Solar Panel Quote 3.5kw

Oneday77

Does anyone think getting Solar Edge Inverter and Optimisers is worth the extra £500?
Yes I will experience a tiny bit of shading, though probably negligible but I was thinking of the extra monitoring potential too.

EricMears

Oneday77 wrote: »

Does anyone think getting Solar Edge Inverter and Optimisers is worth the extra £500?
Yes I will experience a tiny bit of shading, though probably negligible but I was thinking of the extra monitoring potential too.

It's certainly not worth spending £500 just to get better monitoring. You could for instance spend £500 and get an Immersun unit for its monitoring package AND get immersion diversion thrown in free of charge Or (if still available) a Wattson setup would be a lot less than £500.

OTOH, if you think you can increase FIT payments by at least £100/year by reducing the shading effects then £500 for SE might be worth considering.

Oneday77

EricMears wrote: »

It's certainly not worth spending £500 just to get better monitoring. You could for instance spend £500 and get an Immersun unit for its monitoring package AND get immersion diversion thrown in free of charge Or (if still available) a Wattson setup would be a lot less than £500.

OTOH, if you think you can increase FIT payments by at least £100/year by reducing the shading effects then £500 for SE might be worth considering.

I'd been told Immersun was problematic, I guess that is a white lie
Though for monitoring, if I only have a string inverter does that not mean I'd only be able to tell output by string, rather than panel?

pinnks

I can't see why immerSUN could be problematic. It has a clamp (2 if you go for the monitoring kit) which goes on the live or neutral incoming wiring - usually the meter tail. This has a 5m cable which can be extended using cat5 network cable to connect into the immerSUN. There is also a wireless box for the clamps if access or locations necessitate. This is mains powered (not sure if that can sit on the end of a 5m cable) so can't see why that should be a problem.

The second clamp can go into the immerSUN or, I think, the wireless sender and just has to be on the cable from inverter to distribution box. Mine is in the main isolator switch housing as that was convenient.

The immerSUN itself just has to be between trip switch and immersion heater on the immersion wiring, so can be located anywhere where you can get access to that cable. In the airing cupboard perhaps? Mine is in a bedroom cupboard as that was easiest given that there was no wireless sender when I bought mine.

If you have the monitoring then the bridge unit, which is mains powered just has to feed into your home network or directly into your router. It talks wirelessly to the immerSUN, so can be anywhere in the house.

And that is it.

I assume the other diverters are similar but do not have first hand experience with them.

zeupater

Oneday77 wrote: »

... Though for monitoring, if I only have a string inverter does that not mean I'd only be able to tell output by string, rather than panel?

Hi

You'd be lucky to even do that .... If a central inverter has two MPPTs you may be able to query the relative power between the strings (you can with SMA), as for storing a generation history/summary by string - I don't really see what the advantage this would provide. We have 2 strings on separate MPPTs with a 10:6 split - every so often I check that there's no panel issues by taking the spot DC power on the 10 string, multiply it by 0.6 and compare it with the DC power on the other string ... it's never more than a few watts out ... job done!

With the shade issue you describe, as long as the string split is okay then save your money - even if the tree causes a little evening shade at certain times of the year, it'll only do so if in direct sunlight (and what are the chances of that ?), under cloud it'll make hardly any difference at all ... as for monitoring individual panels - it that really worth £500 when, as Eric mentions, that would pay for both proportional diversion, which would actually save money, and a pv/import monitoring setup ...

HTH
Z

EricMears

Oneday77 wrote: »

I'd been told Immersun was problematic, I guess that is a white lie
Though for monitoring, if I only have a string inverter does that not mean I'd only be able to tell output by string, rather than panel?

I suppose it depends on what you regard as a 'problem'. If all you want is an instantaneous picture of what is happening (and most people seem satisfied with that) then the Immersun works fine. Have to agree that I'd prefer a continuous trace of what the system has been doing for the last few hours and the Immersun 'history' function is frankly pathetic. When I get round to it, I'll be harassing the Immersun tech guys with some suggestions for improving that.

My inverter is an SMA and I occasionally compare the two strings output (if one panel was causing probs the whole string would be dragged right down compared to the other) but can't really see the advantage of getting a full history for each individual panel.

Oneday77

EricMears wrote: »

I suppose it depends on what you regard as a 'problem'. If all you want is an instantaneous picture of what is happening (and most people seem satisfied with that) then the Immersun works fine. Have to agree that I'd prefer a continuous trace of what the system has been doing for the last few hours and the Immersun 'history' function is frankly pathetic. When I get round to it, I'll be harassing the Immersun tech guys with some suggestions for improving that.

My inverter is an SMA and I occasionally compare the two strings output (if one panel was causing probs the whole string would be dragged right down compared to the other) but can't really see the advantage of getting a full history for each individual panel.

I can see the benefit of individual panel output for shade monitoring and fault finding. Which in turn would result in less lost output.
We've requested a new quote for 14x 285W panels, with Solis Inverter and an Immersun unit, we will see what they say.
We also have an EPC from 3 years ago, so hopefully we can bypass that for a wee saving. We were on a C then.

Oneday77

I think I'm almost there.
We will be settling on 14 x 285 JA Solar panels, with Solaredge optimisers. My shading gets worse than I thought. Turns out after 3 years in this house I have no idea. My shading at the moment starts at about 17:00 by 18:00 it takes up a good 75% of the roof.
In Summer it may be non-existent but I won't know for another 8 months by then it'll be too late.

The 14 panel layout will get the panels higher up the roof(we have 2 velux that take 2 spaces, though it does leave space for an additional 8 panels along the bottom.
If I get a 4kW system, should I want to add another 2kW in the future. Could I get a 6kW inverter now and limit it to 3.68kW until I need it? I don't want to layout too much extra right now but willing to save on future costs, why replace what could be a 1 year old inverter. Would the 6kW inverter be a breach of the FiT scheme? If I add later do I get the current FiT, future one and will it ruin what I have now.

tunnel

Oneday77 wrote: »

If I get a 4kW system, should I want to add another 2kW in the future. Could I get a 6kW inverter now and limit it to 3.68kW until I need it? I don't want to layout too much extra right now but willing to save on future costs, why replace what could be a 1 year old inverter. Would the 6kW inverter be a breach of the FiT scheme? If I add later do I get the current FiT, future one and will it ruin what I have now.

If you're seriously considering going bigger then do it now, reason being is the government are probably going to drop the FiT in January and drop it quite considerably. Waiting till next you may get next to sod all in FiT for an extension.
Ask the installers about going bigger, it shouldn't cost much more and the FiT will only be around 10% less for doing it now, that shouldn't matter too much as getting a bigger system won't cost much more(£7k ish), in fact the kWp ratio will be much less than a 4kWp system.
£5700/4=£1425 per kWp
£7000/6=£1166 per kWp
Hope that makes sense!!

Oneday77

tunnel wrote: »

If you're seriously considering going bigger then do it now, reason being is the government are probably going to drop the FiT in January and drop it quite considerably. Waiting till next you may get next to sod all in FiT for an extension.
Ask the installers about going bigger, it shouldn't cost much more and the FiT will only be around 10% less for doing it now, that shouldn't matter too much as getting a bigger system won't cost much more(£7k ish), in fact the kWp ratio will be much less than a 4kWp system.
£5700/4=£1425 per kWp
£7000/6=£1166 per kWp
Hope that makes sense!!

It does make sense. The problem is it's possibly a stretch too far right now. I got some share money that I was going to use to pay for the 4kW system, which is fine. Though with a 3 week old baby in the house, spending another £1.5k is not high on the agenda.
Is there not an extra cost to SSE to get permission to go higher too?
Though you have cleared up that the FiT will suck.