Coming Soon to NJ - 12.35 kW Hanwha DUO-G5 + SolarEdge Inverter/Optimizers by GPE

[macaddict]

So here she is....The system was completed yesterday with the panel install and electrical both inside and out.

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Little annoyed that I was receiving emails by mid-day from Sungage Financial to release my initial payment to GPE stating, "Green Power Energy informed us that construction of your project is complete". Come on guys..... email came through at about 3:30pm and meanwhile the crew was still onsite and wrapping things up after 6pm.

During my final walk around I did have to point out some trash in the yard (cut rail ends, wire clippings, wire ties) to the foreman/electrician Paul, as well as a water bottle I could see under one of the arrays. He seemed kinda annoyed at his two "helpers" for not being more thorough and proactive.

Anyways, I know how it is having run crews in the field years ago. Sometimes you rather just do everything yourself rather than babysit. So much thanks to Paul, as he was very receptive to me and any request or question I had for him. On my request he took his time to hide the wire runs from the lower garage roof through the attic vs on the surface and also carefully mounted the inverter/meter/disconnect on my prepped mounting board centered on my custom very "Green" basement wall. He also corrected our main panel grounding situation with an extra ground rod and noted that the main service lines were lacking bushings coming into the panel which the town inspector obviously missed as well.

I guess I'll have to follow up the company who charged me a good chunk of change to swap the whole thing out just about a year ago.

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So now the wait begins again for our final inspections and PTO..... To be continued.....

Interesting that they still installed the separate production / SREC meter even though you got the inverter with the revenue grade meter built-in. What happens if they don't match?

[NJturtlePower]

So here she is....The system was completed yesterday with the panel install and electrical both inside and out.

IMG_1372e.jpgIMG_1373.JPEGIMG_1375.JPEG

Little annoyed that I was receiving emails by mid-day from Sungage Financial to release my initial payment to GPE stating, "Green Power Energy informed us that construction of your project is complete". Come on guys..... email came through at about 3:30pm and meanwhile the crew was still onsite and wrapping things up after 6pm.

During my final walk around I did have to point out some trash in the yard (cut rail ends, wire clippings, wire ties) to the foreman/electrician Paul, as well as a water bottle I could see under one of the arrays. He seemed kinda annoyed at his two "helpers" for not being more thorough and proactive.

Anyways, I know how it is having run crews in the field years ago. Sometimes you rather just do everything yourself rather than babysit. So much thanks to Paul, as he was very receptive to me and any request or question I had for him. On my request he took his time to hide the wire runs from the lower garage roof through the attic vs on the surface and also carefully mounted the inverter/meter/disconnect on my prepped mounting board centered on my custom very "Green" basement wall. He also corrected our main panel grounding situation with an extra ground rod and noted that the main service lines were lacking bushings coming into the panel which the town inspector obviously missed as well.

I guess I'll have to follow up the company who charged me a good chunk of change to swap the whole thing out just about a year ago.

IMG_1370.JPEGIMG_1371e.jpgIMG_1368.JPEG

So now the wait begins again for our final inspections and PTO..... To be continued.....

[NJturtlePower]

NJturtlePower so this is the progress over 2 full days of work? Your crew moves a lot faster than mine then, although my install is perhaps more complicated than yours. IIRC it was day 3 before they got to put up the optimizers.

Wow $305, yeah hope you get your PTO ASAP. GPE was on top of everything every step of the way. Hope it's smooth sailing with your town inspection and JCP&L

Our highest electric bill ever was probably $200, before adding the Tesla (or the new roof). Last month it was $180. We average 1500 miles a month on the car. Comparing apples and oranges here but those are our numbers.

Those are good stats that TeslaFi keeps. I do keep a mental record of my daily drive, daily miles driven and efficiency. I've been this way since my very first car.

BTW, you might as well get the ball rolling now and request for full admin access to your inverter. At first they gave m the most basic which is just the dashboard. Couple of emails later now I have panel layout. I sent another email requesting full admin access. Let's see how that goes..

You're telling me! So ready to start banking some SREC's too.

You have your PJM-EIS GAT's account all set I'm guessing.... GPE coordinates that?

Yeah, before the Tesla our highest bill was about $220, but I definitely drive a lot more than I did before partially just because I enjoy it so much and the rest is getting into the grind of multiple kid drop off spots and events. I use to average about 8,500-9,500mi per year, but I'm on track for about 12k in my first full Model 3 year.

What department at GPE have you been in contact with to get the inverter access freed up? Any explanation why they restrict so much off the bat?

I don't think they can do much for me YET since the inferter was only tested but not configured but I'll have it on my list of to-do's.

[sunpoweredev]

NJturtlePower so this is the progress over 2 full days of work? Your crew moves a lot faster than mine then, although my install is perhaps more complicated than yours. IIRC it was day 3 before they got to put up the optimizers.

Wow $305, yeah hope you get your PTO ASAP. GPE was on top of everything every step of the way. Hope it's smooth sailing with your town inspection and JCP&L

Our highest electric bill ever was probably $200, before adding the Tesla (or the new roof). Last month it was $180. We average 1500 miles a month on the car. Comparing apples and oranges here but those are our numbers. With second full day of solar production, per the new JCP&L electric meter, we used 19kWh in the past 3 days, since I first noticed the meter was first put on Monday morning. The 19kWh figure will go up since the car is being charged right now. If we have another day tomorrow like it was today, I expect to be at a surplus

73kWh generated today. Peak output I saw was 11.4kW. Wait.. that is the max output of my inverter didn't hit me until now, that I'll never see the full 12.21kW output because the inverter is 11.4kW. I actually never expected to even peak at 11.4kW because my panels are all over the roof and face different directions. I am happy with what I saw today.

Those are good stats that TeslaFi keeps. I do keep a mental record of my daily drive, daily miles driven and efficiency. I've been this way since my very first car.

BTW, you might as well get the ball rolling now and request for full admin access to your inverter. At first they gave m the most basic which is just the dashboard. Couple of emails later now I have panel layout. I sent another email requesting full admin access. Let's see how that goes..

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[NJturtlePower]

So to update, GPE has been at it with the racking, rail and wiring install over the past two day... 76 mounting points total for my 38 panel system spanning 3 different roof faces.

Some progress pix attached below....

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PTO can't come soon enough after getting our latest and LARGEST electric bill to date.

JCP&L July 2019 Bill = $305.32 for 2,069 kWh used including EV charging which I estimate at about $50 (including efficiency losses) via TeslaFi for the close to 800 miles driven in the month.

[macaddict]

You can see the serial number of the optimizers but not the panels.
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[J.P.M.]

As far as linking the S/N's to the arrays, dunno about that but isn't any of that info already tagged in the SolarEdge portal?

I don't know. One of the many things I'm ignorant about, but it won't hurt to have the info as a backup.

[sunpoweredev]

Yeah, that's been my feeling from the start about the consumption meter, so you see how much you use, when you use it, and where the draw is coming from, but so what..... Unless it's something you might replace with a more efficient one, what you use is what it is and I already know what my biggest single draw is currently my Model 3 which I track via TeslaFi. If you haven't already tried it, and want to get an extra 2-week trial (full month total) use my username here (NJturtlePower - CASE SENSITIVE) at sign up.

So yeah, if it's not there I definitely won't be adding it.

Paul my foreman is the GPE electrician (or at least one of them) so he'll be doing most of that part of the install planned for tomorrow.

I already prepped my basement with an ethernet switch and moved a few devices to hardwired while I was at it to clean up my WiFi traffic. I have an inverter dedicated ethernet cable ready to plug-n-play when the time comes.

Right now I don't really know if what I'm looking at is provided because I have the consumption meter. GPE only granted me very limited access, but as it is now, production and consumption numbers are continually updated in realtime on the phone app and on the web browser. If that realtime capability is provided by the consumption meter, then I'm happy to have it. I only even brought up the consumption meter when arguing with my rep about trading in the cellular option for something more useful. I'll update you once GPE gets me full access to see all the info.

I started another thread as not to clog up yours, and posted some very preliminary production numbers, in case you're interested in seeing.

[NJturtlePower]

Small point: If you don't have a record already, record the serial numbers of the panels and if appropriate, the optimizers and if possible, match S/N's with array location for future reference.

Good tip! I snapped a picture of the panel S/N listing and I think I saw the optimizer S/N decals on the boxes. I'll ask the guys to save and of that stuff for me.

As far as linking the S/N's to the arrays, dunno about that but isn't any of that info already tagged in the SolarEdge portal?

[J.P.M.]

Yes, they'll be FINALLY starting today! 😬

Just got the supplies delivered this morning, but didn't go through all the boxes yet.

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Awesome about your PTO.... So how many days since the system test total?

Small point: If you don't have a record already, record the serial numbers of the panels and if appropriate, the optimizers and if possible, match S/N's with array location for future reference.

[NJturtlePower]

My install took 4 full days, plus the electrician on day 5 which took 2-3 hours IIRC.

I'm not even sure if I'm seeing the extra info provided by the consumption meter yet. I plugged in my Model 3 for a few seconds to see how much it draws (~7kW once it reached the full 40A) and it did register the load from the Solar Edge monitoring app. I tried to lookup what addition info I'm suppose to see with the consumption meter but so far I can't tell what one will see with and without the consumption meter. From what I'm seeing now, it's definitely not worth the additional expense had I have to pay for it.

BTW, when the second electrician came on day of inspection, it was when the inverter was setup and final connections made. This was when I told them don't bother installing the cellular module and handed him an Ethernet cable from my wifi bridge right above the inverter.

Yeah, that's been my feeling from the start about the consumption meter, so you see how much you use, when you use it, and where the draw is coming from, but so what..... Unless it's something you might replace with a more efficient one, what you use is what it is and I already know what my biggest single draw is currently my Model 3 which I track via TeslaFi. If you haven't already tried it, and want to get an extra 2-week trial (full month total) use my username here (NJturtlePower - CASE SENSITIVE) at sign up.

So yeah, if it's not there I definitely won't be adding it.

Paul my foreman is the GPE electrician (or at least one of them) so he'll be doing most of that part of the install planned for tomorrow.

I already prepped my basement with an ethernet switch and moved a few devices to hardwired while I was at it to clean up my WiFi traffic. I have an inverter dedicated ethernet cable ready to plug-n-play when the time comes.

[sunpoweredev]

Good to know about the PTO timeline, I'm sure it will vary town to town, but better than expected either way!

Paul the GPE forman onsite told me my town doesn't require any rough inspections, just the final, so guess that's better than others. We just walked through the 3-day install plan starting with the racking and pre-wiring today.

I can confirm I did get the RGM inverter I requested, but no mention of the lucky meter on the list, but fingers crossed it was just thrown in the bundle like yours was.

My install took 4 full days, plus the electrician on day 5 which took 2-3 hours IIRC.

I'm not even sure if I'm seeing the extra info provided by the consumption meter yet. I plugged in my Model 3 for a few seconds to see how much it draws (~7kW once it reached the full 40A) and it did register the load from the Solar Edge monitoring app. I tried to lookup what addition info I'm suppose to see with the consumption meter but so far I can't tell what one will see with and without the consumption meter. From what I'm seeing now, it's definitely not worth the additional expense had I have to pay for it.

BTW, when the second electrician came on day of inspection, it was when the inverter was setup and final connections made. This was when I told them don't bother installing the cellular module and handed him an Ethernet cable from my wifi bridge right above the inverter.

[NJturtlePower]

It was 2.5 weeks from the time the GPE rep turned on the system for the town inspection, although it was one week after the physical inspection that the town actually issued the certificate of approval, which was when the final paperwork for interconnection was submitted to JCP&L. If I don't count that week, JCP&L took 1.5 weeks from the time I signed the final interconnection paperwork.

Hope you also received that consumption meter

Good to know about the PTO timeline, I'm sure it will vary town to town, but better than expected either way!

Paul the GPE forman onsite told me my town doesn't require any rough inspections, just the final, so guess that's better than others. We just walked through the 3-day install plan starting with the racking and pre-wiring today.

I can confirm I did get the RGM inverter I requested, but no mention of the lucky meter on the list, but fingers crossed it was just thrown in the bundle like yours was.

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[sunpoweredev]

Yes, they'll be FINALLY starting today! 😬

Just got the supplies delivered this morning, but didn't go through all the boxes yet.

Awesome about your PTO.... So how many days since the system test total?

It was 2.5 weeks from the time the GPE rep turned on the system for the town inspection, although it was one week after the physical inspection that the town actually issued the certificate of approval, which was when the final paperwork for interconnection was submitted to JCP&L. If I don't count that week, JCP&L took 1.5 weeks from the time I signed the final interconnection paperwork.

Hope you also received that consumption meter

[NJturtlePower]

NJturtlePower any updates on your install? I received PTO yesterday

Yes, they'll be FINALLY starting today! 😬

Just got the supplies delivered this morning, but didn't go through all the boxes yet.

IMG_1346.JPG

Awesome about your PTO.... So how many days since the system test total?