3.1 kW SolarEdge/Canadian Solar coming to San Diego soon

[sensij]

Thank you.

You are welcome!

Attached is a picture from the sidewalk in front of my next door neighbor's house. Because the road approaches my house from a lower elevation, the side and underside of the panels are part of what anyone would first see coming up the street. Although curb appeal is hard to define, I'm really happy with how the black frame and rails do not draw attention to the array. Other installations in my neighborhood with the standard clear finish have caught my eye in what I consider a bad way.

The inverter and other equipment will be installed tomorrow in the wall space near the main service panel shown in the picture, with appropriate clearance to the gas service. Because that wall is south facing, I may install some kind of awning if too much direct sun on the inverter is elevating the temperature higher than it should be.

20150327_075929.jpg

[thejq]

You are welcome!

Attached is a picture from the sidewalk in front of my next door neighbor's house. Because the road approaches my house from a lower elevation, the side and underside of the panels are part of what anyone would first see coming up the street. Although curb appeal is hard to define, I'm really happy with how the black frame and rails do not draw attention to the array. Other installations in my neighborhood with the standard clear finish have caught my eye in what I consider a bad way.

The inverter and other equipment will be installed tomorrow in the wall space near the main service panel shown in the picture, with appropriate clearance to the gas service. Because that wall is south facing, I may install some kind of awning if too much direct sun on the inverter is elevating the temperature higher than it should be.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]6170[/ATTACH]

Anyway you can install it inside the garage? Beside the temperature concerns, your equipment can be sighted directly from the street, with no fencing around, I'd worry about vandalism and theft. Even in a safe neighborhood, you never know who's driving by. A well trained (someone knows how to operate a power tool) thief can probably take the inverter down in less than a minute. An alternative is to install some type of utility box with locking mechanism to make it harder for the thief and also hide the inverter from untrained eyes.

[silversaver]

Looks like your garage is on other side of house so I guess the inverter will be place on South wall next to service panel. Solaredge 3k inverter uses passive cooling without fan and weather in your area isn't that hot, so I guess should be okay.

[SD_Rider]

Looks good. That's why I want black panels with black frames too.

[sensij]

Anyway you can install it inside the garage? Beside the temperature concerns, your equipment can be sighted directly from the street, with no fencing around, I'd worry about vandalism and theft. Even in a safe neighborhood, you never know who's driving by. A well trained (someone knows how to operate a power tool) thief can probably take the inverter down in less than a minute. An alternative is to install some type of utility box with locking mechanism to make it harder for the thief and also hide the inverter from untrained eyes.

It is something to consider. My street dead ends, so the amount of traffic is fairly limited. I wouldn't be excited about the conduit run to get to the garage; definitely not outside the house, it would need to go through the attic. Finding wall space in the garage would be a problem, too. The inverter costs $1200 retail... not nothing, but it isn't such a big score, either. Maybe I'll look into what it would cost to add it to the home insurance.

Whoever eventually tried to use it later would be limited to only local monitoring... any connection to the online portal would reveal the serial number, which would have been reported to SE as stolen.

Whether the installation on that wall looks clean won't be known until tomorrow. The conduit involved will be painted, and I think that having a "utility area" should not hurt the curb appeal enough to convince me that putting it somewhere else would be better.

Looks like your garage is on other side of house so I guess the inverter will be place on South wall next to service panel. Solaredge 3k inverter uses passive cooling without fan and weather in your area isn't that hot, so I guess should be okay.

Yes, there are reasons to believe it might be OK even without a shade. Direct sun can be harsh... I'll just keep an eye on it, and see how it goes.

[silversaver]

Place the inverter higher close to the roof and little to the West, I think that will be the best spot and still gets shade in mid day. As long as the inverter isn't too far away from service panel, the loss is minumun. save yourself money from building anything to prevent direct sun light.

[sensij]

The system is live! Here are a couple more pictures showing the inverter installation:

20150409_103846.jpg20150409_103904.jpg

SolarEdge public portal is in my signature. I'll join PVOutput.org tonight so it gets a full day tomorrow.

Now the fun of data collection begins! I've commented in a few places about the inconsistencies in the SolarEdge reported data, and intend to install a revenue grade meter to provide more accurate data. After some discussion, the basic analog meter that had been intended was left out of the install, so that I could put in something that will provide more easily accessible data.

Very high on my list right now are the meters by EKM Metering. Solid core CT's, Class 0.5 rating, with developed software already in place for auto-loading into PVOutput.org, for a very competitive price. I'm still working out the enclosure and exactly how it will mount, but more to come soon...

[Alisobob]

Th

Now the fun of data collection begins! I've commented in a few places about the inconsistencies in the SolarEdge reported data, and intend to install a revenue grade meter to provide more accurate data.

Sounds like lots of lame monthly posts are coming....





Congrats on getting in going...

[J.P.M.]

The system is live! Here are a couple more pictures showing the inverter installation:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]6301[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]6302[/ATTACH]

SolarEdge public portal is in my signature. I'll join PVOutput.org tonight so it gets a full day tomorrow.

Now the fun of data collection begins! I've commented in a few places about the inconsistencies in the SolarEdge reported data, and intend to install a revenue grade meter to provide more accurate data. After some discussion, the basic analog meter that had been intended was left out of the install, so that I could put in something that will provide more easily accessible data.

Very high on my list right now are the meters by EKM Metering. Solid core CT's, Class 0.5 rating, with developed software already in place for auto-loading into PVOutput.org, for a very competitive price. I'm still working out the enclosure and exactly how it will mount, but more to come soon...

FWIW, I could be way wrong on this, and it's not a knock, but don't be surprised if the revenue grade meter shows less production than the other stuff, with both being somewhat higher than estimated production.

Good luck. Honest.

[SD_Rider]

Looks good!

How many days after the net metering email did it take for SDGE to sign off and turn on?

[sensij]

City inspection passed on Thursday last week. If I had required a service upgrade, SDG&E said that it would have been a 20+ business day backlog to get to me, because I hadn't already been in queue. However, since no upgrade was required, they could approve me faster. When I spoke with SDG&E on Wednesday this week, I learned that they would have already approved me, but there was some additional labeling they wanted to see, beyond what the city had required. It took 24 hours to get that labeling in place, and they approved me right away once evidence of the correction was provided.

I am not sure how much time would have gone by before SDG&E notified my installer that a correction was needed. By calling and talking to them, the information flow worked much better. Seriously, they were were helpful and friendly. If you give them a call and ask nicely, my guess is that you will get good information on what it will take to get approved.

[sensij]

FWIW, I could be way wrong on this, and it's not a knock, but don't be surprised if the revenue grade meter shows less production than the other stuff, with both being somewhat higher than estimated production.

Good luck. Honest.

Yeah, it will be interesting to see. By using the rainforest Eagle without solar for the past several weeks, I have a good idea of what the power companies sees for my baseline power demand each day, which is handy data to calibrate against. I'm certain that SolarEdge over-reports the amount of energy they produce by a few percent, but the power numbers actually look pretty close. Due to the way the inverter makes its measurements, the power and energy numbers are not consistent with each other. Now that I'm running, with the EKM Meter I will soon have the tools to dig into that more deeply.

[sensij]

An update... after some discussion in this thread, I switched to EV-TOU2 rate plan, and just completed my first billing month. Here are the numbers:

From SDGE
Number of billing days = 28
Net kWh consumed = 90 (89.7 kWh in downloaded data)
Carry forward generation credit = 57.98

Estimates from PVOutput
Gross kWh consumed = 578
Gross kWh generated = 489
Net kWh consumed = 89 (one bad day before I got my monitoring system working right accounts for most of the difference with SDG&E)
Carryforward generation credit = 55.65

Some other numbers:
Consumption from EV = 275 kWh (on pace for 15000 mi annually... averaging better than 100 mi / 25 kWh)
Consumption without EV = 578 - 275 = 303 kWH
Consumption over same dates in 2014 (no EV) = 298 kWh
PVWatts modeled output for this period = 442 kWh (premium, roof mount, 8% loss)
Gas cost avoided by EV, assuming 41 mi /day, 27 mpg, $3.50 / gal = $149

Compared to Tiered pricing:
Baseline allocation = 9.6 * 28 = 269 kWh
Rate DR cost avoided, no EV or solar = (269 * 0.1741) + (34 * .2046) = $54
Rate DR cost avoided, w/EV but no solar = (269 * .1741) + (81 * .2046) + (188 * .4036) + (41 * .4236) = $157
Rate DR cost avoided, w/EV and solar = (90 * 0.1741) = $16
(not counting carry forward credit until I actually use it)

I'll figure out how to present these numbers in a more coherent way, but the extremely short version is that solar is working out very well! My 492 kWh generated is offsetting (578 kWh + $58 / 0.18) = 900 kWh of consumption, which suggests a system size of only 57% of consumption is needed to zero my bill. That ratio should drift higher in winter, and I'm not counting on 12 pm - 6pm peak TOU to last much longer. Once it switches to 2 pm - 9 pm (or whatever), the ratio will definitely be worse.

I'm disappointed to see my baseline consumption unchanged... might be because I added a refrigerator and some networking equipment this year, although I removed a hardwired attic fan and started switching to LED's so I thought I might still see some reduction.

The EV consumption is tracking much lower than expected (advertised at 100 mi / 28 kWh), making the credit a bit more than I expected for the month when I made the plan switch.

One other nice thing is that the california climate credit is mostly paying the $5.17 / mo minimum charge, which can't be offset by TOU credits. It is technically money out of my pocket, but since I didn't do anything to earn that credit, I don't feel bad about SDG&E taking it back.

[vav925]

Thanks for the update. You mentioned in another post you have a spreadsheet that helped you calculate the size of your system - mind sharing (PM or email perhaps?)? I'm in a similar spot. EV TOU plan in the Bay area (peak is 2-9 pm here...) and trying to figure out what size I should go for given that I'm generating kWh during peak and using more during partial peak or off peak. I have a south facing roof with no shading issues. Thanks!

[sensij]

I've got some spreadsheets in dropbox that might help

SDG&E TOU rates

SCE TOU rates (collaborated with InsaneOctane)

I haven't done one for PG&E yet, but would be happy to collaborate on adapting one of these if someone in that area cares to help.

There are no real instructions on how to use these, make sure to refresh the pivot table with results after updating any information. If you have any questions, ask here or by PM.

Looking at some other TOU rates for my usage this past month..

DR-SES, $59 credit
EV-TOU2, all the same except 2pm - 9pm peak instead of 12pm to 6pm, only $15 credit.