Hey All,
Looking at getting solar for our home. We plan on living here for the next 15-20 years at least.
2 Storey property with no overhanging trees or shade.
I've been getting a stack of quotes from 3 - 4 companies via solarquotes and Facebook recommendations in various groups.
Is there any that you would run away from straight away or one that you would prefer?
Link here:
https://ibb.co/qsmgbCX
Thanks
Roland
edit: if you don't have shading issues, the Fronius is probably the best deal going, and the most reliable hardware.
It's also the most popular solution, and there's a ton of dealers so pricing is competitive.
SMA and Huawei are … okay, and probably a good alternative to the dominance of Fronius.
You can also look at Maps of solar installs in your area using PVoutput.org and looking for who has solar nearby, and who installed it, etc. depending on what people have put online. There's also SMA's website which has homes who elect to be public, on large area maps, and Enphase had something similar for users who made their homes 'public' on the area maps.
The extra you pay for the Dual MPPT Fronius Primo will cover a 2-string layout, so North/West panel strings (typically), or East/West, depending on your roof condition/area/coverage. Dual strings also helps balance morning and afternoon solar coming from different directions.
It really depends on your roof area as to what's the best option, i.e. I have a North/East/West layout with 4+5+4 Q-cell 310w panels due to shade on SolarEdge, and it's expandable to 6.6kw on a single 5kw inverter. The inverter is efficient from 3-7kw, so it can be upgraded or expanded, just not with the solar rebate.
As shade hits panels, the voltage drop affects 'usable' solar output, i.e. a few tree leaves on a panel can cause the whole system to drop 50-70% output, even if all the other panels are clear. with a few panels not-operational, the whole string is affected, which is why it can take 2-3 hours after sunrise for the solar to turn on in some areas, and 2 hours before sunset for the solar to disengage, where an optimiser based system will be within half an hour, and a micro-inverter much faster to 'engage' and wake up. Even if it's only 10-20w in total at 7am.
In the long run, it's maybe $1/day in lost solar, or $100-$200 year with dirt, leaves, bird droppings and other shade problems. YMMV. That said, the benefit of optimisers is hard to estimate. For the extra $100 per panel on a $160 panel pre rebate, it makes a huge bump in price over 20 panels.
The LG NeoN2 345w panels, which are perhaps $300-$400 each, the 5-8% bump in wattage over the 310w, will take an extra few years to pay off, with or without the optimiser/micro-inverter tech. You would be spending an extra $3000 to $5000 to get an extra $80/year in solar feed-in. However, if you live in overcast/winter areas, the 345w panels are more effective at capturing overcast UV/heat, that's their primary benefit. If you're in Melbourne CBD, a 3kw Enphase LG NeoN2 setup could pay itself off in 4-5 years if you have day-heating and so on.
Long term, you have to work out if the repayment time is worth it.
Solar/Usage Calculators will help to figure out your best options.
A 6.5kw Fronius Q-Cell system in the $5k range is likely to be repaid in 4-5 years, versus a 6.5kw 'SE optimised' Q-Cell system for $8k if it's just the end repayment you're worried about. However, if your solar drops out for 1/3 of the day, the SE system will catch up, as it will work longer, and deliver more solar on overcast/cloudy days, than the Fronius. You'd really only know if you compared 2 systems in the same area, which is possible with PVoutput home-solar analysis, or a test setup on the same roof, which has been done too.
If you stretch for a 7.3kw LG Neon2 system on the same layout, it's likely to be $11k, and take twice as long to repay, up to 8-9 years, or perhaps 6-7 years if you use the solar for home heating/AC needs, or storage, i.e. Hot Water systems.
The actual difference between the $5k and the $11k will be $200/year in solar feed-in each year, give or take. YMMV.
However, those extra days will be the mediocre/raining/winter days, so it could end up paying off, especially if you run home heating or a swimming pool during the day, which will actually pay off faster on your actual power bills.
You really have to work out how to use the energy coming in, since the feed-in is close to useless being 1/4 to 1/3 of the standard NSW standing rates (8-12c feed-in, vs 29-34c with GST in NSW) depending where/who provides your power.
The TCO for a Solaredge is likely to be around the same as a string inverter in the long run, because the SE system will run for an extra hour each day, and handle the occasional bad day or faulty panel in a few years. With a string system, you won't know until years or decades if something needs fixing, unless you monitor and compare each year to see what it should be.
This is where having the solar-designer sites can help immensely, since it can pull satellite maps from different seasons and show morning/afternoon coverage and shadows, etc.
Typically, this is also used to "SELL" whatever the sales guy is offering, because it's personalised. You can find US based solar design tool sites, with trial accounts to see what different layouts are possible.
The quotes you provided, seem to emphasise shading, hence the LG and Solaredge/Enphase. The overall difference is perhaps 5% output, the Enphase will cap the peak current of each panel, the optimisers will not "turn on" until there's enough voltage to justify the expense if there's occasional downtime.
The other advantage of the SE system is per-panel monitoring, so you can see if there's shade on your roof area, or it needs to be cleaned in summer to reach your peak/average, or to fix a faulty/fused panel that has stopped working. You get the same per-panel monitoring on Enphase, but it's an extra cost to enable the "installer" level overview/access on your account. YMMV.
If you ever plan on getting an EV or Battery, aim for the 6.5kw max setup as it will pay back faster, and deliver more power on cloudy/winter days. In summer you might not get the full 6.5kw output due to export restrictions, but it will help deliver more in the winter months when running heaters and washing machines during the afternoon/evening/day, etc.
This is a good summary. One year after installation I'm really happy with our Solaredge set-up. We have a gum tree to the north-west of our house so we get partial shade from 2-3pm onwards. We got a 6.6kw system for about $8k and have recouped 21% of the costs one year in. My vote went to option 9.
I think they meant no shade issues.
My only advice is get.a company that does the work themselves. Many are just call centres who sub out the work to the lowest bidder, and will Phoenix if there are any warranty problems.
I would def include the LG/Fronius option.
My advice would be to look beyond price/performance of a system and put no.1 priority of the reputation of the installer.
Having a 12 or 25 year warranty on parts of the system may look great on paper, but it will be of little benefit if/when the installer goes out of business. In Victoria something like 400 installers have folded in the past few years.
For our part we went with Origin Energy, they were not the cheapest but if anything goes wrong I know I will have full protection - either next week or 20 years in the future.
Slightly confused so hopefully someone can help shed some light here…
Had COMPANY A - come out for a chat today.
I'm most likely going for a Solar Edge system.
The sales person said with 3-phase, inverters start at minimum 7KW so I have updated quotes for the following from Soltek:
- 6.6kw panels with 5kw inverter (SE 5000H Power Optimiser) for $6700
- 7.2kw panels with 7kw inverter (SE7K Power Optimiser) for $8030
- 8.1kw panels with 8kw inverter (SE8K Power Optimiser) for $9150
COMPANY B has come back stating:
"The Solar Edge SE8000H is a 8 kw inverter it doesn’t make sense to have 8.1 kw of solar panels on this inverter it would never achieve 8 kw per hour. It would more and likely wouldn’t work properly. I would definitely be doing a back ground check on that company considering 7 out 10 solar installations failed to meet standard based on Clean energy council audits."
The quote from COMPANY B is:
- 7.5kw panels with 6kw inverter (unsure specifically which Solar Edge model) for $7300
They've stated no cost difference whether it's 1 phase or 3 phase.
Who do I trust and can anyone give further clarity?
I'm aware of the over-sizing thing so does that mean technically COMPANY A should be increasing the 7.2kw/8.1kw to have more panels?
Both companies have really good reviews on Solarquotes website.
company B is sort of correct, probably company A just want to trim down the number of panel to make their quote look competitive, the proper way to set it is 1.33 ratio, so third option should be 8kw inverter for 10kw of panel, try asking them for such quote and come back comparing with others to see if their price are competitive, having 8.1kw inverter on 8kw panel won't fail CEC audit so company A doesn't need to bag out the other too. But pricewise for solaredge those quotes are not too bad, just get them to get the price in the better system configuration to be able to compare apple with apple. Cost between 1 or 3 phase is actually not so much.
But for me solaredge is just fancy solution between traditional string and micro inverter that doesn't do much for the price, if you have shading go with micro, if not go with reputable string inverter (or even string with optimiser).
Yes, did the research years ago, and while you are stuck with shading issues, there's 3 tech brackets.
1) SolarEdge with optimisers,
2) Enphase IQ7 micro-inverters
3) SMA/Huawei/Fronius's "Optimiser" solution, which SMA is selling (previously/AKA TIGO optimisers), and Huawei/Fronius is catching up with later on… sic.
The downside of the SMA/Huawei option is, you can pay just as much as the Solaredge setup, as it optimises specific panels that will have shading, but you can also add it to an existing "String" inverter setup, as long as you pay heed to the voltage min/max for the strings.
The Tigo has huge downsides once you get beyond 4-5 panels, including having limits on setup, voltage, distance and range, because it's a hybrid optimiser and it also requires a different signal/data cable on the roof setup, which can cost just as much in labour, sic.
The best mid-range setup is the SolarEdge, but you pay a heavy premium for the Optimisers. If you buy 290w/300w/340w panels that already have Optimisers inbuilt, then you can save a lot of money, but it's a double-edged letdown, as they can take months to import. FWIU, Jinko have a range of solaredge panels that have the optimisers integrated, as do other companies, even SolarEdge has a supplier for their own brand/OEM panels.
Enphase has a similar upfront cost, but you can always add more/different panels. It also handles metering and their own terrible/misguided battery option, but it's a "cheap" solution i suppose. Then it becomes just as expensive as SolarEdge.
The advantage is flexibility on Enphase, you can add more panels with a junction box in 5-10 years with the IQ7's, and even go beyond 5kw in panels.
I would go with a solaredge setup if you want the warranty, but the number of installers is limited, and the quotes they give are "reasonable" i.e. expensive once you know how much the hardware actually costs and how much is in labour/install, which is a good 30% of the quote.
If you "know what you're doing" you can use solar designer websites to model and scope your roof's requirements and work out the quote yourself.