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  • 7 Questions re: LG & SunPower Quotes for 18.31-21.16 kW systems


    I'm really close to making a solar investment for my property. I have above normal electricity demand requirements because I have a house on a river that the original owner/builder thought it would be a good idea to put a basement in a home that's 200' from a river (the basement floor is about level with the water during the summer, but in spring the basement floor is about 12-18" below the water level in the river). So.... we have 4 very large sump pumps that run about every 10 minutes April-July and about 1x/hour the rest of the year. As a result, I pay an average of $288/month to National Grid here in Syracuse, NY area location on the Oneida River just off of Oneida Lake. I guess having 700' of water frontage with a basement should be considered a blessing so the electricity cost is just another, "tax." LOL

    So, I'm considering solar and placing it on our pole barn that faces 5-10% off perfect south with a 1 year old roof that is 44'5"x24'6" with ~28 degree pitch. I've had 6 companies walk the roof, check the electrical, etc. None of the companies can get me more than about 75% production. The four quotes I'm considering have 2 that companies want to do 56 landscape panels. One company wants to put 60 panels (56 landscape 4 portrait on top that will go above the peak by ~12 inches of 40" panel). I'm concerned that the other companies won't do that and feel that wind will be an issue. However, the company that wants to do it has been in the business of solar, geothermal, home energy improvements, etc. since 1984 and feels very confident in doing this.

    Here is my analysis of the quotes from 3 companies (4 LG quotes and 2 SunPower):
    Solar

    Panel
    Annual NatGrid Bill w/o Solar Annual NatGrid Consump
    (kWh)
    Solar System

    Size (kW)
    Annual Electric Offset 1st Year Solar Prod (kWh) 1st Year National Grid with Solar

    (kWh)
    Annual National Grid Bill With Solar Annual Electrical Bill (NatGrid + Loan) Current Electrical vs. Electric + Solar Annual Savings Solar Quote Gross

    Cost
    Solar Quote Net

    Cost
    $/Watt Gross $/Watt Net (after incentives) Gross Levalized Cost of Solar per kWh Net Levalized Cost of Solar per kWh
    1) LG 335W 56 Panel IQ6+ Microinverter $ 3,456 29,000 18.76 73% 21,100 7,900 $ 933.12 $ 3,103.92 $ (352.08) $ 49,000 $ 24,047 $ 2.61 $ 1.28 $ 0.093 $ 0.046
    1a) LG 335W 60 Panel IQ6+ Microinverter $ 3,456 29,000 20.1 75% 21,700 7,300 $ 864.00 $ 3,158.88 $ (297.12) $ 51,500 $ 25,422 $ 2.56 $ 1.26 $ 0.095 $ 0.047
    2) SunPower 360W 56 Panel $ 3,456 29,000 21.16 76% 21,747 7,253 $ 829.44 $ 3,865.32 $ 409.32 $ 63,240 $ 33,630 $ 2.99 $ 1.59 $ 0.116 $ 0.062
    3) SunPower 327W 56 Panel $ 3,456 29,000 18.31 69% 19,161 9,839 $ 1,071.36 $ 3,573.72 $ (117.72) $ 54,060 $ 27,720 $ 2.95 $ 1.51 $ 0.113 $ 0.058
    4) LG 335W 60 Panel (Solar Edge Optimizer) $ 3,456 29,000 20.1 75% 21,788 7,212 $ 859.53 $ 3,164.37 $ (291.63) $ 51,657 $ 25,532 $ 2.57 $ 1.27 $ 0.095 $ 0.047
    4a) LG 335W 60 Panel IQ6+ Microinverter $ 3,456 29,000 20.1 75% 21,788 7,213 $ 859.53 $ 3,380.37 $ (75.63) $ 55,074. $ 27,924 $ 2.74 $ 1.39 $ 0.101 $ 0.051

    For the cost, I think I'm leaning towards the bottom solution with 60 panels. Questions/feedback appreciated:
    1) Will 4 landscape panels going ~12" of 40 inch panel above the roof ridge be a wind sheer or structural issues? (in my state an unoccupied building does not need to have space left for firemen at the top of the building)
    2) Age old question - I really like the idea of the Enphase micro inverter in #1 with 25 year warranty, but #4 company really wants to stay away from it. Should I press #4 company to requite with Enphase IQ6+?
    3) My Wife really likes the engineering firm's offering of SunPower product in #2 and it seems to be a very good price for SunPower. I've told my wife that its essentially a waste of money to spend ~$8K more than #4 and fairly similar overall system size to #4. Thoughts?
    4) Each company has walked the roof, measured it, etc. and Solar shading appears to range from 80% to 83%... I have lots of woods on the west side of the barn and there are 2 trees on south side of the barn my wife refuses to consider taking down to increase solar production by 6-9% per the company's in the final selection here. Do the first year Solar Production kWh claims appear, "real" and reasonable?
    5) Has anyone had experience with a Heat Pump Water heater? #2/3 & #4 companies believe that I should consider replacing my 10 year old electric heater with one and I stand a reasonable chance of getting closer to 100% annual production target with the reduction of water heat production cost(s). Neither company is trying to sell me one though. There is a $400 National Grid power company rebate for installing one with a licensed professional. The water heater's I've had quoted are around $4K installed. Is it really worth it (I see things on the internet indicating they have about a 3-4 year return)?
    6). Are the $/Watt Gross/Net a good deal (overall or local/regional feedback appreciated)? I guess I'd like to know if I should try to negotiate the prices down any further? Short of telling the companies who the competition are and their exact numbers, I've beat them all up and #2/3 said they are at last and final (another reason I like #4 for nearly $8K less).
    7) Is there anything that I'm missing?

    If you've read this far, I probably owe you a bottle of wine or a beer. However, I hope my thanks in advance for your thoughtful consideration and feedback is enough. THANK YOU!
    Last edited by ERiXN; 06-21-2017, 08:41 AM. Reason: Fixed table formatting.

  • #2
    I grew up in upstate NY - a great place to be from. On PV: Opinions around here vary. Take all w/a grain of salt, including and maybe especially mine.

    In the order your questions were asked, some opinions:

    1.) Maybe. Even though fire regs don't mandate it, the wind doesn't care . If you're concerned, get a P.E. to do an analysis. Asking kind of shows you're playing heads up ball, but without an analysis, you'll never get a reasonable guess.

    Remember, solar outfits make money primarily by putting product on your roof, not reducing your electric bill. Follow the money.

    2.) Yes/no on micros is indeed an ongoing discussion. I favor string inverters for lots of what I consider sound engineering and practical reasons. Micros have a longer warranty than string inverters but there will be a lot more micros (and so more failure points) than string inverters (which will be more accessable, particularly in winter).

    A bigger/related concern I'd have is snow removal and access for servicing. Think ahead. Will you be able to get to every panel ?? With micros and also snow, the probability is greater that you'll need to at some point. Think long term and serviceability.

    3.) Sunpower is good stuff, but no more fit for purpose than other stuff. Solar is a commodity, not a lifestyle. Buying Sunpower is like buying a Mercedes as a grocery hauler when a Toyota is as fit for purpose.

    4.) I like trees - the ones to my north. PVWatts est. ~ 1,150 kWh/yr. per STC kW for your stated location and orientations, less any shading from trees /snow. If what you write about shading is accurate, all the estimates seem a bit high (1,125,1,028,1,046,1,084 kWh/yr. per STC Watt, respectively).

    FWIW, as a decent 1st approx., equal (electrical ) size systems in the same location, orientation and service ought to produce about the same annual output, +/- a few %.

    5.) If you have nat. gas, my inclination is to stick with that over a heat pump H2O heater, especially in your climate. Also, Nat. gas heaters are proven tech. that's been around a long time and pretty straight forward. Heat pumps are complicated by comparison. I doubt the cost to install or operate a heat pump water heater is anywhere near the cost to either install or operate a nat. gas water heater. I'd also bet a fair sum that a heat pump water heater won't be long term cost effective in your climate once installation costs are considered vs. a plain old electric resistance tank type heater.

    6.) Prices/Watt you show before incentives look better than around here (San Diego), but I don't know the going rate in your area. You might check w/NYSERDA for info - just a thought.

    Besides, $$/install STC Watt is only one consideration - an important one for sure, but not as important as long term cost effectiveness and long term value. Terrible to pay too much. Worse to pay too little. Everything is negotiable , but squeeze a vendor too hard and they'll cheap out I ways you'll neve know until problems occur.
    Pick your vendor with at least as much care and consideration as the equipment.

    7.) Probably, but if I was in your shoes and if I hadn't done so yet, I'd consider doing two things before going further:

    - Download and read "Solar Power Your Home for Dummies", free on line or ~ $25 for an updated version in bookstores/Amazon.
    - Download and run PVWatts from NREL. Read the help/info screens a couple of times and do a couple of runs. It's pretty straightforward. Use 10 % system looses rather than the 14 % default value.

    I'd also consider some drain tile around the foundation.

    Question everything everyone says to you until you believe you understand what's being said and have reasonable confidence you can separate most of the reality from most of the B.S.

    Question to you: What parameters did you use to get the levelized costs ? They're pretty low compared to mine, even after considering greater NY incentives and w/ what are probably higher CA POCO costs. Have you compared those costs w/LCOE for grid electricity under a similar analysis - that is, the cost of POCO power for the same period without the PV using the same assumptions as applicable ? Or the ROI of some alternate investment ?

    Welcome to the neighborhood and the forum of few(er) illusions.
    Last edited by J.P.M.; 06-20-2017, 04:59 PM.

    Comment


    • #3
      I don't see the ROI that would make me proceed. But it's just my opinion ...

      Keeping the equity loan out of the equation it looks like #1 costs 24K net and saves $2523 a year, #4 costs 25.5K net and saves $2597 a year (#2 and #3 are much worse).

      Thus, it's just short of 10 years to hit the positive side.

      Add in the equity loan costs, and it just lengthens when you go to the plus side.
      8.6 kWp roof (SE 7600 and 28 panels)

      Comment


      • #4
        If you have much snow in your area, you need to allow for some method to keep the panels clear. A large roof array will shed a lot of snow onto the ground, maybe over the eves if it piles up high enough. Perhaps a Ground Mount array is better and no need to reverse engineer an old roof
        Powerfab top of pole PV mount (2) | Listeroid 6/1 w/st5 gen head | XW6048 inverter/chgr | Iota 48V/15A charger | Morningstar 60A MPPT | 48V, 800A NiFe Battery (in series)| 15, Evergreen 205w "12V" PV array on pole | Midnight ePanel | Grundfos 10 SO5-9 with 3 wire Franklin Electric motor (1/2hp 240V 1ph ) on a timer for 3 hr noontime run - Runs off PV ||
        || Midnight Classic 200 | 10, Evergreen 200w in a 160VOC array ||
        || VEC1093 12V Charger | Maha C401 aa/aaa Charger | SureSine | Sunsaver MPPT 15A

        solar: http://tinyurl.com/LMR-Solar
        gen: http://tinyurl.com/LMR-Lister

        Comment


        • #5
          First, Thank you JPM/Charlie/Mike for your responses. I'll make an effort to answer some key points for which you provided feedback.

          re: JPM's comments -
          1. Instead of having panels go above the ridge, its been suggested there would be less issues with wind and better snow shedding if the panel overhangs the eve and gutter instead. This way I don't need to worry about snow shed building up because of the gutter, which they would recommend be removed. Definitely something that sounds better given Syracuse is in #2-3 snowiest cities populated over 200K people.
          2. I'm definitely concerned about snow shedding and access for servicing. I'm not sure its reasonable to try to clean panels off barn as roof is over 24' up. All vendors believe that once a corner of a panel clears that the panels will start to produce electricity/heat and the panels should clear reasonably most of the winter... only a few days get really cold and stay below freezing. I've been told not to worry too much about servicing as it is necessary to remove panels for servicing in most large installations anyway. The top 3 competitors all have a 10 year labor warranty for the system (for state incentives they have to have a 5 year minimum, but most companies double the state around here).
          3. Agree - Mercedes/SunPower Grocery Hauler doesn't make sense when a Toyota (with options)/LG panel will do. I think I've convinced my wife that SunPower has no benefit for the premium+ price.
          4. I've run the PVWatts numbers and they seem to show higher outputs then my competitive bids do, which seems odd to me so maybe I'm not putting the data in right... hmmm.
          5. I don't have natural gas (expensive propane [~5-$6K for heat], which is why I heat house to 72F - 80 in room with a single Pellet stove [~$1K for pellets and much more comfortable throughout the house at 4 degrees warmer temp]), hence the heat pump hot water heater option seems to be best @ about $.06/day, plus dehumidification benefit for a basement that requires it - hopefully dehumidifier runs somewhat less. Wait and see I guess.
          6. We pay about $0.12 for both supply and delivery charges here with National Grid. I am squeezing vendors a bit, but hopefully not too hard. I do enough support of our sales teams and know what you mean about cutting corners by not funding things the right way to do the best job. I want people to make honest profit. We have a very nice house on the river and I feel like 3-4 competitors that were ruled out gave us the "river island discount", which is to say that they added 20-60% to their estimate as they think we have, "MONEY!" LOL, I do have savings, which causes me to live paycheck to paycheck with some nicely budgeted vacations. However, they should be ashamed for trying to gouge. The LG competitors I believe are in the neighborhood. 1 LG competitor ruled out tried to get $6K more for same panel and micro inverter. Shameful.

          re: Charlie's comments - The ROI is out there. 8.5-10 years. My wife is a professor of geography at a local university and teaches things like environmental change. For us its really about paying equal or less than the current electric bill and knowing that we'll save more money as prices go up. We'll live in our house for 15-20 years (until our daughter is off to or out of college). We won't need ~7 acres on the river and large house to maintain and will take the equity out of the house to downsize/retire. In regards to the loan, we have a 2.85% 1st year / 4.25% 14 year loan. Our intention is to pay it off in 1-2 years so we won't have huge interest. We'd like to do our very tiny and little part to have an environmental home and be friendly to the planet.

          re: Mike's comments - See #1 & 2 in my response to JPM above. With ~28 degree roof pitch, do you believe that there will be an issue with snow shedding? The companies I'm working with don't believe it will be a big issue. I am worried about it. I plan to put in 15' of road fabric and 4"-6" of stone in the area below the eve to park a trailer during the summer instead of inside the barn. I thought this would also allow me to plow the area if snow build up becomes an issue.

          Comment


          • #6
            If you are serious about keeping production maximized with snow, you'd best go ground mount. In that case there
            are a few things you should do to help keep snow cleared. But if you experience mostly clouds for those short days,
            there may not be that much energy to be lost. Bruce Roe

            Comment


            • #7
              Originally posted by ERiXN View Post
              First, Thank you JPM/Charlie/Mike for your responses. I'll make an effort to answer some key points for which you provided feedback.

              re: JPM's comments -
              1. Instead of having panels go above the ridge, its been suggested there would be less issues with wind and better snow shedding if the panel overhangs the eve and gutter instead. This way I don't need to worry about snow shed building up because of the gutter, which they would recommend be removed. Definitely something that sounds better given Syracuse is in #2-3 snowiest cities populated over 200K people.
              2. I'm definitely concerned about snow shedding and access for servicing. I'm not sure its reasonable to try to clean panels off barn as roof is over 24' up. All vendors believe that once a corner of a panel clears that the panels will start to produce electricity/heat and the panels should clear reasonably most of the winter... only a few days get really cold and stay below freezing. I've been told not to worry too much about servicing as it is necessary to remove panels for servicing in most large installations anyway. The top 3 competitors all have a 10 year labor warranty for the system (for state incentives they have to have a 5 year minimum, but most companies double the state around here).
              3. Agree - Mercedes/SunPower Grocery Hauler doesn't make sense when a Toyota (with options)/LG panel will do. I think I've convinced my wife that SunPower has no benefit for the premium+ price.
              4. I've run the PVWatts numbers and they seem to show higher outputs then my competitive bids do, which seems odd to me so maybe I'm not putting the data in right... hmmm.
              5. I don't have natural gas (expensive propane [~5-$6K for heat], which is why I heat house to 72F - 80 in room with a single Pellet stove [~$1K for pellets and much more comfortable throughout the house at 4 degrees warmer temp]), hence the heat pump hot water heater option seems to be best @ about $.06/day, plus dehumidification benefit for a basement that requires it - hopefully dehumidifier runs somewhat less. Wait and see I guess.
              6. We pay about $0.12 for both supply and delivery charges here with National Grid. I am squeezing vendors a bit, but hopefully not too hard. I do enough support of our sales teams and know what you mean about cutting corners by not funding things the right way to do the best job. I want people to make honest profit. We have a very nice house on the river and I feel like 3-4 competitors that were ruled out gave us the "river island discount", which is to say that they added 20-60% to their estimate as they think we have, "MONEY!" LOL, I do have savings, which causes me to live paycheck to paycheck with some nicely budgeted vacations. However, they should be ashamed for trying to gouge. The LG competitors I believe are in the neighborhood. 1 LG competitor ruled out tried to get $6K more for same panel and micro inverter. Shameful.

              re: Charlie's comments - The ROI is out there. 8.5-10 years. My wife is a professor of geography at a local university and teaches things like environmental change. For us its really about paying equal or less than the current electric bill and knowing that we'll save more money as prices go up. We'll live in our house for 15-20 years (until our daughter is off to or out of college). We won't need ~7 acres on the river and large house to maintain and will take the equity out of the house to downsize/retire. In regards to the loan, we have a 2.85% 1st year / 4.25% 14 year loan. Our intention is to pay it off in 1-2 years so we won't have huge interest. We'd like to do our very tiny and little part to have an environmental home and be friendly to the planet.

              re: Mike's comments - See #1 & 2 in my response to JPM above. With ~28 degree roof pitch, do you believe that there will be an issue with snow shedding? The companies I'm working with don't believe it will be a big issue. I am worried about it. I plan to put in 15' of road fabric and 4"-6" of stone in the area below the eve to park a trailer during the summer instead of inside the barn. I thought this would also allow me to plow the area if snow build up becomes an issue.
              For my part, you're welcome. Suggest you continue to question everything everyone says, including me. None of us is as smart as all of us. Read the book.

              In all the hoopla, I forgot to mention the ground mount option that Mike writes of. I'd vigorously suggest giving it serious consideration, especially given your land availability and climate. I believe CharlieEscCA has a ground mount. Also, poster BruceRoe, who is probably the resident expert with respect to living with PV in snow country has a ground mount that some might consider a small (?) solar farm, and a lot of practical knowledge based on experience. I don't always agree w/Bruce, but I pay attention to what he writes and give it a lot of consideration. Perhaps he'll be along. If I had the room, I'd have a ground mount - no question. Besides, the tighter a roof get packed = less free area --->>> , the more and greater, in general, do the potential problems, the fixes and the cost/hassle of those fixes become.

              On vendor's sizing: The PVWatts estimates from vendors are influenced by one of the same things I mentioned in my prior post: Vendors make money putting equipment on your property, not necessarily saving you money. Most solar marks are ignorant of sizing and unaware that most any modeling program such as PVWatts van be manipulated rather easily to give just about any desired result. Vendors know this. That desired result of more product on a customer's property just might be helped along by underestimating annual output per installed STC Watt, thereby increasing the system size (and price).

              Whatever a reasonable estimate of annual output might be, good models seem to produce estimates that are reasonably close to one another for the same inputs. That agreement includes, to a slightly lesser degree, shading analyses.

              I believe my est. of 1,150 kWh/yr. per STC kW without shading, and using your supplied conditions with 10% system losses and Utica -Rome TMY3 data to be a reasonable representation of what PVWatts might estimate. Your vendor #1 seems to have gotten the closest, but that may be without shading being considered, with (perhaps) the other vendors did take shading into account, and that explains some of the disparity between quotes with respect to annual output estimates. This is not an exact science. Maybe vendor #1 is the only one that did not consider shading.

              BTW, another benefit of a ground mount is that the array has more location flexibility than a building. Makes working around shading a bit easier. Just sayin'.

              Given your situation, location and climate, if it was me (and locationwise it pretty closely was until 1995), I'd stick with the propane for water heating. The cost of the fuel may be a bit more, but maybe not, given the performance of heat pumps in climates similar to yours, depending on propane prices. Get a bigger tank and fill up in the summer when propane prices are generally lower - but check that out for your area first. Offsetting that possibly greater propane fuel cost is the greater upfront cost of the heat pump and the greater probability of more maint./service costs, and whatever $$ figure you assign to the hassle/PITA factor. Propane water heaters are pretty cheap, pretty dumb and pretty reliable by comparison, and you don't even need beer goggles to see it.

              Good luck.

              Comment


              • #8
                I am in your same geographical area - little south of Oneida Lake on the east side.

                After careful consideration of the all available data, we chose a ground mount as we had lots and lots of land available to do it.

                1. There is nothing called squeezing the vendors too much. I did same as you and had 5 vendors and I asked the questions over and over and was not afraid to push back more.
                2. I think the roof size limitation is forcing the vendors to come back with higher wattage panels, increasing your cost
                3. Ask for a ground mount and increase the panel count to achieve the same total output
                4. Do not fall for the line from vendor that Ground mount is expensive - I heard the same thing and complain about the trenching cost (I said, I will rent a trencher and do it for them in 1 afternoon)
                5. Everything is fair in negotiating - if a vendor takes offense with pushing back they lose their business.

                Can I ask who the vendors you are dealing with - I can share who I finally went with.



                Comment


                • #9
                  I'm thrilled with the great feedback and so very appreciative. My wife is really hesitant to take trees down (she's a professor that teach environmental change, deforestation, etc.). Therefore, to get to 80/81% solar shading, she's only willing to cut one tree down and knows we could get 3-4% more annual coverage by cutting a couple other trees, but won't do it ; while I would cut a few down to get optimal performance.

                  Regarding snow on roof panels, she's been told that only about 10% loss of annual production worst case scenario with 3 months of snow that will occur based on 30 years of weather data analysis due to snow covering panels if the snow doesn't shed.

                  My wife is willing to have the 10% loss rather than cut trees down and go to ground mount. I wish it were easy to put a picture from google earth here, but the long/short of it is, that we really don't have a good location to do ground mount without cutting 8-10 very large trees down. Our property is ~7 acres with about 1/1.5 acres of grass with many trees on the property. My wife also doesn't like the idea of ground mount aesthetics. She is happy making some compromises as am I knowing we lose some benefit that we've bought. Complicating this is that we've priced taking down a few trees and the Return on Investment is >20 years of increased solar productivity (incremental 1-2% total 6-9% increased production). As such, trees have environmental benefits, taking them down won't help materially, so for now they stay.

                  Thanks again.

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Hi @ERiXN,

                    Sounds great, I wish you all the best! I hope you have a nice propane/gasoline generator to manage your sump pumps in the event of a prolonged power outage! I'd hate to see you get flooded. Originally, I was strongly leaning towards an Enphase solution myself. But in the end I went with SolarEdge and I'm really glad I did. Overall I think it's probably the better or the two solutions long term. Few of the reputable vendors I spoke with wanted to do Enphase for fear of their financials and long term reliability.

                    Definitely agree LG or Panasonic would be a more cost effective choice than SP. You might press your top bids to see if they can get realistic timing and pricing on the new LG Neon R's. You'll get a better warranty, and potentially higher percent solar offsets due to the increased yields per panel. Though the 60-cell Neon R panels are slightly larger so this may or may not fit on your roof.

                    Did I read you have ~7 acres? Why aren't you considering ground mount? Especially if you barn has shading / surface area issues? With a ground mount you could step up to 72-cell panels, and perhap even bifacial to improve you yields. Similarly, if you could clear some trees for the ground mount system, you could even go with a regular string inverter instead of micros or optimizers. Though by the time you clear, fence, and trench, it will probably more expensive overall, IMHO, than using the roof of the barn.

                    You've probably already thought of this, but is there anything you can do to reduce your sump pump run frequency/duration/current draw? For example, fewer, larger 240VAC units?
                    https://www.sumppumpsdirect.com/pump...ump-pumps.html

                    A basement below sea/river level. What a "brilliant" idea. Perhaps an indoor pool instead?

                    -Jonathan

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      Originally posted by ERiXN View Post
                      I'm thrilled with the great feedback and so very appreciative. My wife is really hesitant to take trees down (she's a professor that teach environmental change, deforestation, etc.). Therefore, to get to 80/81% solar shading, she's only willing to cut one tree down and knows we could get 3-4% more annual coverage by cutting a couple other trees, but won't do it ; while I would cut a few down to get optimal performance.

                      Regarding snow on roof panels, she's been told that only about 10% loss of annual production worst case scenario with 3 months of snow that will occur based on 30 years of weather data analysis due to snow covering panels if the snow doesn't shed.

                      My wife is willing to have the 10% loss rather than cut trees down and go to ground mount. I wish it were easy to put a picture from google earth here, but the long/short of it is, that we really don't have a good location to do ground mount without cutting 8-10 very large trees down. Our property is ~7 acres with about 1/1.5 acres of grass with many trees on the property. My wife also doesn't like the idea of ground mount aesthetics. She is happy making some compromises as am I knowing we lose some benefit that we've bought. Complicating this is that we've priced taking down a few trees and the Return on Investment is >20 years of increased solar productivity (incremental 1-2% total 6-9% increased production). As such, trees have environmental benefits, taking them down won't help materially, so for now they stay.

                      Thanks again.
                      You're welcome again. Life is indeed a matter of choices. Pay your money, take your choice. Just do the best you can to be informed of the consequences of the choices. and live with the outcomes.

                      Read the book.

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        Originally posted by gcherian View Post
                        I am in your same geographical area - little south of Oneida Lake on the east side.

                        After careful consideration of the all available data, we chose a ground mount as we had lots and lots of land available to do it.

                        1. There is nothing called squeezing the vendors too much. I did same as you and had 5 vendors and I asked the questions over and over and was not afraid to push back more.
                        2. I think the roof size limitation is forcing the vendors to come back with higher wattage panels, increasing your cost
                        3. Ask for a ground mount and increase the panel count to achieve the same total output
                        4. Do not fall for the line from vendor that Ground mount is expensive - I heard the same thing and complain about the trenching cost (I said, I will rent a trencher and do it for them in 1 afternoon)
                        5. Everything is fair in negotiating - if a vendor takes offense with pushing back they lose their business.

                        Can I ask who the vendors you are dealing with - I can share who I finally went with.


                        I was on the seller's side of the negotiation for a long time. Vendor's get squeezed too much and they'll walk away when business is good. Been there - done that. They'll make due when business is bad and/or they need the business and do what they perceive is necessary and use survival as a justification for what can sometimes be what's perhaps viewed as questionable logic and justifications.

                        I appreciate tough negotiations and the tactics that go with them. Been through a lot of them.That's just business and part of life. But unprofessional tactics will bite you in ways you'll never know or understand. Thinking like the other guy will usually get better results in war and negotiations. Both can be equally brutal.

                        Ground mounts generally do tend to cost more, at least in my neighborhood. No doubt some of that is B.S., but trenching and added material as well as likely a fence do not come for free.

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          Originally posted by J.P.M. View Post

                          I was on the seller's side of the negotiation for a long time. Vendor's get squeezed too much and they'll walk away when business is good. Been there - done that. They'll make due when business is bad and/or they need the business and do what they perceive is necessary and use survival as a justification for what can sometimes be what's perhaps viewed as questionable logic and justifications.

                          I appreciate tough negotiations and the tactics that go with them. Been through a lot of them.That's just business and part of life. But unprofessional tactics will bite you in ways you'll never know or understand. Thinking like the other guy will usually get better results in war and negotiations. Both can be equally brutal.

                          Ground mounts generally do tend to cost more, at least in my neighborhood. No doubt some of that is B.S., but trenching and added material as well as likely a fence do not come for free.
                          When the higher price is justifiable then I am completely on board but the difference I was seeing in the quotes were too much and the vendor is not able to justify the difference other than a blanket Ground Mount is expensive. The book does help as more knowledge leads to more informed choices/questions to ask and also informed counter points in negotiation. These days the ground mounts with pile driven or ground screw is not as expensive as the poured concrete foundations. It also requires you to know the ground conditions to know and understand if those options are viable in your specific situation.

                          There is no one answer fits all - the situation is different for each one and we have to make choices based on your specific situation.

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                          • #14
                            Originally posted by gcherian View Post
                            There is no one answer fits all - the situation is different for each one and we have to make choices based on your specific situation.
                            +1.

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                            • #15
                              With shading issues, if one of the lower panels is shaded, it will NOT clear itself, and will become a DAM and prevent snow from uphill panels from clearing too.
                              Wife and I actually watched one array clear itself this last winter, panels were in full sun, and about 1/5 had crept off the array, and vibration from our car triggered the cascade, fun to watch, but bad to be under, or if a lower panel didn't clear, show will either dam up behind it, push the panel clear, or tear the panel off the array.
                              Snow, shade and a high roof are a poor combination. WAF is also (Wife Acceptance Factor) critical.
                              Powerfab top of pole PV mount (2) | Listeroid 6/1 w/st5 gen head | XW6048 inverter/chgr | Iota 48V/15A charger | Morningstar 60A MPPT | 48V, 800A NiFe Battery (in series)| 15, Evergreen 205w "12V" PV array on pole | Midnight ePanel | Grundfos 10 SO5-9 with 3 wire Franklin Electric motor (1/2hp 240V 1ph ) on a timer for 3 hr noontime run - Runs off PV ||
                              || Midnight Classic 200 | 10, Evergreen 200w in a 160VOC array ||
                              || VEC1093 12V Charger | Maha C401 aa/aaa Charger | SureSine | Sunsaver MPPT 15A

                              solar: http://tinyurl.com/LMR-Solar
                              gen: http://tinyurl.com/LMR-Lister

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