My Recent PV Install.

jetski690 · 9 July 2011 at 10:08PM

Thought I would share with you my recent Solar pv install, system size 3.70kw comprising of 8 Schuco 185w panels on the South facing roof and 12 on the West, as you can see by my picture I have some shading issue's with the Monkey puzzle tree and so every panel has it's own micro inverter so when one goes in the shade the others carry on performing to their best ability.

So far since the install on Tuesday we have had sunshine ,rain and a lot of cloud but from the Enecsys monitoring system which is an excellent bit of kit you can tell what panels are doing what at any given time of day,week,month or over it's lifetime, here's some screen shot's from today.

So far I'm quite supprised that the 12 West facing panels seem to be on par with the 8 South.:)

Gizmosmum_2 · 10 July 2011 at 11:36AM

Fab pictures and a great solution thanks for sharing these. Don't be surprised that your West facing roof is performing well, our almost East facing panels are generating up to 28kwh a day in the longer sunny days and we're in the north.

Casper55 · 10 July 2011 at 1:16PM

Looks like a great piece of kit. perhaps you could give me the website of this and also what they cost. Great to hear that your 12 west facing panels are on par with your 8 south facing panels.
I have recently had a quote of £11,500 for 16 sharp panel system giving 3.92kwh, panels facing 80 deg west of south( not quite west) hopfull this would give me a similar energy production of 12 panels facing south? best regards Casper

penrhyn · 10 July 2011 at 3:59PM

Hi OP, would you care to tell us the cost, name of the installers and whether you would recommend them to others?

NotSoWise · 10 July 2011 at 5:06PM

Who installed and did you have to ask for separate inverters or were they suggested unprompted?

I have shading problems too but haven't got to ringing up for quotes yet

jetski690 · 10 July 2011 at 6:03PM

penrhyn wrote: »

Hi OP, would you care to tell us the cost, name of the installers and whether you would recommend them to others?

The installers were http://www.affordablerenewables.org.uk/pv.html
I would whole heartily recommend them and advise most others to look closer to home and get quotes from their local installer's who will still be there once the Solar pv fad has finished, this local company to me would cover the whole East Anglian region and the fringe of Essex. As for costs you can see from their website the costs of a normal system which many company's don't display but the micro inverters are more expensive about £2000 for my 20 + the monitoring system which I think was £500-£600 so my worked out a tad more expensive then the prices quoted on the website, some benefits though of the micro inverters is that they have a 20 year warrany.

NotSoWise wrote: »

Who installed and did you have to ask for separate inverters or were they suggested unprompted?

I have shading problems too but haven't got to ringing up for quotes yet

Company as answered up above, The first two company's quoted double glazing type one's never mentioned the shading issue's it was this company that led me to them, Micro inverters wont work with every type of panel manufacture so they have to be carefully matched with the one's that will.

Casper55 wrote: »

Looks like a great piece of kit. perhaps you could give me the website of this and also what they cost.

http://www.enecsys.com/
Casper this is the website for the inverters though you cant see the monitoring bit unless you have a system in place as you need a username and password to access it but once you have it the system can be monitored from any pc anywhere in the world although as I've found out it wont work from my ipad

Worcester · 10 July 2011 at 8:57PM

@Jetski690

You got good advice there, and the price you paid was reasonable. Yes the micro-inverters do cost more, and the big advantage is that each and every panel is treated as a seperate generator.

This actually gives you another advantage, if when you've monitored them for a while and you see that a couple are performing considerably worse than the others, - why not consider having them moved to the east roof?

We have done a number of installations where there was no south facing roof and so we had to split it east / west this actually has a number of advantages, especially since the majority of peoples electricity consumption is either morning or evening, so long as it it properly set up (and the installer knows what they are doing!), you are able to optimise the system so that you can get very close to same output as on a south facing roof, and could actually have more useable output.

Also the 'nationals' / big boys only want the simple installations. As an installer to be able to even buy the enecsys micro-inveters you have to go through their specialist training and induction courses, so you will find that it tends to be the smaller / local installers that are trying to provide the best solution for their customers as opposed to what head office dictates that will mention this and offer this type solution.

Once again the big boys don't like installing on an east / west split as it involves multiple sets of scaffold, and is effectively the same as two small installations so their is more work involved. If you're looking for a local installer, you could always visit UKSolarInstallers dot co dot uk (I'm new so I'm not yet allowed to post the link

) (if that's not being too cheeky!)

peakoil_2 · 10 July 2011 at 9:10PM

this is great. we are looking to buy a house soon and I would love to have solar installed. does anyone know when the feed in tarrif period ends? I read somewhere that the amount you get decreases after the intro period, but cant see when this is?

Worcester · 10 July 2011 at 9:24PM

The Feed in Tariff is scheduled to go down each year for new joiners, so that those that get in early get the highest tariff.

At whatever rate you join, your rate is then linked to the RPI, so as that goes up, your rate goes up, and you'll get it paid for 25 years.

Watch out though, the Goverenment recently carried out a fast track review which effectively has killed off all the commercial installations, so now nothing over 50kWp is viable. Net effect a lot of businesses that are large consumers, now have lost out.

It doesn't stop there though, and please this is not a sales tactic / scaremongering, the Government is conducting a comprehensive review of the Feed in Tariff that will be published in February and the industry expects the Feed In Tariff to be slashed dramatically from next April.

The reason is economics. The Government has to cut its spending, and due to the way the Government counts its money the Feed in Tariff is seen as a Government subsidy and the surcharge on your bills is seen as an indirect taxation, as everybody HAS to pay it.

When they set the current tariff level back in 2009, a 4kWp system cost £20k, today anyone can get one for less that £14k (unless you need micro-inverters or Sanyo HIT Panels ) they are looking to bring parity back in, rather than allowing people to use the Feed in Tariff as a pension annuity replacement!

jetski690 · 10 July 2011 at 9:32PM

Worcester wrote: »

@Jetski690

You got good advice there, and the price you paid was reasonable. Yes the micro-inverters do cost more, and the big advantage is that each and every panel is treated as a seperate generator.

This actually gives you another advantage, if when you've monitored them for a while and you see that a couple are performing considerably worse than the others, - why not consider having them moved to the east roof?

We have done a number of installations where there was no south facing roof and so we had to split it east / west this actually has a number of advantages, especially since the majority of peoples electricity consumption is either morning or evening, so long as it it properly set up (and the installer knows what they are doing!), you are able to optimise the system so that you can get very close to same output as on a south facing roof, and could actually have more useable output.

Also the 'nationals' / big boys only want the simple installations. As an installer to be able to even buy the enecsys micro-inveters you have to go through their specialist training and induction courses, so you will find that it tends to be the smaller / local installers that are trying to provide the best solution for their customers as opposed to what head office dictates that will mention this and offer this type solution.

Once again the big boys don't like installing on an east / west split as it involves multiple sets of scaffold, and is effectively the same as two small installations so their is more work involved. If you're looking for a local installer, you could always visit UKSolarInstallers dot co dot uk (I'm new so I'm not yet allowed to post the link ) (if that's not being too cheeky!)

Thanks Worcester I recognise you from being active on the Electricians Forum to which I gained a fair bit of knowledge just by reading them so welcome here to the MSE it's good to have some in depth knowledge on the forum so stick around:)

tjacks55 · 11 July 2011 at 1:38PM

Nice one! my sister had hers installed by a french company named Soleol it cost her a bit more than if it would have been a british company but they did the double glasing installation aswell on all the windows for a good price;)

My Recent PV Install.

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