Solar Panel Guide Discussion

Cardew

I think that there might be some confusion about Energy Saving Group(ESG) and a Rent a Roof(RAR) company going into liquidation.


My understanding from the many posts on this subject was that ESG collected a £500 deposit from a householder. Some/many? of these householders were under the impression that ESG themselves would be fitting a RAR system. However it appears that ESG were just acting as an agent for another firm who were to fit the RAR system.


In some cases a system was fitted, but in may cases a system was not fitted and the household has lost the £500.

ed110220

Just came across an interesting German fieldtest of a large number of different panel models, it's rather wordy and doesn't test some of the commonly used ones here, but pretty interesting nonetheless:-

http://www.solar360.com.au/files/YINGLI%20YGE%20Photon%20Module%20Yield%20Test%202012.pdf

Yoshii

Hi

Over the past few weeks we have had very good sunshine but the readings from my 4Kwh solar panels rarely hit 1.3 Kwh and daily totals have been 5-6 Kwh . Is there a reason for this low readings.... I was expecting higher readings

Why

Yoshii

Oops . ignore "why" from previous message.

Thanks for reading

Martyn1981

Yoshii wrote: »

Hi

Over the past few weeks we have had very good sunshine but the readings from my 4Kwh solar panels rarely hit 1.3 Kwh and daily totals have been 5-6 Kwh . Is there a reason for this low readings.... I was expecting higher readings

Why

Hiya Yoshii. Copy of response from 'Household & Travel' Board:

Martyn1981 wrote: »

Would need more info, but that doesn't sound right.

What is the orientation and roof pitch, and if you don't mind rough location (nearest town).

Does your system have 2 strings, is it possible that only one string is working. Does the inverter display output for the two strings for you to compare?

Are all the panels facing the same direction? If they face different directions, are the differing arrays on separate MPPT's, or do they 'compete' with each other, with the higher performing system being dragged down by the lower performing?

What was your total generation for September, how did it compare to PVGIS (as recommended by Fruit and Nut)? There's a walkthrough for the site in section 5 of the PV FAQs.

Lots of thoughts, but gut feeling, something is wrong.

Mart.

keithwarburton66

Can anyone help us out. We bought solar panels from Tesco (after seeing them highlighted as a good buy on the MSE website) and after 2 years they have stopped working. Tesco customer service have been most unhelpful, pointing us to a guarantee which the insurers inform us only covers faulty workmanship. We have had an electrician look at the inverter and the manufacturer says there is not enough energy coming through from the panels so there must be a fault there. Has anyone had a similar problem and managed to get help from Tesco or does anyone have the email address for the head of customer services so we can go to the top? We are getting really frustrated and have tried all the e-mail addresses we can find on the internet. Any help or suggestions on how to resolve the problem would be appreciated.

JTPR

keithwarburton66 wrote: »

Can anyone help us out. We bought solar panels from Tesco (after seeing them highlighted as a good buy on the MSE website) and after 2 years they have stopped working. Tesco customer service have been most unhelpful, pointing us to a guarantee which the insurers inform us only covers faulty workmanship. We have had an electrician look at the inverter and the manufacturer says there is not enough energy coming through from the panels so there must be a fault there. Has anyone had a similar problem and managed to get help from Tesco or does anyone have the email address for the head of customer services so we can go to the top? We are getting really frustrated and have tried all the e-mail addresses we can find on the internet. Any help or suggestions on how to resolve the problem would be appreciated.

This is unfortunately the case with a lot of the big boys, they don't really know the industry, and have a subby do all the work, they squeeze and squeeze the subby and quality suffers.

You have the paperwork, is Tesco the MCS installer or does it have a different name on the MCS certificate? Im assuming its an MCS installation. They should be coming to site to do an inspection and diagnose the issue at no cost to yourself.

Do Tesco use thin film panels like ikea?

CrazyCol

Can anyone help a newbie, so much information overload on google, I have received lots of quotes but narrowed down to 14 X 280W LG mono X + Growatt inverter under £5k against 16 X 250W JA solar JAM6 SE (embedded edge) + Solaredge inverter @ £5.3k NE UK no shading issues so strictly which is best price / quality compromise. Solaredge appeals from a monitoring perspective but I don't have the knowledge to know which is best.
Thanks, Colin

Martyn1981

Hiya Colin and welcome.

From a cost perspective, both deals seem excellent.

I have a SolarEdge system on my WNW roof (heavily shaded), it works brilliantly and the monitoring is excellent, though I don't bother to check it much these days.

However ..... if you don't have any shading, then the power optimisers will mean 16 extra bits of kit (albeit with excellent warranties) that are stuck up on the roof and hard to access if anything goes wrong.

Also, you may be past the initial PV intro stage, but regardless, you may find the PV FAQs interesting.

Mart.

CrazyCol

Mart
Thanks for this - just had quick look at PV FAQ and looks a mine of useful information.
Agree about the optimiser, I thought this panel has them built in at source so less likely to fail ? The quote was the only way he could get close to the LG one & he regarded it as a better quality system.