Feedback on quote for New Jersey home

[Guillaume_8667]

Hi all,

It's my first time posting, I have found this forum very resourceful!

I decided to have solar panel installed on my roof and received my first quote today (solar company based in Annandale, NJ), I wanted to know what you guys think:
System proposal: 5.87kW
Solar panel: LG LG315N1C-G4 PV
Solar panel quantity: 18
Rated size of system: 5.670 DC kW (STC) / AC Rating 4.4970 AC kW (CEC)
Estimated system output: 6,972kWh
Sub-total: $22,936
Incentives collected by customer in 1st year: -$8,414.54
Net customer price: $14,521.46 / $2.56 per Watt (STC)

Not included in sub-total
Permit fee: $500
Cutting tree $2,350

My current situation:
Location: Madison, NJ, 07940
Roof situation: full south
Roof size: from my conservative measurement 400 sq.ft.
Annual: 6,735 kWh -> monthly 561.5 kWh
Annual cost: $1,371.72 -> monthly $114.31

Thanks for you help

[solar pete]

Hi there Guillaume 8667 and welcome to Solar Panel Talk. Well the short answer is if your total out of pocket cost ends up at $2.56 per Watt that is excellent, you have not mentioned what type of inverter/inverters you are using, in my opinion inverter choice is more important than solar panel choice. Make sure you check your installer out on BBB and www.solarreviews.com or other reviews sites. It wont hurt to get a few more quotes you can try www.solarreviews.com enter your zip code and or www.solar-estimate.org and follow the prompts.

Some locals might chime in with their experiences which would be cool, keep reading up, and asking questions and you should get a good result, cheers.

[Guillaume_8667]

Hi Pete,

Thanks for input.

I just realized that I think the cost/watt is after the federal tax credit, actually my cost per watt is $22,936 / 5,870 W = $3.91/W is that correct calculation?

And no specific inverter was mentioned in the quote, I will email them.

[solar pete]

Yep its total out of pocket cost by nameplate watt size of the system, so $3.91 looks more like it and I must say that's a bit expensive unless you have issues with your roof that make the install harder/longer than usual. To me if a company does not mention what inverter to use that's a red flag, if you dont bring it up they may use the cheapest piece of crap around and you dont want that. Cheers.

[Guillaume_8667]

We have a split level house, the roof has two different levels were the panels would be installed would that justify increasing the costs?

[solar pete]

Its will be more expensive/ time consuming to do two arrays rather than one, but its probably only a couple of extra hours, sometimes in that situation running the wiring can become a bit of an issue as well and may add to the cost

[Guillaume_8667]

Ok the company got back to me for the inverter:
SolarEdge SE3800A-US (240V)

Any thought on the whole system?

[solar pete]

On a 5.6kW system a 3.8kW inverter is to small unless they are planning on using two

[SunEagle]

From what other have stated the SolarEdge inverters are good.

Just to be clear if the system consists of 18 315 watt panels then the total installed is 5670 watt system not 5870 watt. That brings the initial cost up a little to $4.05/watt ($22936 / 5670w = $4.045/w) which isn't that bad before incentives.

Oh by the way I use to live up in that area of NJ. My parents use to live in New Providence and I had a home in Lake Hiawatha and later another in Bud Lake. Moved down to Florida back in 1988.

[NYHeel]

I live nearby in Bergen County and just accepted a quote from the same company you're using. See if they can give you a quote using different panels. For me, the quote that included the LG panels was the most expensive by a good margin. I ended up going with Winaico 300 watt panels and SolarEdge inverter with optimizers. My cost per kW was significantly less but I'm also installing a much larger system, so that could be why my cost is lower. I'd imagine that a 10 kW system costs less than double what a 5 kW system costs.

[Guillaume_8667]

Ok I had a second company ((JD SOLAR) quote me today:

1/ System proposal: 5.6kW
Solar panel: SolarWorld 280 W Mono Black
Solar panel quantity: 20
Inverter: Enphase M250
Estimated system output: 6,735kWh
Sub-total: $20,440
Net price: $20,440 / 5600 W = $3.65 per Watt

2/ System proposal: 5.80kW
Solar panel: LG 365W mono Neon
Solar panel quantity: 16
Inverter: SolarEdge SE5000A-US
Estimated system output: 7,000kWh
Sub-total: $21,608
Net price: $21,608 / 5800 W = $3.72 per Watt

Other thing to mention here is that there is a 25 year warranty on solar panel and inverter but only "5" years on workmanship. I thought standard was more like 10 years?

Any opinions? Should I go with the LG or SW?

Thanks

[solar pete]

Panels are panels in my opinion, both are tier 1 so it doesnt matter. 5 years on workman ship is fine, if there are any issues you will know about it sooner rather than later. I think the question to be asked is do you have any shade issues? and how important is individual panel monitoring to you ? I dont think it will hurt to get a couple more quotes have you checked if any of the Pre-Screened Solar Pro's service your area, http://www.solarreviews.com/solar-in...ed-solar-pros/

[Guillaume_8667]

To be honest I didn't realize how overwhelming it was with all the choices available for panels and inverters!

No shade issue (we are cutting our tree down).

I personally don't really care for individual panel monitoring, as long as I know everything is working as it's supposed to.

From the quote I got I don't understand why first company quoted me SolarEdge SE3800 while for the similar size system second company quoted me SolardEdge SE5000?

[solar pete]

Re the wrong sized inverter, probably a typo if it wasnt a typo run away from them as fast as you can

[Guillaume_8667]

I will check the Pre-screened Solar Pro. That first company however has has terrific ratings so I'm not sure why they quoted wrong inverter!

[ButchDeal]

First system isn't using solarEdge, it is using enphase
An SE3800 would marginally work but have some lost production. If your Service panel is smaller the 3800 might be a better choice to avoid upgrading it.

[Guillaume_8667]

Hi butch,

I was talking about the first quote of the first company see post #6. I was quoted a solaredge 3800 while the other company 1/ M250 2/ SE5000

[ButchDeal]

SE3800 is only rated for 5.1kw DC or warranty would be void.....

http://www.solaredge.us/files/pdfs/products/inverters/se-single-phase-us-inverter-datasheet.pdf

[Guillaume_8667]

Wow so here is the details of the system provided by the company:
Rated size of system: 5.670 DC kW (STC) / AC Rating 4.4970 AC kW (CEC)

So that inverter is inadequate for that system size.

Nevermind this company then haha

[Guillaume_8667]

Few other questions:
- does the solaredge inverter comes with optimizers? Or it's a separate purchase?
- if optimizers fail do the solar panel still continue working?
- if the panel stop working if optimizer fail is it really worth getting them, I'm thinking cost of maintenance vs loss of optimization?

[Guillaume_8667]

Ok

I was reading that having someone go on the roof to replace microinverter or optimizer would be costly, that's why I'm trying to compare it to a string inverter.

But from the info you are providing here it sounds like Solaredge optimizer have no issues!

Because my roof is full south and no shading issue, optimizer would be better than microinverter correct?

[ButchDeal]

in my opinion optimized system are better than micros except for sites smaller than 10 modules.
I prefer them over string as well but we have done quite a bit of string inverters. We do 90% SolarEdge because the majority of our issues are with non-solarEdge systems (over half the problems are with 10% of the equipment).
We install Xantrex, OutBack, SMA, Fronius, Enphase, and SolarEdge.
The biggest problem we have with SolarEdge is with the Zigbee and personally (as the person that deals with all the problems) I feel that most of that is with installers not following the instructions on the zigbee install.
We have had a few optimizers that were DOA but again I suspect that the majority of those were not DOA but installer error. One in particular I suspect was a string of 6 paired with two much larger strings. The minimum recommended string length is 8. We had them swapped out and re-wired correctly immediately (ok took about 10 days, but happened within first week of turn on).
The simple point is that most failures are due to being used incorrectly, configured at the edge of tolerances, or just plain error. SolarEdge has the most flexibility and monitoring so it is harder to get outside of the tolerances and when you do the monitoring makes issues apparent quickly. Further the flexibility affords the simplest solutions down the road (Say you want to add 1kw 4 years from now or you have a module damaged, good luck finding matching modules, but with solarEdge just find similar looking modules)

[Guillaume_8667]

Thanks for the detailed explanation.

[solar pete]

Its possible that the inverter they quoted will work if the two solar panel arrays are facing different directions, it may be ok if you have one array (set of panels) facing east and the other array facing west, but if both arrays are facing the same direction (south) then its a bad idea in my opinion, so they might be right or they may be wrong or it might have just been a typo, hard to say from here

[Guillaume_8667]

all my panels will be facing full south...

[ButchDeal]

Its possible that the inverter they quoted will work if the two solar panel arrays are facing different directions, it may be ok if you have one array (set of panels) facing east and the other array facing west, but if both arrays are facing the same direction (south) then its a bad idea in my opinion, so they might be right or they may be wrong or it might have just been a typo, hard to say from here

It is possible it will work but warranty will be voided if you exceed the DC STC input ratting as they have

[monroe]

LG and Solar World both are good, at that price installer should give 10 year installation warranty. Check Solar Reviews, Annandale based company has good reviews, but their sales process and initial quotes are always high, they will match competitor quotes.

[Guillaume_8667]

Hi monroe, I just read few of your other posts do you mind me asking if you used the Annandale based company and if so system size and $/watt. I feel like all my quotes are pretty high