Anyone heard of Kinve panels & KACO inverter?

Geoff_W

I've just had 3 quotes from the same company (Solar Essence) for a 14 panel 3.5kWp system. Each system uses a KACO 4400 Transformerless inverter, but different panels.

System 1: 14 x Kinve KV250-60M + KACO 4400 £9,290
System 2: 14 x Sharp NU-R250 (J5) + KACO 4400 £10,797
System 3: 14 x Sanyo HIT-H250E01 + KACO 4400 £12,671

Sharp and Sanyo panels I've heard of, but not Kinve. Nor have I any knowledge of the KACO inverter. I would much appreciate your views and comments on the relative merits of these systems.

Egg_custard_2

I have heard of Kinve, but only because we had a quote from the same company, Solar Essence for a 4kWh system. All I remember from their pitch is that Kinve is Chinese and according to Solar Essence, cheap because they are relatively new to the market. I have no experience of them though.

We ended up having 4kWh Sanyo panels (16 x 250) with a sunny boy converter fitted by another local company for £12,500. They finished yesterday, and did an excellent job.

Peter_B_Surrey

I've had a visit from Solar Essence - not that impressed.

Salesman just wanted to push Kinve/Kaco - never heard of either (been looking at PV for nearly a year now), and can't find any reviews.

New company cheap product. Buy cheap, buy twice as the saying goes.

Why save a grand or two on such a major investment?

EGG CUSTARD :T- can you post details of your £12,500 supplier? Just what I've been looking for - probably the best panels on the market, with a reliable, proven inverter.

DYOR!

Geoff_W

@ Peter B

You are right, the Solar Essence salesman certainly played the psychology card regarding the Kinve/KACO system. Because of the almost non-existent monitoring facilities on the KACO, he was quite dismissive of 'nerdy' (my word, not his) people who wanted to graph every last morsel of data. Personally, I actually want to know how my system is performing, not just look at an export meter from time to time.

The Kinve panels are just too much of an unknown quantity to compromise the investment.

To be fair to Solar Essence, I have asked them for more quotes which they readily provided., such as:

14 x Sharp NU-R250 (J5) + SunnyBoy SB3000HF + SunnyBeam Monitor, all for £11,151.90

rogerhoward

Peter_B_Surrey wrote: »

I've had a visit from Solar Essence - not that impressed.

Salesman just wanted to push Kinve/Kaco - never heard of either (been looking at PV for nearly a year now), and can't find any reviews.

New company cheap product. Buy cheap, buy twice as the saying goes.

Why save a grand or two on such a major investment?

EGG CUSTARD :T- can you post details of your £12,500 supplier? Just what I've been looking for - probably the best panels on the market, with a reliable, proven inverter.

DYOR!

So you're not speaking as a Solar Essence customer, then?

Prejudice aside, plenty of solar panels are in fact nowadays made in China.

The Aurora twin-stringed inverters are what Solar Essence mostly seem to use now.

My Solar Essence salesman was far more knowledgable, professional and left behind far more detailed information and calculations, than any of the other companies that I had here.

For £7.2k, I now have on my ordinary terraced house a Kinve-panelled 4kW system from Solar Essence, and their installation was extremely professional and helpful too. Within an hour of the first 1.5kW being installed, performance had spiked at 1.7kw, showing that the Kinve panels perform better "in the field" than the test conditions under which they are rated.

I too had the choice of paying a whopping £3.6k more for a Sanyo-panelled system, from Solar Essence.

Personally I felt no pressure to choose the Kinve's but with Solar Esseence being able to offer Kinve's so cheaply, why would they recommend anything else to you? Not heard the phrase "never mind the quality, feel the width", you guys? Whatever your fancy brand label, a 4kW system is still just a 4kW system. Unless you don't have the roof space for anything other than the slightly smaller Sanyo's, what possible other reason would there be to pay so much more?

Solar Essence are a straightforward pleasure to deal with.


Under the reduced 21p FiT tariff, instead of the quoted 8 years I am in fact looking at a payback period of only 7 years, ie a 14% Return on Investment.

Had I taken any notice of these posts and instead chosen expensive Sanyos, even with Solar Essence I'd now be looking at only a 9% Return on Investment and 11 years to payback (if I'm still here by then). And you???

jimjames

rogerhoward wrote: »

Within an hour of the first 1.5kW being installed, performance had spiked at 1.7kw, showing that the Kinve panels perform better "in the field" than the test conditions under which they are rated.

Firstly its amazing to see how much prices have dropped since the original posts in Oct.

I'm curious about the quote above. Did your installers put partial panels in place and connect them to the inverter before the rest? It isnt something I've heard of before, with ours everything was installed and connected before the final connection to the inverter and grid was made.

WestonDave

Jim if you have two strings you do tend to end up with part generating before the other part is connected - it happened on our system.

rogerhoward

Yes, the first 1.5kW string on one roof was connected to the inverter first. The other 2.5kW on the other roof later in the day.

JJSmith_3

Kaco is a pretty established brand - they have been around a long time.

But I have personally had a very bad experience with Kinve, and for sure I would never choose to use their panels.