connected (S5 and S1/S2), and the house-side inverter has the "I3" and "I4" strings connected (S3 and S4/S6). So going by the Vmp/Imp data, the inverter channels should be:
I1: 240.16V Vmp, 7.8A Imp (1873.2 W)
I2: 331.36V Vmp, 15.6A Imp (5169.2 W)
I3: 376.96V Vmp, 7.8A Imp (2940.3 W)
I4: 212.8V Vmp, 15.6A Imp (3319.7W)
Which also means there's a total of 7042W on the first Solivia 5.2, and 6260W on the other one. Looking at the production history data on the inverters, the grid-side one has hit a Pmax of 5000+W almost every day, so this one seems to clip a good bit. The house-side one has peaked at ~5250W two days, but usually runs closer to 4200W peak. The actual Vmax/Imax/Pmax data reported by the inverters per-string so far is:
I1: 205V Vmax, 9A Imax, 1375W Pmax
I2: 392V Vmax, 16.4A Imax, 4457W Pmax
I3: 264V Vmax, 11A Imax, 2134W Pmax
I4: 240V Vmax, 19.5A Imax, 3608W Pmax
So interestingly, I4 (S4+S6, noting that S6 should get the least sun) has exceeded it's rated power (twice), the rest have not, though I suspect I1 & I2 have been limited due to their shared overload/clipping. I'm curious why I3 (S3)'s Vmax hasn't gotten near it's expected Vmp, I'm going to ask my lead about that one to see what he thinks.
The sun basically rises from the top-right corner, and sets along the bottom, close to the bottom-left corner. The grid-side inverter has the "I1" and "I2" strings connected (S5 and S1/S2), and the house-side inverter has the "I3" and "I4" strings connected (S3 and S4/S6). So going by the Vmp/Imp data, the inverter channels should be:
I1: 240.16V Vmp, 7.8A Imp (1873.2 W)
I2: 331.36V Vmp, 15.6A Imp (5169.2 W)
I3: 376.96V Vmp, 7.8A Imp (2940.3 W)
I4: 212.8V Vmp, 15.6A Imp (3319.7W)
Which also means there's a total of 7042W on the first Solivia 5.2, and 6260W on the other one. Looking at the production history data on the inverters, the grid-side one has hit a Pmax of 5000+W almost every day, so this one seems to clip a good bit. The house-side one has peaked at ~5250W two days, but usually runs closer to 4200W peak. The actual Vmax/Imax/Pmax data reported by the inverters per-string so far is:
I1: 205V Vmax, 9A Imax, 1375W Pmax
I2: 392V Vmax, 16.4A Imax, 4457W Pmax
I3: 264V Vmax, 11A Imax, 2134W Pmax
I4: 240V Vmax, 19.5A Imax, 3608W Pmax
So interestingly, I4 (S4+S6, noting that S6 should get the least sun) has exceeded it's rated power (twice), the rest have not, though I suspect I1 & I2 have been limited due to their shared overload/clipping. I'm curious why I3 (S3)'s Vmax hasn't gotten near it's expected Vmp, I'm going to ask my lead about that one to see what he thinks.
The tiles, or the inverters? The inverters are covered for 10 years. The tiles have breakage, weatherization and production warranties.
Degradation is not quite as good as the standalone Panasonic panels. These degrade about 0.5833% per year or about 17.5% after 30 years.
The VBHN330SA17 guarantee 90.75% by year 25, or 0.37% per year. Assuming linear degradation, that's ~88.9% by year 30.
it's not clear with just this text if: they will replace any malfunctioning tiles, ignore bad tiles if your overall average doesn't degrade much, or just somehow credit you the production difference annually.
Since roofs run hotter than 25C, would be nice to see the Pmax/Voc numbers for performance degradation under operating temperatures.
Shygar
Member
That's odd that the inverters are only covered for 10 years, right? With my regular panel setup and powerwall (single inverter), my understanding is both the panels and inverter are covered for 20 years for the timeframe I bought it.
I find the insolation data on PVOutput rather interesting, also. I have the system configured as 444x 30W panels instead of the proper 561x 23.75W, they actually didn't allow a panel spec below 50W (or non-integer values), after I emailed them they lowered the limit to 30W (and still integer-only), but that's still not correct obviously. But 444 * 30 gets 13.32kW which is basically the same. Pretty much all of the roof surfaces are 18° pitch so I entered that. Since the surfaces point 4 different directions there wasn't really anything I could put in the orientation field, so I set that to East West, and I left the azimuth at 0. Panel coefficient is blank and shading is Low with no time specified.
With this setup, on a clear day the data is pretty darn close. This link shows May 12th, if you click on Insolation below the graph (there's no direct-link to this, unfortunately) shows how close the projection is to actual. It's a bit off at the edges, probably because of the panels on the less-ideal surfaces for the current low sun position. But then if you look at this link for May 19th and click on Insolation, in between the clouds the system peaks quite a bit above the projection, ~1500W (~20%) over at times. I guess this is some combination of the tiles and/or inverter being cooler and able to output more during these periods? I haven't seen any good cases so far where things cleared-up and stayed clear, to see when it eventually comes back in-line with the insolation projection. Though looking at Insolation on the first day I flipped the switch (May 5th), it basically followed the curve from the moment it was switched-on, so I guess it's more the tiles than the inverters (as the roof would have already been in the sun and warm in this case, but the inverters had been sitting off until then, and there was no overshoot in that case).
Also took screenshots since the direct-links aren't possible, in the order I referenced them above.
With this setup, on a clear day the data is pretty darn close. This link shows May 12th, if you click on Insolation below the graph (there's no direct-link to this, unfortunately) shows how close the projection is to actual. It's a bit off at the edges, probably because of the panels on the less-ideal surfaces for the current low sun position. But then if you look at this link for May 19th and click on Insolation, in between the clouds the system peaks quite a bit above the projection, ~1500W (~20%) over at times. I guess this is some combination of the tiles and/or inverter being cooler and able to output more during these periods? I haven't seen any good cases so far where things cleared-up and stayed clear, to see when it eventually comes back in-line with the insolation projection. Though looking at Insolation on the first day I flipped the switch (May 5th), it basically followed the curve from the moment it was switched-on, so I guess it's more the tiles than the inverters (as the roof would have already been in the sun and warm in this case, but the inverters had been sitting off until then, and there was no overshoot in that case).
Also took screenshots since the direct-links aren't possible, in the order I referenced them above.
