Hello,
Recently purchase a house in Melbourne and planning to install solar panel system. Did check online reviews and few brands but there is so much to look at - Brand, Efficiency, Warranty, After sales service and so on.
And then it comes to out of pocket expenses PRICE. Not sure should I look on paying for higher brand or a medium range system.
Please share your experiences on your systems.
Thanks in advance.
Every day a new company emerge and certainty of work is unpredictable as they try to cut corners wherever they possibly can..
Brand quality is hard to gauge, it's only really 10+ years out where 'premium' panels are meant to provide their value, so it's hard to get empirical reviews
I think inverter failures are much more common, so is a good starting point to be spending a premium.
Whirlpool has a incredibly resourceful thread on solar in WA. Not sure if they have something similar for over east, but it's only the installers that will change with states
https://forums.whirlpool.net.au/thread/3kw4nv83?p=241
Why are you concerned about efficiency? Do you have a restricted space where they can be installed?
Paying extra for higher efficiency is not wise unless you need to pay more because of constraints.
Don’t have any space issue on the roof.. facing East plenty of sunshine..
Non Chinese panels have best efficiency for panels but you will pay a premium. Believe the premium doesn't justify the up front cost because the efficiency is a few percent if at that. Standard Chinese panels (Jinko etc) would probably be between 18 - 19% efficiency. You can pay a big premium to get 20 - 21%.
THEN the problem shifts to the fact that if you get 6.6Kw of panels, you have direction it faces, shading, inverter efficiency. Your feed in is limited to 5Kw basically the additional 1.6Kw is for early mornings, late afternoons and cloudy days when the system struggles to hit 5Kw limit.
You don't want cheap and nasty inverters and panels. If you get middle of the road higher end Chinese panels like Jinko and inverters like Growatt you'll be okay. If you see it as an appreciating asset you could go for non Chinese panels and European converters but prepare to pay big.
Upper end Chinese panels and inverters you'll be looking at $800 - $1000 per kilowatt installed before any rebates.
I just installed 12Kw with 10Kw inverter for feed in.
Facing east with No shading issue.. Haven’t checked growatt, just top of my head they have 5+5 warranty, don’t know what they cover individually.
Just curious what you have purchased?
From the 3 quotes I received, every single one suggested Fronius inverters. 10-year warranty and from what I have ready they are expected to last about 15 years. On a 7.6Kw system with 6Kw inverter I was quoted between $8,200 and $9,050. The difference being cheaper panels in the lower quotes. Slightly better efficiency won't make up the cost difference on its own, but there was also a 10 vs 25-year warranty on the more expensive panels. We just built the house and expect to be here a lot more than 10 years so figured we'd pay the premium for slightly better efficiency and peace of mind of the longer warranty.
The cheapest panels we were quoted were Trina, and we ended up going with Sunpower. They only got installed yesterday so can't provide any actualy insight on performance etc yet!
Normal inverter is about $1k. Fronius is $2k. A Growatt is 10 years warranty. If you bank the $1k if it does break down in 10 years buy another and you might get even better features.
Warranty on panels. There is panel build warranty (which won't be 25 years) and performance warranty (which is acceptable decline in performance). I'd check which one is covered for 25 years. For an extra $40 a panel (assuming you got 300W panels) I'd say the manufacturers would bank that money and see if you will come looking in 15 years.
Panels are 330W, SunPower has 25 year warranty on product and performance, the Qcells in our other quote covered both for 25 years as well.
Fronius is in high demand every one has suggested me.. Sunpower and Qcell falls in same category I think.. getting 6.6 kw Fronius with qcell g5+ panels for $7200.. where as cheap Chinese brands are far less..
Fronius is in high demand every one has suggested me
So is BMW and Prada.
Chinese products are built to a price and a purpose. If in case you did not understand my post: it is built to a price and a purpose. Everyone is trying to sell you a BMW and Prada. If you can be a BMW sales person why be a Toyota sales person??? If there is a conscious mugging at least you need to know what you're being mugged for.
If you buy a Growatt and Jinko solar and can't sleep at night then get Fronius and LG / Qcell (Sunpower is also Chinese I believe). If you can't sleep at night because you paid an extra $2k you can use on something else then get Growatt (or similar) and Jinkos.
Quality of the installation would be something I would be factoring in.
Some of the installers are cowboys, if the front of your new house faces north installation could be very ugly.