Solar panels

We have been in our house in the Aurora Estate for just on 5 years and are now considering installing solar panels.
Does anyone have solar panels?
Are you happy that you had them installed?
How many panels do you have?
Have you saved on electricity cost?
Have we missed the boat?
Any advice?

Hi There

We have panels. We are very happy we installed them. We did not install them to receive a 'feed-in-tariff' but because we are fed up with the electricity retailers and are hoping battery storage isn't to far off, plus 'it feels good

You should really look at the 'wattage' for each panel and not the 'number' of panels. Some panels are smaller than others and hence you may need more of them. Some panels may not be as efficient as others either. Really research where your panels are made and ensure you have purchased a good inverter for your system.

We have extended our place and doubled the number of appliances and area to heat/ cool. So far our electricity bill has remained the same (only had one bill so far) even though we have increased our usage, which is encouraging. We have used half of the solar power our system has generated.

You really need to determine when you are using the electricity in your house, bearing in mind that you will only be producing solar power during day light hours. Given this, it will require some behavioural changes in order to get the most out of your system, such as putting appliances on timers ie. dishwasher, to come on when you are at work.

Depending on which state you are, the energy retailer may 'make you' go onto 'time-of-use' tariffs if you are now on a flat rate. Check your bill to determine how you are charged and speak to your retailer. This website can help with that- https://www.energymadeeasy.gov.au/contr ... -your-bill

This website is a good reference also- http://www.cleanenergycouncil.org.au/te ... ar-pv.html

Sorry for the info overload.

Dolphinblu, what company/brand did you go with? How much did it cost? Would you recommend them? We're trying to decide for a build starting in Feb/March 16. Need something cheap (3-4K) but want good quality! That age old dilemma

A few years ago it used to be simple you put the panels on the North facing roof for maximum efficiency.

These days now the Feed In Tariff (FIT) is nowhere near as generous it makes sense to be more interested in generating power when you are using it.

Either have west facing panels or use more power between say 9.00am and 3.00pm.

Also see this link: http://www.anewhouse.com.au/2015/04/upd ... d-tariffs/

Given that feed in tariffs are all but gone, you may find that your best return on investment might be spending money on ways to reduce your energy consumption. The first step to working this out is to understand what appliances use the most energy in your household, and during what times.

Each household is different. Our household is two working professionals, neither of us are here during the day except weekends. So solar PV for us is not a great solution. I did consider getting 1.5kW PV just to offset the pool pump, and run the pool pump during daylight hours. I ran the numbers and it worked out cheaper for me to simply get the pool pump shifted to off peak tariff and run it during the night (also works better because chlorine is more effective at night).

For a household where someone is home during the day cooking, running the dishwasher, washing machine, dryer, air con or electric heating, then solar may give the best return.

For a household with old electric hot water systems, or old air conditioners etc, you might get a better return on investment by simply replacing these with high efficiency solar hot water, or inverter air conditioners.

Depending on your local climate, solar hot water when compared to electric element or LP Gas storage hot water will probably give you a better return on investment than solar PV at current solar feed in rates. A solar hot water system is basically a big, dumb battery. It collects the solar energy during the day and stores the thermal energy over night, for use as and when you want. Far cheaper than equivalent capacity of solar PV and electric battery storage, and low maintenance too.

With all respect, it's not really a dilemma. You can have cheap, or you can have good quality. Take your pick! But with solar (and most things) you can't have both unfortunately. The solar industry is extremely competitive and there is no room for fat. Prices are as lean as they can be, the variations in price are almost completely commensurate with quality. It's not like designer handbags where you pay disproportionate amounts for a brand name.

I have lost count of the amount of people that have told me stories of their inverter dying and them having to pay for it to be replaced because the company has gone out of business or some other such horror story with solar - not one of them had brands of inverters that I have ever heard of before...

I recommend panels that are on the Bloomberg clean energy finance "Tier 1" list, and inverters from SMA, ABB, Schneider Electric, or Siemens. Generally speaking stuff from Europe is the higher quality, especially with inverters, but in saying that several Chinese panel manufacturers are Tier 1. Yingli Solar for example, is probably one of the top 3 in the world.

Thanks!

As 1960sModernistHome said, if you are not home during the daytime, you may not get much of a benefit out of it.

Of course if you are home of a day time, and can move all or at least most of your power usage to the daylight hours, then a big system can be a very good idea.

With our 6.5kw of panels, even on a feeble feed in tariff, we wipe out our daily service charges for the quarter, which is better in our pocket than in Origin's pocket.... on top of that we aren't importing as much we once used to.

That seems to be the case. You need to crunch the numbers to see if it is a benefit. I think I will wait and see what happens in the future with the return of feed in tariffs if at all or even the storage in batteries of power. The batteries of suitable technology are here but too expensive at the moment. I will wait it out.