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PSA: Tesla solar panels $1.70-$1.99/watt
- Thread starter teethdood
- Start date
preilly44
Member
I have 3 SE inverters that were installed in 2/16. One of the three has died already and took SE over a month to replace it.
Chancellor32
Member
Ehhh that stinks, did that make your system inoperable during that time?
SoundDaTrumpet
Member
@TSV2000 Hidden conduit starts at $1000 for PW and $500 for HPWC. It is priced/charged at $500 increments as I was told by the design team. It is a not-to-exceed amount. I included it in the contract and during the installation the team was unprepared to handle it, a supervisor came out to add a 1 hr delay, pointed out that breaking open the wall connected to the interior (fire rated wall) such that a section of conduit will not be hidden. Same with the HPWC. My subpanel which was replaced with the backup load center already had a 2" exposed conduit inside the garage. I elected to save $1500. Glad for the decision as Powerwall is a bolt-in 10 year life "appliance." I think if the team arrived all ready to go for hidden conduit, and gave no resistance, I probably would be out $1500.
Hidden means in wall conduit or indoor cable. I have a finished (textured & painted) soffit in the garage. They were thinking of using indoor cable thru it and transition to exposed conduit for the fire rated wall. Thinking 100% hidden or don't bother with it. (HPWC and PWs co-located in perfect spot. HPWC cable can reach driveway AND charge port with car backed in.) Tesla electrician-in-training did a nice job routing two 1" EMT conduit with both mine and his input.
Did you also get solar from Tesla? I'm only getting solar, no PW or HPWC. Asked the design team get back to me about whether a hidden conduit for the solar panels can be done, but they did not call and scheduled me anyway. Wondering if hidden conduit from the roof is included in pricing or they will pull conduit over the top of the roof.
SoundDaTrumpet
Member
I went through this debacle with my solar installer. It's 50/50 with whether or not thru the attic is included or not. Petersen Dean once asked for $200 to do it while my installer said included. The team lead comes and I get talked into running on top of roof saying it's tight and have to cut huge holes in stucco. Convinced they go ahead. Ugly! Can see it a block away! Such that I had to call sales. They come back another day and run thru attic as the electrician said to do as it's cooler in the attic than on a roof (better for the conductors, less voltage drop). The stucco was repaired in less than an hour by stucco contractors and cannot tell a 2x4ft cutout was made. Superb after it was painted inspection day.
That said, I do not know about the cost for running the conduit on the side of the house. I imaging this to be an extra charge. Having been thru the above with stucco artisans, I would not fear doing it one bit. It just depends if you are willing to spend the money.
preilly44
Member
I was able to utilize all the panels except the ones connected to the bad inverter, so I lost about 22-23 panels during that time period. Of course it was sunny every day it seemed like.
Jigglypuff
Member
Wow, so if you lose a solar edge thingy, the entire string goes down??? If that's the case, micro-inverters FTW.
BlueOvalFan
Member
Yes...the main inverter going down will kill power generation across the entire system. The bad with micro-inverters is they also fail quite often in hot climate zones as they have to operate near their max tempautre specifications. As such they were not recommended for my install.
RFernatt
Solar/EV Owner/Enthusiast
Yep, and a lot easier to deal with one central, accessible inverter than pull off several panels on the roof to get to that failed inverter over in the middle.
The inverter itself gets quite hot in a garage out of the sun. I can't imagine the temps of a hard working inverter on a roof in August!
As with everything, pros and cons.
mspohr
Well-Known Member
I've had 25 Enphase microinverters for four years with no failures. Earlier versions did have frequent failures but they seem to have fixed the design.
SolarEdge seems to have the worst design with both a central inverter and panel inverters.
I actually have a Enphase install, but the major issue with Enphase that I see is that your DC:AC oversub is at a per-panel basis instead of the entire inverter. Particularly for our location which has a 10kW-AC max for single phase installs to be net metering cap-exempt, that means your ideal max install is a 10kW SolarEdge inverter and 12-14kW DC of panels (we are a heating climate and moving most of our heating to heat pumps).
If you are using multiple roofs (particularly 90 degrees off), then this means you would very often be clipping individual micro-inverters but on a string inverter you would have plenty of headroom.
For a 330W-range panel, which seems to be the sweet spot right now, you would be seeing 250W max per panel on Enphase IQ7, but on SolarEdge you would use a P340 with zero clipping other than the string inverter itself. If you upgrade to IQ7+ on Enphase you consume too much of your AC allotment. I can regularly see my IQ7's maxed out at 250W. Enphase will tell you that you are not loosing that much because you are just chopping the top off the curve, but its still a hit.
Further if you are also trying to hit some AC cap, then on Enphase you are also are limited on this ratio between your panel choice and IQ7 or IQ7+.
I used an installer that was basically an Enphase shop and there was no discount for using SolarEdge (but they would if you insisted), but if I did it again I would probably just do SolarEdge. I mostly went with Enphase because they formally support the dual 200A panel consumption monitoring, but I have found my consumption monitoring to be very far off anyways as compared to a Fluke clamp-on meter, Sense, and my utility net meter.
mspohr
Well-Known Member
It's an interesting argument. Do you lose more due to clipping or due to partial shading?
My installation consists of 16x 250w panels with 250w inverters and 9x 285w panels with 280 w inverters so clipping is not an issue. Shading is an issue and the Enphase inverters work well whereas strings would not.
I don't think there are any shading issues with the SolarEdge optimizers (which I believe is basically a DC-DC converter). You trade-off the failure mode of the sum of the string inverter plus the optimizer instead of a single failure of the microinverter (since the reliability of the passive combiners is very high, only really mechanical failure modes, no electrical failure mode). You would think there would be an efficiency loss but SolarEdge is actually better.
SolarEdge Optimizer 98.8% efficient, Solaredge SE10000H 99.0% efficient = 97.81% net
Enphase IQ7 97.0%
both using CEC weighted numbers
After a certain point, fractions of a percent are inconsequential.
As a single data point, my 37 Enphase IQ7’s with 37 Q.Peak 315 watt panels have made 7.78 megawatt hours (in 5 months and 17 days) and I have consumed 3.47 megawatt hours, sending the balance to the net.
I did have 1 inverter fail after 15 days and it took about 2 weeks to replace, inconsequential unlike my old Omnion 2200 MPPT string inverter that failed twice. (Diodes both times)
mspohr
Well-Known Member
Here's an article which argues for overprovisioning solar since it is so cheap. This is in the context of a utility but as long as the power company is willing to take all of the power we generate, it would be good to install more than you need.
A radical idea to get a high-renewable electric grid: Build way more solar and wind than needed
I really wasn't arguing for SolarEdge due to efficiency - was just pointing out that it is not worse than Enphase despite the fact that it seems like it might be due a double conversion. (Likely because the large-scale conversion is much easier to do at high efficiency than the small scale).
TheTalkingMule
Distributed Energy Enthusiast
Philadelphia just enacted a $0.20 solar rebate, it'll be interesting to see how that affects Tesla energy pricing in the area.
Cariver
Member
RV’ing and boondocking are fantastic applications for solar energy. It’s not a perfect power source, but the tradeoffs are more than likeable. Components are easily available, simple to assemble and make clean, quiet and green power. You’ll enjoy having topped off batteries without the noise, odour and pollution. A larger inverter and battery bank would be needed to run rooftop ac units, or connect the generator. 3 panels mean less space and less to install. The included 30 AMP charge controller will easily get the max current from your panels to your batteries for optimal charging.
