How big is your system?

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JeremyW

Well-known member
Joined
Nov 13, 2011
Messages
1,575
Location
San Gabriel, CA
I'm curious to see what the name plate is on some of these solar systems you guys have. Looking through the various posts on utilities and how you guys getting surplus checks and credits even with EV charging leads me to believe there are some hefty systems out there! :p Include solar hot water if you have that as well.
 
In most states when you put electricty back onto the grid your utility company has to credit/pay you the same amount that they would charge you. The Surplus Comes from the TOU(Time of Use) Rates. There are differences in the rates for Peak and Non-peak hours of use. Peak Hours generally run from mid/late morning to evening on weekdays, non-peak Hours are evenings through early morning on weekdays and usually include weekends, actual times vary per plan specifics. The difference in these rates can be where small amount of excess solar generation during peak hours can offset most, if not all and a little extra, of the non-peak usage for that day.


I am Currently looking into getting a PV system, but for the size of my house and the location in TX to Offset total product at fixed rates I would need a 12KW-14KW system. That is quite a big and expensive system, i'm not even sure it would fit on the house. However, If I can get ToU Rates and cut my energy usaged during the peak hours I could get by with a 8KW-9KW system based on the differencials of the rates.
 
Mine is 5.16 kW DC. Twenty-four Sunpower panels of 215 Watts each. And Hedge is right, the credits come from TOU rates on a single meter.
 
My solar array is 8,280 watts (230 x 36 panels). You can see on its web page how much electricity I am generating and consuming, and how many miles I estimate I could drive on the surplus kWh produced.

I am NOT on a TOU schedule at present. In my area to qualify for that lower rate, you must pull 80% of your daily kWh from the grid between 8:00 PM at night and 1:00 PM the following afternoon. I think that, given the kWhs my array produces in the afternoon, we could qualify for that TOU schedule. However... the utility pays me for any surplus at the same rate that they charge me for what I pull from the grid. Therefore, if I went on TOU, and still produced a surplus, they would pay me LESS than what they are paying me now!

We'll see if that changes when I finally take delivery of my Leaf.
 
keydiver said:
The combined total of my 2 systems is about 10kw. I also have solar hot water and a solar pool heater.
How much area does your 2 systems and pool heater take up
 
I have a 5.04kW system that was installed by American Solar. It uses 24 Kyocera panels and a Fronius IG Plus inverter. Both are top quality. Living in Phoenix, with our heat, that is very important. The system only provides for about half of our consumption (all electric 3100 sq ft house) but it was the biggest system SRP (our electric utility) would provide incentive money for. We also replaced our kitchen appliances for all latest Energy Star rated, and re-did the roof including a radiant barrier under the tiles. Those helped drop our consumption quite a bit, I estimate about 10% or more.
 
Yeah. I got mine in before they imposed that limit and were still paying $3/kw incentive. But the panels were a lot more expensive back then, too. I understand why they reduced the incentive as the install costs dropped, but I wonder why they limited the size. My 10.8kw system only covers 80% of my bill.
 
TickTock said:
My 10.8kw system only covers 80% of my bill.

Ack! That's a lot of energy! Where does it all go?? :lol: You live in an oven state (Mom is from there), so I'll cut you some slack. ;)

I have a family friend that is consistently in the top tier bracket with So. Cal. Edison, and nothing I've said has convinced him to invest in solar, or at least conserve a little bit. I think he'd need your size system to keep up with his bill. The biggest draw is their pool, with its 2 hp pump motor that has to run 10 hours a day.
 
JeremyW said:
TickTock said:
My 10.8kw system only covers 80% of my bill.

Ack! That's a lot of energy! Where does it all go?? :lol: You live in an oven state (Mom is from there), so I'll cut you some slack. ;)

I have a family friend that is consistently in the top tier bracket with So. Cal. Edison, and nothing I've said has convinced him to invest in solar, or at least conserve a little bit. I think he'd need your size system to keep up with his bill. The biggest draw is their pool, with its 2 hp pump motor that has to run 10 hours a day.
3100+ home, three kids, and lots of west facing windows. I have some trees strategically placed that I think will help a lot (without blocking the array) in a few years but they are still small. I actually think with just a little work (like installing better reflective coasting on the windows) and maturing the trees, I will eventually get the "SRP pays me" bragging rights.
 
2.2 kW 14 Sunpower panels. 1900 sqft house, not yet on TOU (I have access to L2 when I go to work so I only use L1 for occasional top off).

Out of curiosity, does anyone hose/clean their solar panels? If so, what time of year and how often? I usually hose mine down from June to September/October about every 2 weeks (unless it rains, which is rare in those months in Sacramento, but not unheard of).
 
scramjett said:
2.2 kW 14 Sunpower panels. 1900 sqft house, not yet on TOU (I have access to L2 when I go to work so I only use L1 for occasional top off).

Out of curiosity, does anyone hose/clean their solar panels? If so, what time of year and how often? I usually hose mine down from June to September/October about every 2 weeks (unless it rains, which is rare in those months in Sacramento, but not unheard of).
I was encouraged very emphatically NOT to ever hose them off and just let the rain do it (despite how infrequently that is in Phoenix). The calcium deposits are very difficult to remove once you have them.
 
scramjett said:
Out of curiosity, does anyone hose/clean their solar panels? If so, what time of year and how often? I usually hose mine down from June to September/October about every 2 weeks (unless it rains, which is rare in those months in Sacramento, but not unheard of).
I clean my panels every few months, depending upon what storms have blown through. A rainstorm will simply do the job for me, but if it rains and then a blustery dust storm hits... they end up caked with dirt.

I do not hose them off. About a half-hour before sunset I climb up on the roof with a bucket of water, plus a half-cup of vinegar added, and clean them with a dual felt-squeegy attachment for washing windows. Of course, this is easy for me to do since we have a flat roof (Santa Fe style desert home). Cleaning off panels on a traditional, peaked roof would be much harder.

Funny thing, however: I do not notice much difference in my array's output whether the panels are clean or dirty. On back-to-back sunny days, the first day dirty, the second day clean, the difference between the kWhs produced seems negligible. In fact, I once noticed that they produced a bit more dirty than clean. Go figure!
 
My panels are hard to reach for cleaning. They're on my second story tile roof and they take up most of the roof area, so there is no safe place to stand, even if I had the guts/stupidity to try it, which I don't. I have to work on a ladder placed on my patio cover using a sheet of plywood for a base, and use a hose and a long handled soft brush reaching upward from the eave line.

I've cleaned them only twice in almost five years, both times during the summer, thinking that the panels might be dusty from the lack of recent rains and I wanted to make sure that I was making the most of my summer generation potential. I did wait until later in the day, so that the panels were not as hot. I could definitely see the panels shine after removing the dirt film. It was like washing a car in that you can hose it all you want, but the dirt doesn't all go away until you physically touch the surface.

I noticed a slight increase in performance of perhaps 2 to 3 percent the last time I cleaned them, but that was after a summer when a lot of roadwork had been done on the road behind us, so there was probably a lot of dust on the panels. This year, without having cleaned them in the summer, they've performed about the same as last year.
 
I have a 5.52 kW system consisting of 24 SunPower 230w panels connected to a SunPower (SunnyBoy) Inverter.
The system is monitored using Tigo Energy Maximizers on each panel.

My system has been in since March, 2011. The installer cleans my panels twice a year (included)

I am so satisfied with my production that in January I will be adding 6 additional panels to bring the system to 6.9kW.

The link to my daily and historical production is: http://www.tigoenergy.com/site.php?PVPwrEv" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

In the Scottsdale/Phoenix area Solar is a no brainer. Seems like 400 days of sunshine per year :)
 
My 4kwh system supplies my all electric house and charges my Leaf. (I live alone and have a well insulated home.) 120 panels, as I installed it 9 years ago. (Imagine what 120 panels today would produce!) I am on 4 acres out in the desert so space wasn't an issue.
 
We have a 5kW/hr system. 24 Sanyo HIT panels and a SunnyBoy inverter. We just passed our 2nd year anniversary with solar. Output covers all our home electricity and all our Leaf usage (11,000 miles/yr) and we now get a credit of a couple of hundred dollars for over production. We don't have A/C in the house but don't need it since we are on the coast and we upgraded all lights and just about anything that uses electricity over the last 5 five years as things have worn out. If I had to do it over again I'd do 30 or 32 panels to have enough for two electric cars.

-john
 
Uccello said:
We have a 5kW/hr system. 24 Sanyo HIT panels and a SunnyBoy inverter. We just passed our 2nd year anniversary with solar. Output covers all our home electricity and all our Leaf usage (11,000 miles/yr) and we now get a credit of a couple of hundred dollars for over production. We don't have A/C in the house but don't need it since we are on the coast and we upgraded all lights and just about anything that uses electricity over the last 5 five years as things have worn out. If I had to do it over again I'd do 30 or 32 panels to have enough for two electric cars.

-john

The Sanyo panels are really the best panels to get especially in the hotter areas of the country. We did some testing and found that as the weather gets hotter the Sanyo ones would produce 15-20 watts more power than all the other brands of the same wattage rating did.
 
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