Solar PV offer. Please can someone give advice on this offer

eyeofthetiger999

Can anyone recommend any solar panel fitters in manchester area and surrounding areas?

Thanks

unkletom

eyeofthetiger999 wrote: »

Can anyone recommend any solar panel fitters in manchester area and surrounding areas?

Thanks

just sent you a pm

Tom

1961Nick

EOT999,

I'm not too far away from you & my roof has a similar orientation. It's a 4kW system & last year earned £621.51 (3457kW) in FIT & deemed export.

The house is empty most days & the saving was only about 20% of the bill (c £1000). To achieve that we had to make full use of the delay timers on the dishwasher, washer & dryer.

The system was £4K for black panels (June 2013) plus the cost of a scaffold to span the conservatory (The soffit facia & gutter needed replacing so I don't really count that).

Similar installations from the same installer are now just under £5K.

eyeofthetiger999

Thanks for all the info and advice coming in guys.
An update:
I have now had 2 quotes in addition to the one I have stated in my post. One company quoted me:
£4750 for 4kw system,
Sharp panels
Inverter SMA 4000 TL Multi track
He recommended fron roof panels with 12 facing 108 degrees(SE but more towards E) and 4 placed on an inverted V shape on my roof which will face 197 degrees(almost fully south).

I had another MD of a company today who quoted me £5400 and told me his company use the the best inverters, and that all other companys were dodgy blah blah blah. BUT what interested me most was that he mentioned that he would place all 16 panels on the back side of my roof which would mean that all panels would face 334 degrees(NE but closer to North). His point was that in summer you will ger more sunlight in the west then the east and that WEST IS BEST(OR BETTER THAN EAST). He also stated it wasnt a good idea to split up the panels and that the 4 panels facing S would not be generate any electricity.

Can someone please clarify the best position on which to place the panels? Is it better to have 12 panels face E and 4 South or all 16 panels facing NE??

Any comments on the quotes so far?

Thanks

zeupater

eyeofthetiger999 wrote: »

Thanks for all the info and advice coming in guys.
An update:
I have now had 2 quotes in addition to the one I have stated in my post. One company quoted me:
£4750 for 4kw system,
Sharp panels
Inverter SMA 4000 TL Multi track
He recommended fron roof panels with 12 facing 108 degrees(SE but more towards E) and 4 placed on an inverted V shape on my roof which will face 197 degrees(almost fully south).

I had another MD of a company today who quoted me £5400 and told me his company use the the best inverters, and that all other companys were dodgy blah blah blah. BUT what interested me most was that he mentioned that he would place all 16 panels on the back side of my roof which would mean that all panels would face 334 degrees(NE but closer to North). His point was that in summer you will ger more sunlight in the west then the east and that WEST IS BEST(OR BETTER THAN EAST). He also stated it wasnt a good idea to split up the panels and that the 4 panels facing S would not be generate any electricity.

Can someone please clarify the best position on which to place the panels? Is it better to have 12 panels face E and 4 South or all 16 panels facing NE??

Any comments on the quotes so far?

Thanks

Hi

Fire your solutions into PVGIS and see for yourself .... http://re.jrc.ec.europa.eu/pvgis/apps4/pvest.php

Anyway, I guessed that the SB4000TL probably wouldn't like 4 panels on a string so I've just plugged some details through SMAs SunnyDesign for a SB4000, it's not ideal, but it's not disastrous as the 4 panel string should still achieve about 2/3 of the generation/panel as the 12 panel string .... with the split 10/6 (more normal) you'd get ~10% more generation than with a 12/4 ... only having 12 panels (6/6) SE you'd get ~10% more than 16 panels NE ....

You really need to check for shade and this time of year is best to do so .. using a split configuration with 90degree separation often results in one roof shading the other ...

HTH
Z

Martyn1981

eyeofthetiger999 wrote: »

Can someone please clarify the best position on which to place the panels? Is it better to have 12 panels face E and 4 South or all 16 panels facing NE??

Thanks

I'm with Zeupater on this, so long as the 4 panels on the SSW roof meet the minimum voltage requirements of the inverter (your installer will sort this, and can deliberately choose a make of panel with higher voltages to make sure) then a 4SSW + 12ESE will certainly outperform a 16NNW* set up.

[*I suspect from your orientation 334d and the fact that the installer made a fuss about W beating E that you meant NW not NE.]

Your best friend here is to play with PVGIS (see Z's link) and compare the various combinations. There's a walkthrough in the PV FAQ's Section 5.

If you are open minded to other combinations, then have a think about these:-

1. Use higher efficiency panels on the SSW, such as Panasonic 250Wp panels, they are 20% smaller so you could get 5 on there, boosting generation a little, and solving any voltage issues. Down side, they cost proportionately more, and that would leave you with 11 panels on the ESE which may cause aesthetic issues compared to a simple 6*2 layout. Also if the two rooves can be seen at the same time, you might want matching panels.

2. Go for 5kWp by adding an extra 1kWp, (4 panels) on the NNW. Use a SolarEdge system to link all 3 rooves together via a 3.68kW inverter (more on this in option 3), but you will get the 10% lower FiT rate for systems that are 4-10kWp in size.

3. Go even bigger, put 2kWp on the NNW but you'll probably need a larger inverter. If you go bigger than 3.68kW inverter then your DNO will need to be asked in advance, but the 3 roof system would give you a lovely long generation day.

If you're not intimidated by going bigger and exploring all options, then think seriously about the 5 or 6kWp options and compare total generation (and income) to total cost. But if this scares you, then I would simply suggest forgetting the NNW roof, as it's performance will be 20 or 30% less than the 'better' rooves.

Mart.

eyeofthetiger999

I have had had the solar panels fitted for 1 week now.
Used a company called TP solar down south.
The amount of variation is incredible. 1 gloomy cloudy day I generated 0.5kwh and today I made 7.70Kwh!.
I have been given a solo 2 pv viewer and bridge which is a great tool to show how much you are generating and compare and it is about 99.5% accurate to the junction box.
No regrets so far but its only been 1 week!

Sterlingtimes

eyeofthetiger999 wrote: »

Used a company called TP Solar down south.
The amount of variation is in

Another fellow buyer from TP Solar. Paul's certainly travelling some distance.

ourcornercottage

eyeofthetiger999 wrote: »

I have had had the solar panels fitted for 1 week now.
Used a company called TP solar down south.
The amount of variation is incredible. 1 gloomy cloudy day I generated 0.5kwh and today I made 7.70Kwh!.
I have been given a solo 2 pv viewer and bridge which is a great tool to show how much you are generating and compare and it is about 99.5% accurate to the junction box.
No regrets so far but its only been 1 week!

I'm about to sign my docs with them, can I ask how you found them and what did you pay I. The end and for what?

Sterlingtimes

ourcornercottage wrote: »

I'm about to sign my docs with them, can I ask how you found them and what did you pay I. The end and for what?

For my part I was introduced to the company by a Private Message from a poster here. The price is pretty much that that you see on their website, so the beauty is that you're not faced with a double glazing type salesperson. I was pleased with the recommendation at the time of the survey and everything after that went swimmingly.