I am going solar

Mrbigh.

I sent my cable to eves upgrade.com.

I have it mounted on the wall in my garage. An adapter can be purchased for 120 v. Have not had any problems with it. Wasn't brave enough to do it myself. Lol

 

USB, you will have to realize that today, was an EXCELLENT winter day for PV solar energy production. I'm posting my last 30 days......




NOT such a great 30 days thanks to snow accumulation and extremely gray days.
I passed 16 days in in the negative side

 

Are all the panels the same size? What is their output rating?
So the E/W panels produced about .95kWh each and the South facing panels produced about 1.5kWh each?
Thanks again for all the info!

 

My panels all face east, because that was the largest uninterrupted roof surface on my house, and least likely to get shaded. If you want to estimate how much power you can produce, the NREL has a nice calculator. According to that, I'm losing out on maybe 10% more production if they were facing south. I'm sure it will vary widely by location, however. I think here, the east/west panels may do better in the middle of summer; I seem to recall the calculator telling me that in addition to 10% less production, the difference between summer and winter was much greater with the easterly panels. East-facing panels also have the (tiny) advantage of getting power while the air is cooler - and solar panels are slightly more efficient when they're cool.

One interesting thing that they can do if you have panels facing east and west is to make your inverter rather undersized; for example, mine is a 3 kW inverter, which can handle up to 2 kW on each of the 2 strings that can be connected. (So 2 kW on one string, 1 kW on the other, or 1.5 kW on both, or whatever.) So if you have 4 kW of panels, half facing east and half facing west, you can still hook them up to a single 3 kW inverter without losing anything - because the east-facing panels will peak in the morning, and the west-facing panels will peak in the afternoon. You'll stay under the 3 kW total limit because each string will peak at 2 kW at a different time. Your installer should be able to figure out if that gives you any sort of an advantage in sizing the inverter, or if there's no benefit.

 

The scope of the installation
38 × 260 watts PV panels with M-215 microinverters. Installation tilt 22.0 degrees (3 roof planes) South facing azimut at 180 degrees
There is a sizable energy difference due to Winter solstice, in the Northern hemisphere the Sun is considerable lower than on Summer.

EDIT:
I'm including a good energy production day from last summer

 

I wish I saw this thread earlier! How's it going usbseawolf ? I installed solar last September and we actually went negative...the electric company owed us! Then I bought a used pip in November and yeah...with gas below 2 electric was still cheaper.

Beautiful thing is with solar, as rates rise you do save more. bUT the best thing is when you are on vacation. Because of srecs and generation the house is working for you to save money and make money while you are gone.

Our system is SunPower 5.3 kwh one roofed maxed out, 16 panels. Cost 24k before any incentives but extremely efficient. It has been a rough winter though for the panels with minimal savings. we use about 17 kwh per day with the pip

The largest dislike I have with solar so far (besides bad winters...) is you have to realize, what you make for SREC is not the same as what the electric company counts as your generation. I'm finding a 20-25% loss in what they calculate versus what is directly calculated... So if we generate 20 KWh one day, the electric meter might only account for 15...

 

I'm not talking about Net Usage.

So our meter is a Net Meter, it switches back and forth to how much we use and how much we generate. The generate portion won't match your meter on the inside which shows how much you generate for the state and SRECs.

I believe the power company accounts for some loss across the transmission lines and that is their equation. I hope it's scientific ...but just be aware ..what u see you are generating isn't exactly counted by the electric ocmpany

 

Now whatsoever, it is better a little over rated PV panel with the microinverters.
I took en consideration down the road in the future, about the degradation of the PV panels in about 12 or 15 years...........
Now there is in existence, M250 microinverters and the matched PV for these are 270/275 W panels.
In the short near future I will try some new 250 W micros and tally the difference

 

The M215 clips at 225W. My system of M215s driven by a mix of 265W and 270W panels gets some clipping time in spring and fall, but never in winter (sun angle too low) and rarely in summer (higher panel temperatures).

I'm not following your point here. The Net Meter cannot get an accurate measure how much you generate, because some of that energy is siphoned off by your home consumption before it can reach the Net Meter. The other meter (you call it 'on the inside', my utility calls it the 'Production Meter') is the only one that can accurately measure what you generate.

My Production Meter runs within 1% of what the individual microinverters report to the energy monitor system. The difference is well within my allowance for the wire loss between them (roughly 100 feet, as the branch circuit runs down the outer east wall, under the full length of the house, then to the service entrance and meter station at the far northwest corner of the garage).

 

When designed, the most distal panels on our design were to connect to the inverter via an attic run, which would be about 45 feet. On installation day, it was determined there was one area where our two attics don't connect and therefore that wall wasn't going to be a straight run. Alternatives were an inside run, adding about 100 feet, running the line down the side of the house, hugging the screed, and then going back into attic #2. That would have added at least 35 feet. While they assured me that 80-90ft would not be excessive, we decided a straight run outside with painted conduit was the best option. That put the total run the same as the original design, about 45 feet.
Peak output on a grey coastal day was 5kW yesterday. The system is rated for 6kW. Not too shabby. Averaging about 20kWh/day. That exceeds the NREL estimate and bodes well for summer.
Of course, I'm still "testing" the system.

 

People seem to get confused on the 3 possible ways to see your energy production.

1. Directly at the inveters (or microinverter level)
2. Directly at the net generation meter (mine is installed far far away, actually next to the electric company's meter)
3. At the net meter installed by the electric company - this is where the loss happens unfortunately. And it is 20-25% for us. On a great winter day of producing 6-10 KWh, the electric company can report us as having generated 4-7 KWh unfortunately. Talk to the solar company about that then talk to the electric company..

 

Do be aware of any differing DC and AC capacities. E.g. my mix of solar module ratings (DC) adds up to 4.27 kW, but the inverters (AC) can put out only 3.60 kW. When I tried to list both on some of the local utility's paperwork, it just caused confusion. The normal practice seems to be to use only the DC number.

 

Testing is good

 

On the ABB Aurora 6000, there are display screens for DC in vs AC out. I'm going on the basis of the AC out figure (which the system accumulates on a different screen. I'm in the same boat as you: 6.6kW of panel output (theoretical), 6.0kW maximum inverter output. I would have preferred a bigger inverter, but ABB doesn't make one in that size with independent, dual MPPT channels. The alternative would have been microinverters or two string inverters.

 

#1 and #2 pretty much mimic each other.
#3 - the solar meter on the outside does not and is quite off. I'll call the electric company this week to ask why. As for the solar company, they said they put in the loss of output through the transmission lines...

 

On item #2, I don't believe you should use the word 'net', that causes confusion. It isn't a 'net' anything. It is a gross Production meter.

On item #3, that Net meter isn't going to show the same 'generation' figure as the #2 Production meter. It can't, because some of your energy production is consumed immediately by your home before it can be fed back to the utility, so it never goes through this meter. If this meter records separate totals each way (mine does not), it's production total will show only the portion that went back to the utility because your house could not immediately consume it.

My Net meter shows only a single overall total, not separate totals for each direction.