Sooo…
After about 1,000 years waiting and saving, and waiting more to find somewhere to live where it’s an option. I’m about to get some l33t solar panels for my home. It’s a listed (old) building, so they have to be ground mounted in the garden rather than the roof.
I’m in the UK.
My garden faces south and it’s sunny enough, and a cool guaranteed £0.431 per unit feed-in tariff here means it makes economic sense.
Anyway…
I have two quotes. 1 is about 8% cheaper than the other, and is also for a higher output system. However, it has panels and inverters I’ve never heard of, although the installer company has been around decades.
The company I like, however has the coolest monitoring gadget ever:
And they don’t seem to care if the ground is flat (it isn’t) as they use some sort of ‘screw into the ground’ framing system, whereas the other guys just stick an a-frame on the ground on some weighted blocks.
Sooo…
Anyone here has solar panels that has any advice when it comes to getting this stuff installed? Anything to be wary of when picking a supplier? There must be some real gotchas in the process, and it’s lots of cash for me, so I don’t want to choose badly and screw it up.
yup, I looked into them, because we have a small piece of roof on the modern extensiony bit that could badly do with replacing, but they are pretty expensive, and also heavy enough to mean we wouldn’t be sure our flimsy structure could support it, which kind of ruled them out :(
For a new build though, they are awesome.
Heavy? Not so much, the ones in this videoare probably lighter than asphalt shingles. They are pretty expensive though, and they aren’t being made yet. :)
The other problem with solar shingles is that they generate substantial heat, so you need to have good airflow through your attic or roof structure. Standard PV panels don’t have this issue, since they’re elevated off the roof surface.
Ah interesting. That roof is a flat metal roof, and completely hugely unsuitable anyway in that case.
I’m pretty resigned to having a ground-mounted array. The only debate is how big, what panels, and where.
I just signed off on the panel design for a Tesla solar system. 13.77 kW of production and three Powerwalls. Not cheap, but I have a pool and one big thing I worry about is power going out when we get a big freeze and the pipes bursting.
Plus, it’s Texas and our power grid is not the best.
Site visit is in a couple weeks. No idea how long it takes for permits and stuff, but I’ll keep everyone updated.
I signed up for some solar but then cancelled…WA is not the sunniest!
But, My kiddo wants to get some panels…we have a hill which about 60 % of it is in the sun most of the day and thought about buying panels to lay out and connect on the said hill. The problem is it is our backyard but it goes up to the street in our gated community and I doubt the HOA would allow that. IF we can get the backyard fenced, then we should be able to get that array down but that wont be till next year if ever…fences are spendy to enclose 1/2 an acre.
We put 10k on our roof a couple years ago. No battery. ROI is projected to take six years and we’re on track. The sun isn’t very direct here, but the federal credit plus SRECs paid for two thirds of the installation cost and we used commercial panels to make the most use of the best roof spots. An HOA would hate them but they’re not that ugly.
California screwing over panel owners’ net metering (I’m being glib, don’t @ me) did give me pause. Our net metering credits are for the full value, so if a California-style change ever gets implemented here, it might be worth it to add a battery so we don’t do little buy-sell patterns during the day. I’d have to do the math.
