Please help me decide on which way to go. (enPhase vs SolarEdge vs LG)

[russ]

I'm a Nabcep installer and have installed Enphase, Solar Edge, Schneider, Solar Bridge and SMA.
Clipping is bad news. Wow not

If your clipping your not yielding all the power available. May be a big deal and may not

I also seen in here where you think that running an inverter "hard" makes it more efficient. That is exactly backwards. The best inverter efficiency happens at the 80% point of the inverters rating. Going above that pushes the inverter into less efficient operation and reduces it life.
At wide open your down over 2% from the inverter peak efficiency. Actual references for this if you would please - not personal opinion

Here where it gets cold a 250 watt panel will yield near 300 watts each. No enphase can handle that and it amounts to KWH's lost.
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You will never ever see a Enphase do this and the heat matters. The hotter the inverter the lower the power out.
I'll install a Solar Bridge before an Enphase. Micro inverters are the last choice and the least efficient over any central inverter system. Again, references if making this statement

The Solar Edge arrays we installed has beat every other system out there for yearly yields. Including SMA and Fronius systems.
The micro inverter systems are always lower in yield. There easy to install and easier to expand but there the worst performing due to the 96% efficiency. Most modern central inverters are up around 98% efficient.

A 2% shift in efficiency on a 10kw array is 300KWh a year difference. If you live where it's cold then you need to allow head room in the inverter so you don't clip. Just look at the photo. Those are all 250 panels with some right at 300 watts. On a Enphase you'll never know what is really there. 300 kWh per x 15 cents = about 45$ per year? Who cares?

No matter what you decide power clipping is Bad. You spent the money don't you want every drop of power ?

If someone is telling you that a Solar Edge is cheaper than an Enphase some one is feeding you hay. Solar Edge is the most expensive system to install and for good reason. Nothing else comes close.

And with the modular Maximizers it's just as easy to add to a Solar Edge as to an Enphase and online monitoring is built into every Solar Edge. No extra 400 dollar box is needed.
Enphase die. Never mind it's under warranty. Had a car like that. Broke all the time but it was under warranty. Well it didn't cost me but I got tired of it being in the shop all the time and driving a loaner. Give them time and you'll be on the roof pulling panels.

It's time to get the snake oils out of solar.

Seems like you are the snake oil man?

[n9lri]

Solar Edge vs Enphase

This is a no brainer.

Solar Edge is by far the more efficient system.

I'm a Nabcep installer and have installed Enphase, Solar Edge, Schneider, Solar Bridge and SMA.
Clipping is bad news. If your clipping your not yielding all the power available.
I also seen in here where you think that running an inverter "hard" makes it more efficient. That is exactly backwards. The best inverter efficiency happens at the 80% point of the inverters rating. Going above that pushes the inverter into less efficient operation and reduces it life.
At wide open your down over 2% from the inverter peak efficiency.

Here where it gets cold a 250 watt panel will yield near 300 watts each. No enphase can handle that and it amounts to KWH's lost.
Peakpower.jpg

You will never ever see a Enphase do this and the heat matters. The hotter the inverter the lower the power out.
I'll install a Solar Bridge before an Enphase. Micro inverters are the last choice and the least efficient over any central inverter system.

The Solar Edge arrays we installed has beat every other system out there for yearly yields. Including SMA and Fronius systems.
The micro inverter systems are always lower in yield. There easy to install and easier to expand but there the worst performing due to the 96% efficiency. Most modern central inverters are up around 98% efficient.

A 2% shift in efficiency on a 10kw array is 300KWh a year difference. If you live where it's cold then you need to allow head room in the inverter so you don't clip. Just look at the photo. Those are all 250 panels with some right at 300 watts. On a Enphase you'll never know what is really there.

No matter what you decide power clipping is Bad. You spent the money don't you want every drop of power ?

If someone is telling you that a Solar Edge is cheaper than an Enphase some one is feeding you hay. Solar Edge is the most expensive system to install and for good reason. Nothing else comes close.

And with the modular Maximizers it's just as easy to add to a Solar Edge as to an Enphase and online monitoring is built into every Solar Edge. No extra 400 dollar box is needed.
Enphase die. Never mind it's under warranty. Had a car like that. Broke all the time but it was under warranty. Well it didn't cost me but I got tired of it being in the shop all the time and driving a loaner. Give them time and you'll be on the roof pulling panels.

It's time to get the snake oils out of solar.

[Alisobob]

Knowledge of use patterns and such are needed to see if it pays for anyone.

Yup.... Weather patterns too

solar62.JPG
This is a good day.... -18.8 KwH's.


BUT... this is a very similar day, but with some overcast, and some early power usage between 4 and 5 pm, still on "Peak" time ( I think my daughter was baking..)
solar84.JPG
VERY different result... +1.5 KwH's.

Do your homework...

FYI... Weekends are all "Off Peak", as are weekday "Holidays".

[J.P.M.]

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I've been making this argument for awhile... that for the right situation....TOU plans are the way to go.

I'm seeing good credit numbers, and this is after supplying 99% of my power demands. I could have easily gotten a smaller system, had I known.

BUT.... somewhere down the road, who's to say this will remain true, or where will non TOU rates go?

Its a tough decision.

I'd suggest T.O.U. MAY be a way to go, but it's not automatic. Knowledge of use patterns and such are needed to see if it pays for anyone.

[Alisobob]

I could be looking at around a $1k savings just by changing plans. With that in mind, should I stick with a 25 panel 7.6kW system? Or should I downsize a bit?

solar99.JPGsolar98.JPG

I've been making this argument for awhile... that for the right situation....TOU plans are the way to go.

I'm seeing good credit numbers, and this is after supplying 99% of my power demands. I could have easily gotten a smaller system, had I known.

BUT.... somewhere down the road, who's to say this will remain true, or where will non TOU rates go?

Its a tough decision.

[jimqpublic]

I bought an Enphase system- but before you decide on inverter type one more thing to consider is power outages. Over 23 years in Long Beach with SCE we have probably seen no power outage longer than 4 hours- and generally only a brief outage every few years. That said, a severe earthquake could have the power out for weeks.

The SMA Sunny Boy TL series inverters will provide up to 1500 watts from your solar panels even if the grid is down. With a 6 kW system that would give you 1500 watts for about 8 hours per day, enough to keep a few fridges/freezers going and charge a bunch of power tools, radios, phones, etc. It doesn't cost add the sort of cost or complexity of a battery backup but could be a big plus in a long outage- presuming of course that your house doesn't fall down.

[Ian S]

should I stick with a 25 panel 7.6kW system? Or should I downsize a bit?

Well, if you decide to downsize, I'd start with the panels with the 300 degree azimuth. Although I suppose the good thing about them is you'd probably never see clipping.

[chuckgm3]

Thanks all for the feedback. Seems like there's a lot to consider.

I realize now that I'm calculating my $/kWh incorrectly, so is $4 reasonable considering the $1800 panel upgrade, extended 25 year warranty etc.?

It seems like everyone with M250's are happy with the production regardless of whether or not there's some moderate clipping.

To throw one more question into the mix. I originally had my system sized on last year's data of 12,484 and $2,746 based on Edison's 4 tier domestic rate I was on. However, since purchasing my Elec vehicle, I was able to switch to TOU-B and move most of my pool pump operation to night time. Also, my wife and I are both at work during the day so the TOU really works well for us. The end result is that this first month of TOU is shaping up to be about the same kWh as this period last year, but $100 less. If this extrapolate's out, I could be looking at around a $1k savings just by changing plans. With that in mind, should I stick with a 25 panel 7.6kW system? Or should I downsize a bit?

[Alisobob]

The injection circuit in my Duramax runs off 240v, at 20 amps.

New cars have come along way....

[Ian S]

As far as heat is concerned, under the hood of your car gets WAY hotter, than under a solar panel. All the electronics bake away under the hood mile after mile, year after year, and really seem to care. I think its a overblown issue.

Most of the time, a car is not running. 100,000 miles on a car represents less than 5 months of actual operation if you assume an average 30 mph operating speed. Plus, most of the electronics under the hood are a lot lower power than what's seen in an inverter.

[thejq]

Thanks for the info on that. Yeah PVO may show me at like 40.xkWh produced, but yet my inverter or the SE site you see shows 42.x. My friend with the Enphase says that he gets nearly perfect data to PVO.

I think it happens to everyone with SE. FYI, yesterday my SE shows 33.58KWh, but PVoutput registered 32.57KWh. The difference seems to be around 3% on a clear day and somewhat less on a cloudy day. A wild guess is maybe the inverter is calculating DC wattage, but reports the actual AC wattage in the API (which PVoutput reads), since SE claims 97% efficiency, hence 3% difference. Someone else also speculated that the 15-min update rate has something to do with it, but the symmetry of the bell curve should have taken care of the lagging effect. So for comparison with other brands, it's probably safer to use the PVoutputs data, or takes SE's data and divide 1.03.

[sensij]

Supposedly... from both Enphase data, and my installers real world experiences, up until you hit a clipping condition... the Enphase micros are being driven harder, and are therefore more efficient than other inverters...

That is probably BS, even if the installer really believes it.

The 250's would probably not clip at all, the the added expense of them may never get recouped from the slightly better output from noon until 2pm.

Even the 250's would probably clip very rarely with 270's, but I agree with your conclusion.

[sensij]

At the end of the day when I am producing 0kWh, the # that is directly on the inverter display, matches perfectly with their web portal. It's just that since PVO can only grab the data from SE API every 15 minutes (to avoid maxing my # of connections per day) it is only getting the production at that moment, not the total produced between my polling intervals (as I understand it) so those metrics are just a bit off.

Anyyyhowww, I dont want to side-track his post. Back to chuckgm3

Just to continue the tangent one step further... the data in the 15 min version of the SolarEdge API is just an average of the 5 min data (this is provable), which in some cases may be an average of higher frequency data we can't see, and in other cases may be instantaneous data (harder to prove). I've gotten lots of conflicting information from SolarEdge techs on this, and they've basically admitted they don't know, and would need to refer me to engineering if I want real answers.

[silversaver]

At the end of the day when I am producing 0kWh, the # that is directly on the inverter display, matches perfectly with their web portal. It's just that since PVO can only grab the data from SE API every 15 minutes (to avoid maxing my # of connections per day) it is only getting the production at that moment, not the total produced between my polling intervals (as I understand it) so those metrics are just a bit off.

Anyyyhowww, I dont want to side-track his post. Back to chuckgm3

The reason I mention that is I have Locus Energy LGate 101, which is consider revernue-grade, it always display about 1.5% less than what shows on my SMA 6000-TL-US-12 inverter.

back to original topic to OP. I do think Solaredge might be a better choice over Enphase.

[Alisobob]

@AaronG


In other words, the amount of energy lost due to clipping in an Enphase 250 + LG305 system is not likely to add up to very much. I would suggest that the choice between them is better made by preferences in cost, inverter tech, warranty, or installer preference than by any difference in total system output.

Supposedly... from both Enphase data, and my installers real world experiences, up until you hit a clipping condition... the Enphase micros are being driven harder, and are therefore more efficient than other inverters...

solar71.JPG

I'm clipping from noon until 2pm... but supposedly gaining more output from 8am until noon, and from 2pm til 6pm than I'm losing from the clipping. Its also the reason I have M-215, and not the M-250s. The 250's would probably not clip at all, the the added expense of them may never get recouped from the slightly better output from noon until 2pm.

They were presented as a option when the contract was being finalized... buy my guy told me he even has the 215, and not the 250's on his own home, and he can have anything he wants. These are both with 270 watt panels though. With 300+ watt panels, you probably want the 250's.

As far as heat is concerned, under the hood of your car gets WAY hotter, than under a solar panel. All the electronics bake away under the hood mile after mile, year after year, and really seem to care. I think its a overblown issue.