NJ install - questions on size and micro-converter vs optimizer

[robstrash]

I was fixing up the home network and wireless on Saturday afternoon and opened up the SolarEdge app to make sure it was being updated and noticed it had a non-zero value as current power (it was finally sunny after 2" of rain). It seemed to work Sunday as well. GPE called today and said that SE pushed a software update out on Friday and it appears to have fixed the issue. GPE said they'll be monitoring all week and of course I will be too. Too bad it failed on one of the sunniest days we've had all month. Oh well, let's hope the clouds stay away and all works fine going forward.

[NJturtlePower]

I was fixing up the home network and wireless on Saturday afternoon and opened up the SolarEdge app to make sure it was being updated and noticed it had a non-zero value as current power (it was finally sunny after 2" of rain). It seemed to work Sunday as well. GPE called today and said that SE pushed a software update out on Friday and it appears to have fixed the issue. GPE said they'll be monitoring all week and of course I will be too. Too bad it failed on one of the sunniest days we've had all month. Oh well, let's hope the clouds stay away and all works fine going forward.

So how did this all play out Rob? All good and soaking in the solar rays now?

1/29 and 1/30 were pretty solid production days along with today....

[robstrash]

So how did this all play out Rob? All good and soaking in the solar rays now?

1/29 and 1/30 were pretty solid production days along with today....

Yep, all is going well, had about 39 kWh on those 2 days and already there today at 2pm so hoping can go higher. Power bill came over the weekend and had about 300 kWh taken off (about 1/3 usage) so that's nice. Obviously will be higher in the summer with more sun time. Here is my link: https://pvoutput.org/list.jsp?userid=82366

Is there a way to view the individual panels to make sure none is having a problem? Not sure if need to be admin in SolarEdge to see that as I don't have it now. I was going to have my GPE meeting next Friday but realized I have to be out that day so moving it to the following week.

[Ampster]

.........
Is there a way to view the individual panels to make sure none is having a problem? Not sure if need to be admin in SolarEdge to see that as I don't have it now. .......

Look for the layout tab on the monitoring website. My installer made that available even though I don't have admin privileges.

[robstrash]

Look for the layout tab on the monitoring website. My installer made that available even though I don't have admin privileges.

Looks like I need to call installer as I only have Home while on screen shots in earlier post I can see others have the Layout choice. Thanks!

Update: just called and it took about 10 minutes but now the Layout choice appears. They weren't sure how it wasn't added when I went live as it usually is but all good now.

[NJturtlePower]

Look for the layout tab on the monitoring website. My installer made that available even though I don't have admin privileges.

@robstrash as Ampster mentioned, you're going to want to request the additional SE access (Owner or otherwise) for the Panel Layout views.

Super useful for pinpointing any issues and there is even a time-lapse playback feature so you can see how the solar exposure changes over the arrays throughout the day.

So when you open the app you don't see this tab at all currently?

IMG_2760.PNG

[robstrash]

I finally did get all access set up and had my first full month of solar and I banked 38 kWh!!! I'm pretty sure the much warmer than usual February helped with the power bill. Power bill was $2.78 which is the fee for having the account so I'm happy. I also hit my first SREC after about 5 weeks so that's good. I have my GATS account set up but I still need to set up my Flett Exchange account (been lazy). Today is a beautiful sunny day and I'm enjoying a great start to March!

[NJturtlePower]

I finally did get all access set up and had my first full month of solar and I banked 38 kWh!!! I'm pretty sure the much warmer than usual February helped with the power bill. Power bill was $2.78 which is the fee for having the account so I'm happy. I also hit my first SREC after about 5 weeks so that's good. I have my GATS account set up but I still need to set up my Flett Exchange account (been lazy). Today is a beautiful sunny day and I'm enjoying a great start to March!

That's a start.... I'm still running in the red, but think I'll see my first banked kWh this month.

Check out NJSREC for your trades. No account needed, no fees or commissions and you'll receive a hard check in the mail a few days after your trade. I've used them once back in Dec., easy enough using the instructions on their website, so I'll likely continue with them every quarter or so.

I just earned my 5th SREC over the final days of Feb.

[NYHeel]

A bit of cut and paste from our email exchange, but with some thoughts on pricing and equipment as well.

In my opinion an installers reputation, responsiveness and local presence is just as important if not more so than the actual solar hardware and warranty.

GPE has a strong presence in the local community here in Hunterdon County, NJ. They were just at our local 4-H fair and if you follow them on Facebook are active in NJ clean energy politics often meeting with state representatives trying to solidify our solar incentives and programs which is of course in their interest, but also the solar owners and soon-to-be owners.

I like to read their owner follow up case studies they post from time to time on FB as well. https://www.facebook.com/gpenergy/

As far as panel layout and system sizing what's the basic direction of your arrays?

If it's mostly southern, guessing south east by the image above, with good exposure maybe consider another 2 panels on that lower roof for added production and overhead for growth? Considering the strong NJ SREC market and current Federal credit the added upfront cost may be well worth it IMO.

My other suggestion is to push Tim a bit on yourcash pricing... with my financed system there was a 30+ cent gap between the QCells ($2.97 p/w) and Panasonic ($3.30) . Of course larger systems (mine 12.35kW) will have lower price per watt overall, but see if the 30 panel system helps you out in that regard.

Optimizers vs Micro Inverters....Electronics in general (solar or not) are more prone to failure in areas of temperature extremes and drastic fluctuations, FACT.

So for the same reason I chose (based on advice from here) to put my SE inverter in my semi-conditioned/protected basement vs an outside exposed wall is the same reason I would lean away from putting any more on the roof, especially the more complex/sensitive micro inverters. Warranties are comparable with both brands and dealers, GPE by default upgrades all SolarEdge components to 25-years and that's great and all, but in the end it's something you want to know is there but never actually use.

Bottom line, neither units (optimizers or micro-inverters) have been around or physically installed for 25-years in any case so it's a bit of faith we are going on anyways, same with the panels themselves, although they are even simpler and more robust in design by default.

Do the Exact Solar quotes include any squirrel/critter guards as GPE does by default? None of my other quotes did, but they offered them as an add on which would run $1000-$1500 depending on the system sizing per linear foot.

And about the reroof..I found the GPE sub (Costello Roofing) seamless, their communication was as good as GPE themselves and their pricing was great compared to some local quotes which made using them a no-brainer considering the availability to roll it all into the "site prep" of our solar loan.

Was just reading this and I used GPE back in spring 2016 for my installation. It could be that their policy changed but GPE did not upgrade my SE warranty to 25 years. I believe I have the standard 10 or 12 year warranty on my inverter. Also, they did not install any squirrel guards. Just curious if these are changes they made recently.

I did have an optimizer fail last year and GPE was pretty good at getting it repaired under warranty. Just make sure you're monitoring the per panel production every now and then. I use PVOutput to monitor my production and didn't notice that one panel wasn't producing for almost a month. So make sure to check the individual panel production every now and then.

I did have some odd issue where one of my arrays just didn't wake up in the morning and was out for either half a day or a full day. Was quite annoying but it hasn't recurred so not sure what that issue was. GPE did update the firmware on my inverter and hopefully that odd issue doesn't recur.

Lastly, the overall weather has been really bad in NJ the last 3 years. I've under-produced a very conservative PVWatts estimate every year by a good amount. Using a 14% system loss input I've produced at -8.9%, -14.0% and -9.5% for my full three years I've been installed. (Though I was slightly ahead for the 5 months of production in the end of 2016.) In fact I've only beaten the PVWatts monthly estimate in one of the last 29 months. The weird thing is that everything appears to be working properly. My peaks are where they're supposed to be and good days generally perform close to what the good days are supposed to perform. It's just cloudy a lot more than PVWatts thinks it's going to be. Not sure if it's just been a bad 3 years or if the PVWatts weather data is bad. With all that said, I'm still doing quite well on my investment because of the NJ SREC system. The only flaw with solar in NJ is that the net metering rules have you banking kWh instead of banking dollars. Or at least that's what PSE&G does. This means that you don't get the added value of banking more expensive kWh in the summer and you really can't use a Time of Use option. It makes getting an electric car more expensive since you can't use TOU. But I'm not buying an EV anytime soon so I'm ok.

[sunpoweredev]

That's a start.... I'm still running in the red, but think I'll see my first banked kWh this month.

Check out NJSREC for your trades. No account needed, no fees or commissions and you'll receive a hard check in the mail a few days after your trade. I've used them once back in Dec., easy enough using the instructions on their website, so I'll likely continue with them every quarter or so.

I just earned my 5th SREC over the final days of Feb.

Unless we go and put more than our usual 1500-2000 miles on the car, this should be a surplus month I still have not received any kind of acknowledgement from JCP&L on my anniversary reset though. Called a couple weeks back and was basically told yeah we got it don't worry about it :/

NJSREC is great. I made the mistake of entering the dollar value on my certificates when I last transferred to them (entered based on calendar year instead of engergy year). Emailed them and they immediately replied and said they'll correct it on their end (~$20 difference). Really love that they don't even need you to create an account.

Was just reading this and I used GPE back in spring 2016 for my installation. It could be that their policy changed but GPE did not upgrade my SE warranty to 25 years. I believe I have the standard 10 or 12 year warranty on my inverter. Also, they did not install any squirrel guards. Just curious if these are changes they made recently.

I did have an optimizer fail last year and GPE was pretty good at getting it repaired under warranty. Just make sure you're monitoring the per panel production every now and then. I use PVOutput to monitor my production and didn't notice that one panel wasn't producing for almost a month. So make sure to check the individual panel production every now and then.

I did have some odd issue where one of my arrays just didn't wake up in the morning and was out for either half a day or a full day. Was quite annoying but it hasn't recurred so not sure what that issue was. GPE did update the firmware on my inverter and hopefully that odd issue doesn't recur.

Lastly, the overall weather has been really bad in NJ the last 3 years. I've under-produced a very conservative PVWatts estimate every year by a good amount. Using a 14% system loss input I've produced at -8.9%, -14.0% and -9.5% for my full three years I've been installed. (Though I was slightly ahead for the 5 months of production in the end of 2016.) In fact I've only beaten the PVWatts monthly estimate in one of the last 29 months. The weird thing is that everything appears to be working properly. My peaks are where they're supposed to be and good days generally perform close to what the good days are supposed to perform. It's just cloudy a lot more than PVWatts thinks it's going to be. Not sure if it's just been a bad 3 years or if the PVWatts weather data is bad. With all that said, I'm still doing quite well on my investment because of the NJ SREC system. The only flaw with solar in NJ is that the net metering rules have you banking kWh instead of banking dollars. Or at least that's what PSE&G does. This means that you don't get the added value of banking more expensive kWh in the summer and you really can't use a Time of Use option. It makes getting an electric car more expensive since you can't use TOU. But I'm not buying an EV anytime soon so I'm ok.

According to some of the earlier GPE customers here, yes GPE has upped the equipment used such as the racking system and the inclusion of the squirrel guards.

Perhaps there's something I'm not totally understanding, but banking kWh vs dollars makes no difference to me. This is my first winter with the solar system and we used way more than it produced (we have an EV). We were billed ~1200kWh for December, compared to 0 in August - November. I expect that the surplus production starting this month will get us through next winter without getting billed kWh. Same with charging the EV even without TOU. Whatever I use to charge at night (probably averages 20kWh a day used), the system will put back when it starts generating in the morning.

[JSchnee21]

"It could be that their policy changed but GPE did not upgrade my SE warranty to 25 years" -- I think I paid extra for this in 2017 -- maybe $400-600 (I forget). But I wasn't really "given a choice" GPE said, "you'll want to upgrade to 25yrs" (and I did anyway) so I said yes and they added it into my quote from the get go.

The critter guards came as a surprise. I wasn't aware of them (as a product/need) and so I didn't ask about them. I don't recall seeing a line item for them. But GPE said they were included, so I got them. There was a bit of a delay for the install, but the guy who did it (from CritterGuard) was great. They are not super attractive, and leaves build up at the bottom (a little), but I have so many squirrels, chipmunks, birds, etc. constantly running around on my roof / gutters it's a necessity IMHO.

Knock on wood, so far so good, coming up on 3 yrs. So far, in 2020, I've made 1.54 MWh and consumed, 1.55 MWh. I typically go net positive in mid March until the HVAC and foliage kicks in by July/Aug and then use up my banked credit by Sept/Oct.