Solar... who's clued in?

indica said:
Get what you pay for.....
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If i didn't have solar I'd chance Aldi. THe product is only as good as the retailer backing it and even the big brands you have to rely on some random small business to be around at 6 year fr any warranty claim. Aldi will defo be here.
 
Slowman said:
I've had solar installed for over a year now and my annual bill has dropped from something like $3750 to $661. The first quarter was $0 and this last quarter was $7.43. It's the winter months where the panels don't generate as much power where the grid power gets used.

I went through a site called Solar Quotes to learn about solar power and the options. A local company called AG Solar installed it. If you live in the Sutherland Shire I'd recommend them. They were 1 of the 3 companies that Solar Quotes arranged to give me quotes. Total price was $23,907 but it would have been around $4,000 cheaper if I didn't also install a heat pump to replace the old hot water heater which was still OK but getting on. So I replaced it to get better water heating efficiency, to stretch those panels as much as possible.

System size: 9.84 kWDC (STC)
Estimated annual production: 15,042 kWh
Solar panel
24 × 410W REC Solar Alpha Pure-R Series - REC410AA Pure-R
1,730 × 1,118 mm · Monocrystalline · Datasheet · Warranty
Inverter
1 × Tesla Powerwall 3 · 10000W
Single phase · 97.5% max. efficiency · Datasheet · Warranty
Battery storage
1 × Tesla Powerwall 3 · 13.5kWh
609 × 1,099 × 193 mm · 13.5kWh usable · LFP · Datasheet · Warranty · Safety
Heat pump
1 × Madimack MMESGHW-300 · 300L
664W · 4.18COP · Datasheet · Manual

Overall really happy with the bottom line, it will have paid for itself in 8 years. The financial benefits are obvious but there are a couple of other advantages, because you have a battery backup, if there is a power blackout it acts like a UPS and you don't lose power. Even better still if there is a storm the system will start charging the battery up in case of a power loss from the grid, so you have the maximum amount of time possible in reserve.
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How do you find the heat pump @Slowman? I've been umming and ahhing on solar for over a decade, now feels like a great time with batteries being viable but our very long in the tooth solar hot water is taking up the prime panel space. It still does a job but it's not quick and not much help with bills in winter.
 
madstace said:
How do you find the heat pump @Slowman? I've been umming and ahhing on solar for over a decade, now feels like a great time with batteries being viable but our very long in the tooth solar hot water is taking up the prime panel space. It still does a job but it's not quick and not much help with bills in winter.
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Heat pump is best for those that do have solar and DON'T have a controlled load (off peak) circuit. Our hot water has been basically free for the last four years but then given the cost of the Sanden system...it would want to be!
 
madstace said:
How do you find the heat pump @Slowman? I've been umming and ahhing on solar for over a decade, now feels like a great time with batteries being viable but our very long in the tooth solar hot water is taking up the prime panel space. It still does a job but it's not quick and not much help with bills in winter.
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Sorry @madstace for the late reply I am currently in the land of the rising sun on a family holiday. I bought the heat pump because with that added efficiency I wouldn't have to put more panels on the roof. The old HWS was getting on anyway plus I have an 18 year old daughter that has to take at least 30 minute showers. She would regularly use all the hot water no matter how much her mother screamed at her 😂 I would go to old HWS and turn off the hot water inlet valve. We don't seem to have run out since but I think we have the showers down to a more reasonable 20 minutes too.
 
I think that this is my best day so far at 72.2 kWhs. Again, not sure if that's ok or not for my set up.

1770267799689.png
 
indica said:
I was just throwing numbers mate....
Your peak output is well above 2.5kWh to get 72 for a day.
Good set up, great graph too - nice spread...

Use more power during the day,,,,
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Yes, that was a day where we weren't home and had no washing, dishes, etc. to do!
 
Battery installed and humming long nicely.

My current setup is 32kWh battery (5kW inverter), 7.7kW PV with 6kW inverter. Inverters are seperate due to wanting to keep warranty on the existing setup. EV coming in the next week and still on gas heating. Elec plan is about $1 a day and 26c/kWh flat. Not sure how the EV is going to affect my usage (maybe 40km per day on weekdays, more on weekends)

Given all the changes, I'm a bit lost on where to start optimising for an energy plan. Do I;
- Go for the minimum daily charge because I technically should be self suficient for 95% of the year?
- Go for some kind of free charging deal (only have snail charger though so will have to consider a 32A if i go this way)
- Gamble hard and go amber.
 
Calvin27 said:
Battery installed and humming long nicely.

My current setup is 32kWh battery (5kW inverter), 7.7kW PV with 6kW inverter. Inverters are seperate due to wanting to keep warranty on the existing setup. EV coming in the next week and still on gas heating. Elec plan is about $1 a day and 26c/kWh flat. Not sure how the EV is going to affect my usage (maybe 40km per day on weekdays, more on weekends)

Given all the changes, I'm a bit lost on where to start optimising for an energy plan. Do I;
- Go for the minimum daily charge because I technically should be self suficient for 95% of the year?
- Go for some kind of free charging deal (only have snail charger though so will have to consider a 32A if i go this way)
- Gamble hard and go amber.
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Globird seems to get a good writeup on Reddit. Amber sounds like a shit show unless you set up Home Assistant to manage your charge/discharge; and I just can't be fucked.

We're on a grandfathered Ampol plan (now AGL) that gives us a 7c feed in tariff and cheaper off peak overnight energy (18c/kWh) than any current offers in NSW.

We've found with a 14kw solar/27kw battery and EV we are not self sufficient if we get hot overcast weather which has been Sydney for most of Feb. To be honest we would need at least triple the battery to be self sufficient and this wouldn't make financial sense unless we could use the car for V2G.

But we can load shift to the middle of the day and off peak at night. The battery is enough to get us through the afternoon/evening peak. This still saves us many thousands of dollars a year.

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I also drive our Atto3 like a tarmac rally car thanks to the black magic Michelin's. So I could probably save some energy with less of a lead foot.

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Calvin27 said:
Go for the minimum daily charge because I technically should be self suficient for 95% of the year?
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This is our approach. And we don't have a battery. Unfortunately, our daily network charge is closer to $1.50 (thanks Essential Energy) and it's very hard to make that up with a $0.07 feed in tariff (we too are on a grandfathered Ampol plan)
 
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