Solar energy questions and answers

[simplesolar]

Sunpower panels are more efficient. Sorry about the confusion.

That last sentence is a little ambiguous: are you saying Sunpower panels are more efficient than the others, or less efficient? It's too late for me (I have 30 Sunpower panels on my roof), but I'm curious...

 

[ggies07]

What do you guys who live in CA think about this:

California Senate Votes Yes on Amended AB 327 : Greentech Media

 

[Sparky]

What do you guys who live in CA think about this:

California Senate Votes Yes on Amended AB 327 : Greentech Media

Here's what I just posted elsewhere on this:

My immediate thoughts:

The $10 for "maintenance of the grid" looks clumsy. Why $10? Based on what, an amount they figured rate-payers wouldn't notice?

The alt-energy market is pretty dynamic and there's tension in play between residential / industrial alt-energy generators and the traditional utilities. As you point out, your rooftop solar helps reduce the load at peak times. So, some acknowledgement ( in $ ) of that seems fair. Also, you and I and almost everyone with rooftop solar use the grid as our nighttime & winter battery so we need to acknowledge ( in $ ) that. I have a hard time trusting the utilities to be honest and open with costing the real benefits and detriments of distributed private energy as part of the grid. I've been to two public meetings with utility officials regarding plans for alt-energy incorporation and they were openly hostile to residential PV. We are a "problem".

I have a roof with enough sun exposure to supply my house and 25k mi/year of EV driving. It's an asset almost all SoCal homeowners should take advantage of IMO.
I have 4 cars, two are EVs. 3-4 car households are common in my neighborhood. Look ahead 10 years. I may still have 4 cars but they'll all be EVs. I'll have 100kWh of battery sitting in the garage or driveway at all times.

$10/mo becomes $4k on many PV pay-back time scales. Battery prices are dropping, PV prices are cheap. At some point, with this fee and other connection fees, the cost for some residential and industrial alt-energy producers to stay "on the grid" becomes too high and they disconnect. That exacerbates the "have/have-not" problem now where fewer and fewer rate-payers are available to support the grid. I think this can be avoided with honest and smart give-and-take between utilities and private generators (us) and some forward thinking. But, it seems like our legislators and utilities are always "fighting the last war".

I'll add that I don't regard the utilities (even the investor-owned) as enemies. I just think that as the energy landscape is shifting they're clinging to what's familiar instead of anticipating the future. They are surprised at the success of the PV incentives and they're about to be surprised at the success of EVs and the potential downside if they don't get out in front IMO.

 

[rage_777]

I have never used LG panels so I can not speak for them. We have installed enphase inverters before. We no longer install them unless you, the customer, want to pay a huge premium on them. The premium is to cover the warranty work we will have to do in the future.

Panel sizes are increasing as a way to reduce total costs. Each panel still needs to be installed on a racking structure. A 300w panel thus reduces racking cost over a 250w panel by (theoretically) 20%. It also reduces labor. A 10kw system with 300w panels is 7 less panels to install, cutting labor, wiring, and racking.

we install both, the larger wattage panels are utility scale and weigh more and are harder to handle. You usually can't get as many on a roof because of their larger size. They are usually only larger in the length dimension so they don't take up more racking. But larger panels are not as flexible in the same square footage on the roof.

What problems are there with the Enphase inverters? I have had Enphase inverters for three years now and haven't seen any issues.

My other question is, how much does it cost to change out lower wattage panels to higher wattage panels? I think I have Sharp panels on my roof, maybe 220W. But with all the higher rated panels, I feel like I am missing out on a lot of power.

 

[simplesolar]

What problems are there with the Enphase inverters? I have had Enphase inverters for three years now and haven't seen any issues.

My other question is, how much does it cost to change out lower wattage panels to higher wattage panels? I think I have Sharp panels on my roof, maybe 220W. But with all the higher rated panels, I feel like I am missing out on a lot of power.

We see a lot of little problems such as the Internet connections for the monitoring, each individual unit not communicating to the envoy, failures of the inverter completely. It's just when you have so many of them on the roof, the chance of going back for a service call is higher. Conversely if one or two micro inverters do break, they are not affecting the rest of the system which helps production during down time. Double edge sword.

also for upgrading the panels, it is not effective to do so. Higher wattage panels are bigger not the same foot print as your existing. I would just add on more if you have the roof space.

 

[katysplus]

What problems are there with the Enphase inverters? I have had Enphase inverters for three years now and haven't seen any issues.

My other question is, how much does it cost to change out lower wattage panels to higher wattage panels? I think I have Sharp panels on my roof, maybe 220W. But with all the higher rated panels, I feel like I am missing out on a lot of power.

I would second this. Enphase has sold over 3 million units and is now on their 4th generation technology which has undergone massive amounts of testing (from my understanding) prelaunch . They are doing something right and have a warranty to back that up. Certainly time will tell and I'll report back on this forum.

 

[simplesolar]

I would second this. Enphase has sold over 3 million units and is now on their 4th generation technology which has undergone massive amounts of testing (from my understanding) prelaunch . They are doing something right and have a warranty to back that up. Certainly time will tell and I'll report back on this forum.

Enphase does have a great product and warranty. Like everything new, it will work out its kinks. From an installer point of view, just very high maintenance sending out guys to fix one or two inverter couple items a week.

 

[Discoducky]

I'm shopping around for panels and installation on a townhouse that is under HOA domain. Right now they are saying I need to sign a 'hold harmless' agreement that transfers to the new owner if/when I sell. Is this common? NOTE: The HOA owns the roof and all the exterior of the building.

Also, the company I'm currently interested in is SunPower as their panels deliver A/C (integrated microinverters) and have a 25 year (no touch) warranty. My roof is high and the cost to do anything up there is high. Other inverters carry only a 10 year warranty and need to be replaced at a high cost.

And being in WA state we get some money back for producing energy from panels made in WA so with the SunPower panels the return is $0.18/kWh payable up to $4K/year until 2020.

If you have any input TheShadows or anyone I would be appreciative

 

[rage_777]

We see a lot of little problems such as the Internet connections for the monitoring, each individual unit not communicating to the envoy, failures of the inverter completely. It's just when you have so many of them on the roof, the chance of going back for a service call is higher. Conversely if one or two micro inverters do break, they are not affecting the rest of the system which helps production during down time. Double edge sword.

also for upgrading the panels, it is not effective to do so. Higher wattage panels are bigger not the same foot print as your existing. I would just add on more if you have the roof space.

Thanks for the info. The only problem I have had with my system was when I was first installing the Envoy, it wasn't connecting. We had to put the Envoy really close to the panel circuit for the Envoy to pick up the data from the power lines.

I don't have any more roof space, which is why I wanted to upgrade the panels. Oh well, I can live with my system.

BTW, for anyone that wants to know, I have south and east facing panels and the east facing panels get about 10% less energy than the south facing ones. I also have panels that are south facing with the panels horizontal and south facing panels that are vertical, and the vertical ones get more power than the horizontal ones, by about 1%. So, if you have a choice try to get them installed vertically. This is another reason why I like Enphase, because I can see all the reports about the panels and know the lifetime energy it produces for each individual panel.

- - - Updated - - -

If you have any input TheShadows or anyone I would be appreciative

You probably don't want my advice, but I wouldn't sign the agreement. First, that means if your roof was to very need to be replaced, they will tell you that you have to pay for it not the HOA. Second, if you do sell the home you are going to have to disclose it to the new owners and they might not want to have to foot the bill for the roof either. Third, if you don't disclose the agreement, you could get yourself a lawsuit.
If I were you I would go to the board meetings and bring it up to ask if they want to install panels as a community. They will probably shoot you down, but then you could talk to other homeowners and try to get them to pressure the board to vote on it. The good thing is if the board agrees to it, then you don't need to sign the waiver and the HOA will pay for the system. The bad thing is that your HOA fees might go up while your electricity bills go down.

 

[InTheShadows]

I would second this. Enphase has sold over 3 million units and is now on their 4th generation technology which has undergone massive amounts of testing (from my understanding) prelaunch . They are doing something right and have a warranty to back that up. Certainly time will tell and I'll report back on this forum.

That may be the case, and you as the end user may think everything is beautiful. However from the installers perspective we are the ones left holding the bag for pushing their products.... For now.

I have installed over 1200 enphase inverters and almost every week I have to pull one of my best guys off an installation job (maybe two guys if its a roof) to send them to troubleshoot a bad inverter. It is then determined bad, enphase overnights us a replacement inverter. I send another guy or two out a second time to replace the inverter, test it, and reconnect it to the enlighten unit. For these 4-8 lost man hours and rolling a truck to the site twice they send me a check for $150. I will never push another enphase product again until they fix their warranty and compensate me fairly for it. I have explained this to them on countless occasions and its always fallen on deaf ears. As more and more installers refuse to install their products for this reason their chances of success get slimmer and slimmer.

If they don't fix this then 5-10, maybe a few more years from now it will be the end consumer left holding the bag. With the amount of inverters we replace there is absolutely no way their mean time between failures is 300+ years in the field.

 

[simplesolar]

That may be the case, and you as the end user may think everything is beautiful. However from the installers perspective we are the ones left holding the bag for pushing their products.... For now.

I have installed over 1200 enphase inverters and almost every week I have to pull one of my best guys off an installation job (maybe two guys if its a roof) to send them to troubleshoot a bad inverter. It is then determined bad, enphase overnights us a replacement inverter. I send another guy or two out a second time to replace the inverter, test it, and reconnect it to the enlighten unit. For these 4-8 lost man hours and rolling a truck to the site twice they send me a check for $150. I will never push another enphase product again until they fix their warranty and compensate me fairly for it. I have explained this to them on countless occasions and its always fallen on deaf ears. As more and more installers refuse to install their products for this reason their chances of success get slimmer and slimmer.

If they don't fix this then 5-10, maybe a few more years from now it will be the end consumer left holding the bag. With the amount of inverters we replace there is absolutely no way their mean time between failures is 300+ years in the field.

Agreed! I have a dedicated enphase trouble shoot crew and enphase's compensation for warranty work is definitely not enough. Especially the owners that freak out thinking you did shotty work cause stuff breaks.

 

[Sparky]

Another reason to go with microinverters like Enphase is for system expansion. I installed a 2.8kW system in 2008.
This was a self install and I couldn't use Sunpower panels because they only sell through installers. I had a solar house (solarelectricsupply.com) spec the total system for me with Sanyo panels (just as efficient as Sunpower it turned out) and a central Fronius inverter. When I did the install (old Spanish, tile roof) I layed down extra racking for future expansion.

Two years later, I expanded the system to 4kW but the Sanyo panels were much more expensive than several other mono-crystalline panels on the market. Using Enphase allowed me to expand the system without requiring I stay with the same panel type (important for MPPT) and I saved a bunch of $. Since then I've expanded again (2 EVs), so I now have a 6kW system for a whole lot less than it would have cost if I didn't have the microinverter option. My last 2 kW cost me $1.40/W (self install helps a lot here) all permitted and to code.

I've had no trouble with the Enphase so far but of course I'll have to climb on the roof if there's a problem. I have had the big Fronius inverter fail. It was replaced under warranty but it was a much bigger job than swapping out an Enphase. My $0.02.

 

[InTheShadows]

Another reason to go with microinverters like Enphase is for system expansion. I installed a 2.8kW system in 2008.
This was a self install and I couldn't use Sunpower panels because they only sell through installers. I had a solar house (solarelectricsupply.com) spec the total system for me with Sanyo panels (just as efficient as Sunpower it turned out) and a central Fronius inverter. When I did the install (old Spanish, tile roof) I layed down extra racking for future expansion.

Two years later, I expanded the system to 4kW but the Sanyo panels were much more expensive than several other mono-crystalline panels on the market. Using Enphase allowed me to expand the system without requiring I stay with the same panel type (important for MPPT) and I saved a bunch of $. Since then I've expanded again (2 EVs), so I now have a 6kW system for a whole lot less than it would have cost if I didn't have the microinverter option. My last 2 kW cost me $1.40/W (self install helps a lot here) all permitted and to code.

I've had no trouble with the Enphase so far but of course I'll have to climb on the roof if there's a problem. I have had the big Fronius inverter fail. It was replaced under warranty but it was a much bigger job than swapping out an Enphase. My $0.02.

This is not the case always. We installed an enphase system with m190 inverters and for a warranty repair we had to run a whole new trunk line because they couldn't replace it with a m190 because they didn't have any.

Its easy to expand a central inverter system. I just expanded mine. It doesn't make sense to expand by 2 or 3 panels at a time. You still legally have to go through the permitting and interconnection process of which there are usually fees so it is not cost effective.

When micro inverter strings are designed they are designed for the max number of inverters per circuit, this leaves no room for another inverter(s) with out having to run another set of wires for another circuit.

On top of that if you want to go the route of expanding with out keeping the same panel types go with the new sma tl series inverters. They have a mini emergency power system built into them and you can do unbalanced strings using different panels.

Central inverters should never be sided with room to spare, if they are then the system wasn't designed right. Even a 2kw central inverter system will come in more cost effective than an enphase micro system. And the larger the system the less financial sense micros make because their price per watt is high. The inverters look cheap but that trunk cable is where they make their money.

If you don't believe me, go to Chicago next month to SPI and ask attendees if they are an installer integrator, if they say yes, ask them if they would recommend enphase, I guarantee that the majority will say no.

The only reason to go micros is for a partially shady site (and even that is less now because modern central inverters handle shade way better than they used to) that probably shouldn't have been sold in the first place. I have turned many people that wanted solar down because of that neighbors tree that you can't do anything about.

We had a DOA fronius once. To change it out we stood on the ground, removed 4 screws, pulled it off, dropped the new one in place, replaced the screws and turned it on and it was done. Way better than roping in, climbing on the roof, lifting a panel in the middle of an array on the roof, loosening the ones on each side of it, replacing the ground clips, removing the inverter from the rack, replacing it with a new one (if there hasn't been a model change that requires a whole new circuit to be run) torquing everything back down and climbing down from the roof and going through the discovery mode on the enlighten box to make sure it is fixed. I'll take the central inverter change out any day. And other than the DOA fronius, we have never had a central inverter go bad in 6 years (over 700Mw of <20kw residential systems). We have changed out 3 enphase on 3 different systems just this month. We have a handful of enphase customers that have never had an inverter go bad, they are the exception. I hope you are the exception.

 

[napabill]

Here is the finished install (with S charging):

View attachment 30387

You hire out to do garage cleaning? Man, would I like my garage to look like that!

 

[Sparky]

...I hope you are the exception.

I hope so too.
I get it that you are anti-Enphase. What SMA offered was unsatisfactory for my requirements when I was upgrading my system. You'll have to trust me that I understood how much things cost and am happy with my choice. I don't plan to travel to Chicago to verify. When I upgrade again I'll look into the sma ti. I'm neither an Enphase fan-boy nor hater.
I don't have your experience. I was just posting my experience.

 

[Merrill]

Anytime you have a monopoly and have the watch dog agency that is run by a previous CEO of a power company, you have a problem. It is like saying that we need to get off of fossil fuel, so go green and then, oh by the way you are not contributing to road repair so lets tax you. It is a problem when the country is run by powerful special interest groups. I do not know how you change any of this, but if everyone does there part, eventually it will change.

 

[evme]

I was considering a solar installation within the next few months. I live in NY, what is the best way to go about it? How much energy should I expect on average per year or per month?

 

[JPP]

You hire out to do garage cleaning? Man, would I like my garage to look like that!

Bought the house a year ago. Garage had unpainted drywall, but no staircase (...issues with prior owner trying to 'overbuild'). Staircase added, garage painted, with 2 part hot tire proof epoxy paint on the floor. Circuit breaker panels already in place as was the fluorescent lighting. SolarCity inverters and disconnects new as of last month. SolarCity did the NEMA 14-50 install (fished up from one of the panels to the attic, over to the left side wall, fished down and installed the flush receptacle). I added the cord hanger (central vacuum hose hanger).

You can have a cleaan garage, too--the key is having somewhere (like an attic) to store all of the excess stuff (?? junk) that one tends to throw into the garage.

 

[InTheShadows]

I was considering a solar installation within the next few months. I live in NY, what is the best way to go about it? How much energy should I expect on average per year or per month?

NY has a grant program. Search for NYSERDA and you will find some installers that are certified. We are certified NYSERDA installers but only work in the southern tier. If it is a larger system (30kw+) we would consider going further north.

 

[evme]

NY has a grant program. Search for NYSERDA and you will find some installers that are certified. We are certified NYSERDA installers but only work in the southern tier. If it is a larger system (30kw+) we would consider going further north.

Not in the southern tier, actually I would technically be south of the southern tier. Kings county. My average electricity usage is 25kwh - 30kwh per day on most months. And during summer months it gets to about 60kwh per day due to the air conditioning and the pool. (This is not considering an electric car which I do plan to get)

What kind of installation makes the most sense?