SunPower vs SolarWorld/others, price and quality?

[danthi]

Hi Matt. Would you please share the name of the installer that quoted you on the 6.54kW 20 module system. Thank you.

[J.P.M.]

What would a good price to be under where it would be considered a decent deal to consider SunPower modules? I got a quote from an installer who recently started offering them was:
$4.13/dc watt for a 6.54kw 20 module system
when i asked for a quote on slightly larger system
$4.00/dc watt for a 7.194kw 22 module system

Sunpower is quality stuff for which they extract a high premium. Think of a Mercedes vs. a Toyota for hauling groceries. You can get as good an annual output for about a buck/Watt less before tax credit with just about anyone else's panel. If cost effectiveness, long or short term, has any place in your decision making process, Sunpower's overpriced for what you get.

[sensij]

Noblesoft included a link to SRE in post 19. Just click it.

[Anjen]

Who is SRE, at 3.35 per is very inexpensive compared to what I have gotten. Please share.

[mattp]

What would a good price to be under where it would be considered a decent deal to consider SunPower modules? I got a quote from an installer who recently started offering them was:
$4.13/dc watt for a 6.54kw 20 module system
when i asked for a quote on slightly larger system
$4.00/dc watt for a 7.194kw 22 module system

[Noblesoft]

How do you calculate the per kilowatt pricing I see. The quotes I am getting a lump sum for a system. Maybe I am overthinking this, any help would be appreciated.

Pretty simple, just take your total system price (before incentives) and divide by your system size in watts. You can get your system size by multiplying the wattage of your panels by the quantity of panels you're getting.

[Anjen]

How do you calculate the per kilowatt pricing I see. The quotes I am getting a lump sum for a system. Maybe I am overthinking this, any help would be appreciated.

[Noblesoft]

I got a quote back from SRE today for an LG system using their 315w panels and my option of SolarEdge or Enphase for inverters. His pricing is indeed very fair, coming in around $3.35 for me. I was sold on Enphase until recently, now I suppose I could be convinced either way. They both seem to have the same capabilities more or less. Enphase has the benefit of being more modular with a longer warranty, SolarEdge has the benefit of being in an easy-to-maintain area (rather than up on the roof in the punishing heat), and less expensive. Beyond that, I've read a lot about the two and they seem fairly comparable.

Still going to check out one or two more offers. Also actively beating up a SunPower rep to see if I can get them to match the prices I am seeing on the CSI database. They're having a hard time.

[randomuser]

I'm hoping in 25 years, cold fusion will be a reality, where energy is free and we'll all look back at our foolish decision to install solar. One can hope. I signed my contract on Friday and the permit drawings and info was sent to me over the weekend. So far, so good. Let's see how long my city takes to approve the permit.

[Noblesoft]

Noblesoft, sorry for hijacking your topic.

No worries! This is all relevant information to me as well.

In my case, my usage was 10,580 kwh over the past 12 months... so I sized my system for 10,500 (100% offset). That said, we used to be even higher, and we've been conserving a lot... leaving the AC off when it's 90 outside, switched all our bulbs to LED, invested in smartthings and nest to turn things off when we leave, etc. Hence my supposition that our usage will only go up now that we're generating our own energy.

Regarding the contract stuff, I'll definitely be looking into the contracts closely. I usually do anyway, especially for smaller companies, because they usually haven't had a team of lawyers write it, and there can be some weird stuff in there.

And to your point about 25 years being an eternity, agreed. 25 years ago, if you were putting solar panels on your roof, you were an exception, and likely spending 2x-3x what you're paying today. I'd venture a guess that in 25 years we'll have that "solar paint" or "solar shingle" all hammered out, and it will be standard on all construction.

I reached out to Stephen over at SRE, and will be getting a quote for an LG system, too. I name-dropped this forum, and he mentioned that he did indeed recently get a customer from these forums... so hopefully my name-dropping gets me a good deal, too.

I've also been using the CSI database to great effect, pushing back on the prices I've already gotten... seeing if I can get a deal in the bottom % of deals over the last year, rather than the middle/top of the pack. Hopefully it works... to the informed go the spoils of research!

[sensij]

I can be reached by emailing my user name @yahoo.com. Without a closer look at consumption history, and some discussion of the risks of TOU changes, I can't say it is a mistake. However, my guess is that a smaller system would probably achieve your goals.

[randomuser]

With respect to your usage today and in the future, it sounds like you might benefit from taking some time to understand TOU rates, as others have suggested. Especially when EV's are involved, if you can limit your charging to overnight hours, you can essentially pay less than Tier 1 prices for as much energy as you need. I have an EV that more or less doubled my household energy consumption... my PV system produced something approaching 5500 kWh in the last year, I consumed close to 8000 kWh, and I will finish my year with TOU credits on the books having only paid minimum bills. (official numbers coming soon... I'm in my 12th month now and wil get my true-up statement at the end of the month). I am very, very glad I did not spend extra for a system that would have generated 8000 kWh... that would have been money spent that might not ever get recovered.

Sensij, I'm wondering what your usage was without the EV? I use about 5000 kWh now but plan on purchasing an EV after the solar installation. I sized my system to generate about 8000kWh. Is that a big oops on my part?

Noblesoft, sorry for hijacking your topic. I wish I could PM Sensij this question. Sensij, if you want to take this offline, you can email me.

[randomuser]

I thought when people report on $/watt for a solar system, if there's electrical panel work, that's not included in the cost. Noblesoft, are you adding the panel upgrade into your calculation? That would make your calculation different from mine. I don't need a panel upgrade, so if you're adding your cost of that in, then our pricing isn't apples to apples. Or if someone has to perform roof repair, that would be a different apple too.

Oh, I don't know if you've asked some of your contractors for a contract for their proposed system install. I went with my installer partly because of the contracts from different companies. For me, I disagreed with every contract I read from every company. One seemed to be written by a 3rd grader. I was super surprised and actually asked every one of them if people just sign away $20 - 30K without reading the contract first. My guess is that's the case. No spell check. Really??!! This sort of made me think that large companies aren't big because they've learned more lessons and offer a better product (product meaning the people knowledge and labor of the company, not hardware product used).

I thought about the Sunpower warranty over and over too. My wife kept saying to just get a Sunpower system to sleep soundly at night with their warranty. I need about a 15 year warranty I think. If I outlive a 25 year warranty, that'd be great. I'm too old to think a 25 year warranty is meaningful for me. So the LG and SolarEdge 12 year warranties work for me. SolarEdge has 20 year and 25 year extended warranties for peace of mind but for me, I look at this part as something I'll replace down the road. The $300 or $500 upfront insurance is something I'll not get. I hope that I get 15 years from my inverter and at that time, the cost of a new one will be 1/4 the price of what I buy today. Does Moore's Law work with solar equipment?

For me, over my course of learning about solar from this forum and other websites, I got more into watching training videos on Youtube for Quick Mount PV and IronRidge than about the panels and inverters. Again, my paranoia about roof leaks.

Good luck with your journey. I'm glad to have got to the point of selecting my installer. Hope this is the easy part, compared to the work in the selection process.

[Noblesoft]

Thanks for all the input Sensij!

Great point on the 'inflation' factor. Indeed, today's dollar is worth much more 20 years from now. Hard math, but worth considering. I think your approach is probably best... just shoot for as short of a return-on-investment period as possible, to limit the impact of inflation on your initial investment.

I'm no stranger to Tier 3 and Tier 4 unfortunately, so my average utility cost over the last 12 months has been more like $.23/watt. SCE continues to push up their rates, especially the lower tiers, so I anticipate this will only get worse as time goes on. I did a calculation assuming a steady 6% increase in average kWh cost for utilities, and it came out to something like $.425/watt paid over the same 20 year period... so I guess that also factors into my effective payback period. Not sure how realistic the constant 6% increase is, but over the past few years it's been that.

Unfortunately, no installer short of this last one has taken the time to bring my potential shading issues to my attention. Perhaps they were waiting until I approved the initial quote to bring it up... :P

Regarding the upside/downside to an "AC panel"... given SunPower's comprehensive* warranty (*validity TBD), one would expect that a failure of the inverter would lead to a full panel replacement, which would be a 'positive' rather than a 'negative', no? That gives me a fresh panel and inverter whenever any one of the two fails... and since the inverters are more likely to fail, it seems to me like I would be getting new panels with 'fresh legs.' Seems like tying these two components at the hip is not only logical, but financially beneficial, as long as the warranty covers them... or am I reading this wrong? Of course, if the warranty isn't really comprehensive, then it could be that the failure of a particular component is not actually covered, which would make replacing the whole kit more expensive since I cannot replace just the part that failed. I guess it all comes down to how solid the warranty is.

Point taken on the $4/watt comment from the installer. I could have misinterpreted what he was trying to say. He could have also had no actual idea, and was just making up nonsense. Seems to me the cost of the panels are probably more in the $2 range, and the rest is labor/permits/etc.

I downloaded the CSI database and did some sorting... looks like the best price for a system of my size sold in the last year for the proposed panels and DC system size was just over $20k... that seems like an outlier though, as the next closest is $25,800, and the average looks to be more like $35k. I couldn't find an exact comparison for my system though, due to the aforementioned "odd duck" problem... almost all of the installs in the database were with SPR-E20-327 panels and SMA inverters. I figure it should be fairly comperable, though. The average price doesn't help me much... but I could potentially make the case that I am an "informed customer", and thus should be getting "better than average" pricing. I'll see if it flies.


All SunPower business aside, your thoughts on the SolarWorld/Phonosolar quotes, if any? Keep looking?

Thanks for all your time!

[sensij]

Yes, you are calculating $/W correctly. Your panels are an odd duck in that the inverter is "built-in"... a microinverter that is factory installed. That means your panel cost would be more comparable to a more generic panel + inverter cost. In any case, $4/W for "just the panels" with only 0.53 / W for everything else is an outright lie. The downside to AC panels, as they are sometimes called, is that if the inverter fails (it will, eventually), it might mean the whole panel needs to be replaced. Or, if something unlikely happens to the panel, you may have to replace the inverter with it.

With respect to your average cost of generation, I would encourage you to apply some sort of discount rate to account for the fact that you are playing in today's dollars for energy 20 years from now. A lot can happen in 20 years that could change the outcome... personally, I really wanted a system that would pay for itself in no more than 8 years, and as primarily a Tier 1 customer (before the EV), getting a deal to achieve that took a lot of research and time talking.

Of course, take whatever calculation you use and see how it comes out for the non Sunpower quotes. It is true that Sunpower could save you money over utility rates, but it is also true that SolarCity leases could save you money too. Just saving a little bit of money doesn't make it a good deal, when you could be saving thousands more.

The parameters you used for your PVwatts run sound about right for estimating the generation potential. The financial calculation it offers is really basic... I wouldn't rely on it for much.

With respect to your usage today and in the future, it sounds like you might benefit from taking some time to understand TOU rates, as others have suggested. Especially when EV's are involved, if you can limit your charging to overnight hours, you can essentially pay less than Tier 1 prices for as much energy as you need. I have an EV that more or less doubled my household energy consumption... my PV system produced something approaching 5500 kWh in the last year, I consumed close to 8000 kWh, and I will finish my year with TOU credits on the books having only paid minimum bills. (official numbers coming soon... I'm in my 12th month now and wil get my true-up statement at the end of the month). I am very, very glad I did not spend extra for a system that would have generated 8000 kWh... that would have been money spent that might not ever get recovered.

TOU rules will change, and the benefit is likely to be reduced, but even under the proposed plans they can still be a better deal than sticking with the default tiered plans. Spreadsheets exist that can help model the costs under different rate plans on your past or projected consumption (with or without solar), and you should be able to download that consumption history from your utility website at hourly granularity or maybe even 15 min.

Edit:
I didn't comment on shade... that can be a really big deal. There are tools that can fairly accurately predict the impact of shade throughout the year, and any competent installer should be able to do the analysis and share the results with you.