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I joined this forum last fall to get help with my new 20KW solar system at my residence. My system finally went live the last week of December and now after winter is receding I'm finally starting to get some solar results. This past week for the first time I generated more electricity for one day than I actually used for the day! The reason for my post is to share some pictures and information about my project and to thank those that provided some great input.
Several years ago I obtained my net metering agreement with my utility but couldn't start on the project until last fall. Since my home uses a geothermal heat pump, and other typical electric appliances, my usage is around 24KWH per year. Winters near Lake Superior can get nasty! Our electric rates are over $0.20 and increasing so my main purpose for solar was to gain control of costs. I still need to do more work on reducing my use of electricity but am starting down that road.
I installed this system as a partial DIY with help from a licensed electrician. After receiving material quotes from 4 suppliers I purchased 70 Solarworld 285w black panels, two 10KW SolarEdge Inverters (1 string of 18 panels and 1 string of 17 panels to each inverter), and a black aluminum IronRidge racking system. I used the SolarEdge and PVWatts calculators to double check my solar production and everything seemed to check out as I hope to be able to generate most of my electrical needs through out the year using the net metering agreement with my utility.
I went with the IronRidge system as it looked simple to use and the XR100 was able to handle our 80PSF snowloads. I am a PE so was able to verify my garage roof trusses could handle the load. By staggering the roof mounting plates between trusses I was able to spread the load evenly between all of the trusses. Also I designed the system panel layout so I could cover most of the roof figuring that with my 10/12 (40 degree) roof slope the snow would slide off. One picture shows me cleaning snow off of the panels because I was eager to see some kind of solar production in the winter but actually when the sun would come out in later winter the snow would actually slide off.
My final cost after the tax credit will be $24,500 so if I'm figuring it correctly my system at 19,950KW production will be around $1.23 per KW. I tried to do most of the grunt work with some hired help from relatives to keep the cost down. I was going to rent a boom lift to access the roof but since I was only working on it part time I built a rolling scaffold system on some old railroad landscape timbers I had. This allowed me to roll the scaffold up and down the roof for good access. Since I had an electrician hired for the solar project, I decided to add a back up Generac generator so all of the electrical can tie in properly.
Attached are some pictures of my project. This spring I will have some tree cutting to do so the panels have limited shading.
Thanks for all of the help I received from the experts on this forum. (My earlier post was in the Solar Panel Installation section 'New Solar Installation Tie-in to Main Panel'.)
Several years ago I obtained my net metering agreement with my utility but couldn't start on the project until last fall. Since my home uses a geothermal heat pump, and other typical electric appliances, my usage is around 24KWH per year. Winters near Lake Superior can get nasty! Our electric rates are over $0.20 and increasing so my main purpose for solar was to gain control of costs. I still need to do more work on reducing my use of electricity but am starting down that road.
I installed this system as a partial DIY with help from a licensed electrician. After receiving material quotes from 4 suppliers I purchased 70 Solarworld 285w black panels, two 10KW SolarEdge Inverters (1 string of 18 panels and 1 string of 17 panels to each inverter), and a black aluminum IronRidge racking system. I used the SolarEdge and PVWatts calculators to double check my solar production and everything seemed to check out as I hope to be able to generate most of my electrical needs through out the year using the net metering agreement with my utility.
I went with the IronRidge system as it looked simple to use and the XR100 was able to handle our 80PSF snowloads. I am a PE so was able to verify my garage roof trusses could handle the load. By staggering the roof mounting plates between trusses I was able to spread the load evenly between all of the trusses. Also I designed the system panel layout so I could cover most of the roof figuring that with my 10/12 (40 degree) roof slope the snow would slide off. One picture shows me cleaning snow off of the panels because I was eager to see some kind of solar production in the winter but actually when the sun would come out in later winter the snow would actually slide off.
My final cost after the tax credit will be $24,500 so if I'm figuring it correctly my system at 19,950KW production will be around $1.23 per KW. I tried to do most of the grunt work with some hired help from relatives to keep the cost down. I was going to rent a boom lift to access the roof but since I was only working on it part time I built a rolling scaffold system on some old railroad landscape timbers I had. This allowed me to roll the scaffold up and down the roof for good access. Since I had an electrician hired for the solar project, I decided to add a back up Generac generator so all of the electrical can tie in properly.
Attached are some pictures of my project. This spring I will have some tree cutting to do so the panels have limited shading.
Thanks for all of the help I received from the experts on this forum. (My earlier post was in the Solar Panel Installation section 'New Solar Installation Tie-in to Main Panel'.)
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