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  • davidcheok
    Member
    • Dec 2022
    • 90

    Salutations from Brunei

    Recently made the decision to move to solar to reduce my carbon footprint from grid energy. Made my decision in March, did my research and confirmed the order and application end of May/beginning of June. Decided to go microinverter route with APSystems and Risen panels grid-tied as our NEM is on a 1-1 unit exchange and no batteries for now. Panels and inverters arrived in Sept and finally got govt approval in Oct and panels, inverters and meter was up by 27th Oct.

    System is a 18 kWp Risen Titan 600w mono perc half cell (30 pcs) paired with APS DS3 inverters (15 pcs) with 2 panels to one inverter with total max AC output of 13.2 kW. The average irradiance of my locale is around 800 w/m2 with peaks around 1200 w/m2. Average and peak daily ambient temp around 29-33C. I configured the DC/AC ratio to be around 1.38 to take into account panel inefficiencies at 50c to 85c so I can still reach close to peak AC output at high temperatures.

    Reason I picked APS is there are no other reasonably priced micros with a reasonably polished UI at those prices while Enphase value proposition just wasnt there for me. Chose Risen panels due to their good performance warranties as well as their steel framed panels that were inline with lower carbon footprint and stronger rigidity.

    I have had some issues with a couple of the inverters that seemed to be dying after a while and strangely those on the top edge of the roof and all on the same phase. APS, through my local installer, has replaced them all (2 so far and 3rd next week) thus after sales service seems good. I expected some sort of run-around but surprisingly, no such thing.

    Bring right on the equator, we have a situation where the sun is in the northern sky for a few months in the year and south on the end of year periods. I guess luckily my roof has bigger East/West areas (18 degree slope) and I had bad shading in the early mornings until around 9pm from a large tree which I do not wish to cut down. So most of my panels sit on the west side with 6 on the south side.

    Production so far has been good enough to cut my energy use around 80-85%. Being in this hot and humid region, our use of AC is through the roof. Average household consumption range from 1.5k kWh to 4.5k kWh a month for residents here depending on their needs. I sit around the 2k kWh a month zone and have been able to drop that down to around 200-300 kWh. Mind you, our electricity here is subsidised heavily hence the reason why the uptake of solar here is very low. From 0.01 bnd to 0.12 bnd per kWh.

    DS3 inverters easily capable of peaking out for a moderate sustained period before throttling down 10-15 mins before going back up. The inverter with the 0/1 to be replaced soon.

    Screenshot 2022-11-08 at 11.12.05 AM.png

    Daily production accumulated over the last month. We have lots of clouds that comes in after 3pm on the horizon so production after that time is quite weak.

    Screenshot 2022-11-29 at 6.14.46 AM.png
    Well, that's it. Hope to lurk around and hopefully learn and share.

    Take care.
    Last edited by davidcheok; 12-16-2022, 09:06 AM.
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