Ten
Year Review on an On-Grid Solar System
Al Ritter
I just realized that during the time I was banned from
making posts on the blogsite I had installed an on grid solar system and I had
never written about it. So here it goes, I’ll tell you why I made the choices I
did and what I have received in return.
To begin with you have basically two immediate choices
to make. On-Grid System which works to feed back any extra current you make to
use later or be paid for by your local power company. Now you have two choices
to make here also, whether to outright purchase the system or to lease it from
a company such as Solar City. The leased system mainly gives you a big
discounted rate on electric use, but the monetary benefits from government
rebates and sales of SRECS (solar renewable energy certificates) goes back into
the pocket of the leasing company. With an owned system you get to reap ALL the
benefits. The next choice is an off-grid system (meaning free from any grid
system tie in. The way this works is for the panels to supply dc voltage by way
of a battery bank to be stored in the batteries then redistributed through a
larger inverter to be turned into AC current and sent through the house. This
type of system is usually cost prohibitive and should probably only be
considered if you have no electric to your homestead.
Now the sales of SRECS is a floating market and
normally handled by your installer that follows the market closely and makes a
trade when it’s most advantageous for you and them because they get an administrative
fee on that sale. Sometimes it’s multiple times a year and sometimes it’s just
once. My checks have varied from $40 to over $200 depending on the market price
during the time of sale.
Now on to the meat and potatoes part. The system is
comprised of 23 solar panels with micro invertors underneath each panel, the
reason for that is because if one panel is partially shaded it won’t cut down
the production on the other panels in the array. Lucky for me the roof of my
garage faces directly south which is the absolute best orientation for panels.
If you are considering a roof mounted system it’s wise
to consider the roof surface and its condition before you have an installation.
My roof is old corrugated steel but has always been maintained with coatings.
The coating on the roof now is white elastomeric coating made by Kool Coat and
it works extremely well. If you are considering the system over an asphalt
shingle roof I would think about the age of your roof vs. the expected lifetime
of the solar system. In other words if your asphalt is between 15-20 years old
I’d plan on replacing it before the system install.
Now the month of the year is very important to the
electric production because of course of available light hours and solar
orientation (sun angle is lower in the sky during autumn and winter months. As
a result historically June is my highest month of electric production, and
December is the worst.
Because the micro inverters are mounted directly
underneath the panels the resulting power coming out of the inverter is now AC
power and very high voltage! 247 volts on my system.
My system was installed by the company that handled
the sale but a certified electrician with solar experience has to handle the
final hookup and electrical inspection from your local county inspectors.
Now on to the bad. A company called Paradise Energy
Solutions did the install and everything went well until the last 3 years. They
marketed the install based on products sold by the most popular supplier Enphase
Energy Systems. Now they supplied the products used in the install and they
also supply a monitoring system call Envoy which is an Ethernet based system
that reports your system’s efficiency back to them but as I found out later the
web based monitor that I can view wasn’t as detail oriented as I thought. They
expected me to monitor my own system for efficiency and to make sure each panel
was working correctly, but the individual panel/inverter output couldn’t be
monitored online. As a result my output suffered immensely 2 ½ years ago
because 7 inverters had failed. After much back and forth I downloaded the cell
phone app and finally I can now see each panel’s production.
Subsequent inverter failures have happened and my
inverter failures have now totaled 13, some even multiple times! The inverters
are Enphase labelled “Engineered in USA/ assembled in China” for whatever that
means. A side note is that all failures have only occurred on the top row,
which doesn’t make much sense to me or the technician from Paradise.
Paradise is paid by Enphase to do the inverter
replacement (they are warranted for 25 years) but Enphase only pays them $125
labor per invertor. Because Paradise is in Lancaster PA and I am about 15 miles
from Baltimore City they charge me and additional amount for travel time. It’s
kind of like balance billing from a doctor when the insurance doesn’t cover the
full amount they want. I don’t agree with this policy especially when the
failures happen so often!
Thankfully the roof of my garage is low to the ground
offering me walk on access so now I replace the inverters myself when they go
bad.
Now for the good. The last 7 years when the system is
working 100% I pay nothing for electric. BGE charges me $8.32 a month as an
energy transmission fee. The system had paid for itself in 5 years and now I’m
reaping the benefits for years to come with no outlay.
Is it worth it? Without a doubt yes but I pray they
get their inverter problem straightened out.
Watch my video here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kotO8MMPn04
