Solar Panel buying Experience

[sirdevan]

They came out and put in all the electrical about 6 days ago. it took 3 guys 2 full days (8 hours each) to get it all installed. Seemed to be 2 electrical engineers and 1 laborer. Was a lot they installed. Additional meter box outside (FEC requirement) Tesla Backup Gateway(BUG) inside between 2 batteries (Solar circuit breaker box also inside this box), Power shut off for solar between new meter and BUG. Conduit box leading to my breaker box inside and plenty of pipes.

Here was my first 'bummer', but mostly because of assumptions. I thought as soon as they were done I would get to use it, but no, they ran a test then said the City had to come out and approve the installation first. They removed their test meter and said after the city approves it then the electric company had to come out and approve installation and install meter. So, technically, there was 4 days I couldn't use the system at all (course, there are these bars you can buy called bypass bars, so theoretically, I could have been playing with it!)

City came out 2 days ago, a Solar manager was out here with everything opened up. The city guy was nice, but I could tell he barely knew what this was and had zero idea what the batteries were. He was really only up on electrical. Passed inspection.

Now was the wait for the electric company. Good Faith Energy contacted the electric company again yesterday and they called me today and said they would be here tomorrow morning! So, about 9 days installed that I couldn't technically use the system!

Will update after I have had the system run good for about a week!

[sirdevan]

Originally Posted by wheelsup

What is the deal with the builders? Every newer development has the same ugly communist no design flair to it...except for the roofs...where they have gone overboard! And you can pass mustard to your neighbor through windows!

Good luck on the panels hope they live up to your expectations.

I like our home, it looks better from the front and we customized it like crazy inside, but I know what you mean.

[sirdevan]

Finally, Electric company came out yesterday and they failed the inspection, stating the meter box was wired backwards. Good Faith Energy said everyone else wanted power from bottom, but FEC required power from top. GFE came out today around 1pm and fixed the issue and FEC was kind enough to come out an hour later and put in the new meter.

So, After about 12 days post-installation. The system is up and running.

I had already installed the Tesla app, this app talks to the BUG (Backup Gateway) and to be honest, you can get away with using this app alone to monitor your system if you want. It will tell you exactly how much your solar is generating, how much your batteries are charged, how much grid you are using and how much power your house is consuming. It has a rather nice interface. I am attaching a photo of its interface for "Power Flow".

GFE gave me another location to monitor the actual panels. They are using a special product from Enphase.com For both of these applications I had to be sent an invite from Good Faith Energy. You cannot register with Tesla or find the other website without the invites. The key difference here is that the website breaks down power creation to each solar panel and you can see exactly (each day) how much they are providing. This lets you find trouble issues and shows where the sun hits the best. It shows a google maps screenshot of your home's roof and an approximate location of the panels. It is not an exact ratio, but its pretty close.

I thought the website for Enlighten(part of Enphase) is ok (ss attached), but really preferred an app. Today I did some searching and found they actually do have an app and was able to login using my login for the website. Some of the pages are the same and I assume are just html inside of the app, but the dashboard and reports are nicer in the app than on the website.

All in all, the process was fine. I would have liked to know about the delay of 12 days between installation and use, but that was an assumption I had made. Today and tomorrow are not a good view of what the solar system can do, since it is raining and cloud cover. The system was only running about 2 hours with full cloud coverage and generated 0.54kwh which is about 5 hours of a 100w bulb.

I will take the next two days to see how the batteries perform on days like this. Right now my home is running purely on battery power. I will add a photo of this as well.

[sirdevan]

Ok, it's been a little over a month. My first electric bill (for January) was $77. My solar was turned on around the 10th so it's not a full solar month and there was a ton of rain, but overall I thought that was pretty good.

The batteries do ok. The first 2-3 weeks we didn't change anything, just to see how well the batteries would do at night. For the most part, if the batteries are full they will go through the entire night with 20ish% left to spare when the solar kicks on around 8am. I believe, if we were conservative we could get 2 full days on battery alone (ie through night and rain).

Solar is really only gathered between 8am and 5pm. (starts trickling in around 7:45-7:50) and doesn't really go full on till around 11 through 2pm. Around 5 it trickles and is completely gone by 5:30. At least during the winter. That will change soon.

Right now, at current, my electric bill for February (with 4 days left) is around $30. Compared to last year it being around $120.

If its mosly sunny I will go 100% off grid through the entire night, if its super cloudy/rainy the batteries will die around 4pm.

Our house seems to run about 1kw all the time. Currently, the oven is the biggest punch at about 4kw.

We have now adjusted when we use the dishwasher and dryer. We attempt to run those between 10am and 3pm to try to use solar vs burning through the batteries and/or grid at night.

I knew I would eventually want to add 10 more panels and if money was no object I would probably have gotten 4 batteries instead of just 2. Having 4 would let the house run through several cloudy/rainy days.

Power went out a couple weeks ago and we didn't even know, just saw posts on neighborhood forums about it. Our house didn't even blink. So, that was a nice experience. All in all, very happy with the system.

[sirdevan]

Update during a hotter month. I have been intentionally running everything full, including keeping home at 73 degrees and running
a portable AC in study, my electric bill was $160 for June. Looking back at last year it was nearly $300 running at around 75 degrees. So, if I didn't have the Tesla Powerwalls, the monthly payment of solar would be less than the savings.

I am 10 solar panels short of recommended for my home because of getting the 2 Tesla Powerwalls as I stated, but I have requested a quote this week for the 10 panels and going to pay for them directly. This should bring me up to maxxing out my potential solar power and bringing ROI up a lot faster as well as getting me $3k back from the government at end of year.

I can't really add any more panels on my roof as this already puts about 4 panels that wont get maximum input due to being on a east/west facing roof. This should boost me to about 11.3kw solar system vs 7.9kw currently.

The other thing is, since about mid May I have not really been storing much solar in the batteries at night. I do keep 10% of my batteries on reserve for power outages. Adding the panels should allow me to store a few hours worth of AC for night time and should put me into the negative during winter. I was almost negative in February (bill was around $36) which means I was really only paying for services and I didn't use any electricity.

[Sunbather]

always appreciate someone providing a detailed experience. Thanks for cataloging this. I am eventually planning to add solar to our home, but that is likely on the 5+ year horizon at the moment and I'm sure things will change by then.

Our house is right around ~1000 ft2 and our average monthly usage is about 400 kWh with a summer peak of 825 kWh and a winter low of about 225 kWh over the last year. (I expect this year to average and peak a bit higher as we are working from home during the middle of the day and not setting the thermostat back as much. Already noticed the May and June uptick this year resulting from us being home working all day during the pandemic).

Obviously with this usage our costs are pretty low (average of like $60/month i think inclusive of fees). Payback wouldn't be rapid. But being able to utilize solar and also have bridging during utility outages etc. would be nice. Guessing it will still be close to $20k all in even for our house but I haven't priced anything to detail.

[Bill the Butcher]

OP, thanks for the update.

I would not get too caught up in south vs. west vs. East for panel placement. None of our panels face south. We have 33 panels facing west and 4 panels facing East. Most important to us was not having panels on the front side of our home which is the south side. Do our best option was loading up the west side and putting any left over on the east side. Our system still produces like crazy as projected and we are looking at a ROI of 6 years or less.

Our system currently is producing way more than we use but I am okay with that because it enables us to add an electric vehicle if we choose to in the near future and it is also nice knowing that by year 15 or 20 if we are still here it will still be offsetting around 100%.

[sirdevan]

Update!

I had 12 more panels installed. 6 on the same side the first were installed (South facing) and 6 on the East facing roof. This ups me to 36 panels with an overall coverage of 81%

I waited, so I could use these for the entire month of August before posting. Mid July electric bill was $217 and the batteries all but held no charge because AC was eating most of the Solar. Basically the batteries were getting about 30-50% charged up but were fully empty by 6 pm because as the solar lowered, it compensated with battery.

As soon as they turned on the 12 new panels, the batteries were charged to full by 2pm at the latest and even with AC constantly running, they powered the house till midnight (sometimes 1 am).

When I only had 24 panels, the daily coverage was about 52%, after, it was right at 78% of the entire day was solar/battery covered. Mainly midnight to 8am was the non-coverage time.

The rate things were going, I expected August bill to be around $250+ even with 24 panels, the 12 new panels were up and running by August 10th and it looks that my bill for August 10 - Sept 10 is just under $150.

I actually generated 40kw that went back to the grid, unfortunately after costs and the tiny bit FEC pays me that's about $3 but that's also the hottest days of the year.

I fully expect my next bill (Sept-Oct) to be under $100 and after that, near 0.

Bill the Butcher - You're right - the East facing panels are doing as good, sometimes better, than the south facing.

[sirdevan]

Solar now for 4 years. Still very happy with the system. I wish we had 1 more battery and 10 more panels. Right now, at 82% usage coverage we still always pay electricity per month.

If you are looking into solar, I highly recommend getting 100% coverage. Where my system has helped most is, I've seen the cost of electricity increase, but my solar bill obviously doesn't. When I have neighbors with similar homes and family hitting $800+/month, we see electric bills under $200/mo.

We are debating now whether we would benefit more by adding more panels or 1 more battery. It's about the same cost. (About $13k for either 10 panels or 1 batttery)

1 more battery would almost guarantee making it through nights and rainy days so we aren't using any electricity at night. So this is where we are leaning.

If you decide to go with Solar and want to use Good Faith Energy. People have been asking, so, I spoke with GFE last month. If you purchase a system from them and mention my name, you get 1 solar panel free.

Stay safe!!