7 years later my solar panels still achieve maximum efficiency...

Check out PVwatts.org for general estimates of PV production by zip code.

 

Useless site (PVwatts.org). It is a sales pitch, and the calculators are for financing.

 

And you determined this how? I have been in the solar consulting business for over ten year, and I think most professionals in the field would strongly disagree! PVwatts is a non commercial information site, who's Calculations have proved remarkably acurate.

Icarus

 

Investment, Insurance, Broker at the very top of the home page...

Many of the links are NOT solar related, like calorie calculator, etc.

useful solar calculations and information is buried.

 

^^ dot org

Addendum
hmm, it looks like domain squatters may be causing problems. Hopefully this gets sorted out soon. The real pvwatts website is a front end to software one of the national labs developed.

Here is a more direct link:
http://www.nrel.gov/rredc/pvwatts/version2.html

 

Icarus,

PVwatts lets the user configure 1 or 2 axis tracking. Do you happen to know if '1-axis' is inclination or side-to-side ?

Addendum:
Found it.
1-axis is side-to-side.

 

You should see higher Wattage than that on cold days with intermittent clouds. It is a phenomenon called Edge of Cloud Effect. Basically the sun shoots off the edge of a cloud and intensifies the rays where the straight on rays are also focused on the array. This effect may not be as noticeable where you are, but here in CO our cold winter days will produce quite a bit more power than the rating of the panels if it colder than STC rating conditions.

 

I would read the fine print. There are some "solar gardens" (as they are called here in CO) being proposed, and the warranty info is very unclear. Who is responsible to fix the equipment in case of a storm, who pays insurance, who is liable for the lost power while the system may be down...Im not saying run from the CoOp idea, just make sure to read the fine print. I havent seen anything here that really makes it more cost effective to do co-op installs vs on site installs, unless you are looking at going very small, and that typically comes down to the cost % of the system vs permits.

 

Why was the system designed improperly? One word for you, Enphase. 15 yr warranty and lifetime monitoring. You can tie into a separate backfeed breaker in your panel for the few panels you need to pull out of your system for the strings to be proper on the current system.

 

Isnt Schneider who bought out the Xantrex company, and recently had an issue with their XW series of inverters? Also I can only assume the system in question is grid tied. So unless the owner wants to make a mini hybrid system for situations where the utility goes down they can power emergency loads, it isnt financially feasible because of the additional costs involved in doing such (batteries, etc). Also if I were to want to go with off grid or hybrid equipment I would definitely go with Outback. When you need to figure something out (which you will at some point with hybrid systems) you will easily get support with Outback. I tried to get in touch with Schneider for a Xantrex issue....good luck with that! Plus they dont seem to speak english from my experience. lol.

 

I agree 100% on the idea, but price is not close. Those inverters are about $250 wholesale each then you need the envoy monitoring solution and the trunk cable, plus wiring and conduit to the install location. But overall I would still go with this idea. You have total monitoring with the Enphase for the panels installed into the Enphase system. But great thinking outside of the box! Im guessing you work in the solar field?

 

I strongly agree with Icarus. I am also in the solar biz and we use PVWatts v1:

PVWATTS v. 1

This, as you can see from the web link, is offered by NREL (National Renewable Energy Labratories) based in Colorado, and backed by the Feds. If anything we find it to be a bit conservative in comparison to the real numbers, especially when using micro inverters. IF you directly use the link offered by icarus for Version 2 or my link for Version 1, you wont get all the ads. Have fun with it.
For the one axis tracking, that is East to West. 2 axis rotates on the X, Y and Z axis if I am not mistaken, which means it is ALWAYS pointed directly towards the sun, correct Icarus?
Personally with the cost of equipment being cheaper per watt and more reliable than something with moving parts that I suggest to my clients to go with a bit larger system, unless you have limited room. From my experience, if there are moving parts, stuff breaks.

 

Micro inverters harvest the maximum out of each panel. If you look at the power rating of any panel worth using you will see a tolerance of -0%/+5%, which means a 240 w panel can be a minimum of 240 W, up to 252 W @STC. So if you have the Enphase for example, you will maximize yield on every panel, which adds up. Also the warranty is 15 years standard if I recall. And they offer lifetime monitoring. Their monitoring is pretty cool. You can look at shading issues through their monitoring page in fast forward. And if one panel/inverter goes down, the rest of the system stays operational. Oh and that brings up another point. Microinverters are impervious to shading issues that string inverters have. For example, on a conventional string inverter, if you have shade on one panel, it pretty much kicks the crap out of that whole strings power. If you have micros, the panel that is shaded is the only one affected by the shade. The rest still optimize the max out of each and every non shaded panel.
Wow I guess I needed a break from reading all the great info on my Prius...sorry for venting on here..I've been reading about possible issues for the past few days trying to come to a conclusion/plan of attack to go figure out my prius issues this weekend. I have mental overload. It felt good to explain a few things I understand because so far I feel mentally challenged about how the Prius works.

 

ok so it's been months since sipinfuel posted here - but since then So Cal HAS forced utility Co's to pony up about 4 cents per kWh for surplus. I'm still waiting for any signs of a $200 check (in our case). Nothing so far. As for renewable energy credits (R.E.C.'s) ... it looks like the PUC is going to allow such a paltry amount to be paid for these, that customers won't see much here either, if anything.

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We get net metered here, then I believe wholesale rates for any excess (of which I never have any). The SRECs in DE have tanked over the last 18 months. They were selling for over $200 at one point and are now down to around $75-85. There's a glut of supply right now. I partly blame the large PV farm they opened in Dover which, IIRC, Delmarva Power is buying all of the SRECs from. I wish they would have come up with a way to help the common citizen with the REC prices, but considering the PV array was covered 50% by Delmarva & the Green Energy Fund when I got it installed, it really is hard to complain too much.

 

Agreed.
That said, our 7.1kWh AC rated just turned 3 years old last month. We're still generating in excess of our rated amount. Our panels are on both sides/halfs of our roof gable. If push came to shove, and we needed more power, we could angle up our eastern side (gets most sun in the morning) of the array to be parallel to the ground - rather than angled 15 degrees to follow our roof pitch.