Anyone have solar panels

The kit itself looks pretty good. Seems to be a decent price. Less than $3 a watt for the hardware is pretty good.

I've heard a lot of good things about microinverter setups. If you get shade on one panel, only that panel is affected and not the rest of the panels as you would get in a typical string setup. Also, you can put panels in different orientations, so you can maximize the use of your roof.

Have you taken a look at your roof to see how much room you have, shading issues, orientation, etc? Don't forget that some space has to be left for firefighter access.

If you do go DIY, you'll still need an a electrician to help you with the electrical wiring, especially when hooking into your house's electrical system. They also may be required to pull the necessary permit. Check with your tax accountant and local utility to see if DIY will qualify for the rebates and credits available.

 

I believe the fire code is 3 feet from the perimiter on each slope.

Tony, the difference you are seeing is the Loss through the inverter. One number is the DC power into the inverter and the other is the AC power out of the inverter. As we discussed earlier this is a key area that gets overlooked. Inverts are more and less efficient at different %'s so having the right ionverter for your system can make a difference.

I'm told I am about 2 weeks out on my install. SDG&E tripped out when we put in the paperwork for a 8,500 yearly production system yet last year i was no where near that. I had to send them over proof i had purchased an electric car and such...

And Tony I completly agree with you, most installers refuse to build the system the way YOU want. I demanded a 8,500 - 9,000 kwh Yearly system but they all wanted to use there little online calculators and tell me a 5k system was all i needed.... There calculators are junk. There is so many missing variables in them it's crazy they lean on them so much.

 

That's for CA. Might be different for other states. For us, it had to be a 3 foot clearance from the top, and 3 feet from the sides. They were allowed to go all the way to the bottom edge of the roof, however.

It's not just losses from the inverter, but from the wiring used, soiling of the panels, cloudy days, shading, panel rating mismatch, age of panels, etc. That's why there's 2 numbers: the raw panel kW DC capacity, and the actual AC that is delivered after taking into account the above issues. PVWatts assumes a derating of roughly 23%, but for our system, it was closer to 13% because we had a more efficient inverter installed.

With the larger system and the EV, are you expected to produce a surplus of electricity? Is it expected to be a large one? The residential solar program is designed to offset most of the electricity that a home uses, not turn your roof into a semi-commercial electricity producer. I'm not surprised that they balked a bit, especially if you the difference between your annual usage and the expected production was large.

I think you are being a little unfair to the installers here. There are design factors that we may be unaware of that forces an installer to pick a smaller system over a bigger one. Things like roof orientation, offsets for the fire code, vent placement, shading issues, panel sizes and effciencies, inverter string sizing, etc. And then there's the financial considerations. At a certain point you get to a point of diminishing returns where adding more capacity results in a longer pay back. Eliminating the highest tiers of your electrical bill gives you the most bang for your buck.

I was very disappointed that the original system designed for us would only be 2.47 kW DC. And then I talked to my project manager who explained the issues involved. As it turns out, we needed a new roof put on before we could proceed. It was suggested if we could move some roof vents, or replace them with low-profile ones, we could increase the size of the system. So we followed that advice, replaced 2 vents with low profile ones, and ended up doubling the size of the system. Our annual usage is around 12,000 kWh, and the system will produce between 6,000 and 7,000 kWh. That's enough to offset 60% or so of our usage, which will get us out of the top 3 tiers.

A good installer/designer will hopefully work with you to design a system that fits your needs and wants. They'll also hopefully explain the factors that went into the design of the system and make suggestions on what needs to change to increase the size of the system. It could be something as simple as replacing roof vents with low profile ones. Or it could be buying panels that are more expensive but have higher efficiency ratings.