Dr. Meh,

One thing I forgot to mention.

Interested to hear if there's any change (even if only perceived) in your family's tendency to conserve or use electricity now that you're making it--either "we can pay less attention because it's free" or "if we're diligent, we'll make even more for the grid".

We actually wanted to get a fair assessment of how well the solar is working for us so we tried keeping the same habits. We already regularly turn off lights when we leave rooms and stuff (the kids sometimes struggle with this, of course) but we sleep with the ceiling fans on in our rooms as well as a couple air purifiers around the house. Basically the same things we did before.

Part of me wants to be more diligent to challenge ourselves to see how low we can get it but I don’t think the family would be onboard with that.

In the northeast US, who are the companies I should be researching for solar? Who should I avoid?

(been installing solar for 13 years, put my hands personally on hundreds of systems, been involved in one way or another in more than a thousand)

I’ve NEVER had anyone want the panels facing the street when it was less efficient and it’s super super common for people to want them not facing the street even if it’s less efficient because they don’t want them to show.

It’s a long post to explain everything here, but…

Shade matters
South is best (Northern hemisphere bias)
East and West are essentially the same (some minor differences because of typical weather)
North is bad (not horrible if nearly flat)

I’ve never done North (without a reverse tilt). Rarely, but sometimes I see solar on the North and that could be solar companies catering to owners to make a sale (it would be to put the panels facing away from the street), but I’ve seen this with leasing companies and they own the panels and sell the power, so they are determining that it’s still worth it.

I’m certain it’s not true that half of homes put panels on the incorrect side of the house. It’s obviously true that half the homes site the panels imperfectly depending on how nitty you get about being perfect.

I could see a study being done based on satellite pics and getting this very wrong because of things like the panels going on the West side instead of South but there was actually not space on the South side because of the roof shape/vents/ets.

What inverter(s) did you get?

Solaredge/Storedge is the only one I know that is really battery ready. Enphase? Ok, sorta. Makes sense that they would say wait a few years for the batteries. They have batteries sorta out, but not really and they are ridiculously expensive.

This depends on the batteries obv, but $10k to add batteries would probably be a very good price.

interesting, i don't doubt what you say

found the source, was freakanomics not econimist, knew there was a nomics in there somewhere - at least i think i may have gotten it from here, genuinely not sure, this was a while back

https://freakonomics.com/podcast/sho...radio-podcast/

Btw, anyone who is thinking about solar or has any questions, feel free to PM me or post here, but maybe PM me to make sure I check this thread. I'm not here all the time, but I check once a week or so.

I can't say it's never happened to anyone, but I swear not once with me ever ever ever has anyone preferred facing the street. People either don't care or they prefer away from the street.

As a homeowner (sick brag, bro), and someone who is considering solar, I would 100% put the panels where the expert (not me!) suggests, no matter which side of the house.

When we went thru this a couple of years ago, the salesman for the solar company said they would have someone come out with some metering device to test, but I'm pretty sure it would always be the south-side of the house, in my case, away from the street.

I'd prefer to see solar on every home, installed for maximum efficiency. Anyone without solar would be called out for not contributing.

I've been thinking about installing solar, although not too seriously as of yet. I suspect I have too much shade all around the house. What's your suggestion for checking out whether it would be worth it or not, without chopping down any trees? I'm in Fort Worth, Tx. I am a Master Electrician, so would be doing all the electrical work myself and possibly even the panel installs. I don't know what exactly that entails, but I can't imagine any of it is beyond my capabilities.

37 Enphase IQ7+ inverters
37 Hanwha Q.Cell Q.Peak DUO BLK-G6+ 340W panels
12.58kW system

And we had to get a main panel upgrade because our house is about 40 years old and the old panel was junk anyway.

What are your thoughts on our setup? Does it suck? I hope it doesn’t but unless someone’s an installer, there’s really no way for laypeople to know.

If you do it yourself you can save a lot of money and that really changes the calculation of whether it's worth it even if you have moderate shade. I'd be happy to help you pick and buy the equipment and if you want to send me pics of your roof/address so I can look on satellite, I can let you know what I think about the shade.

For those out there thinking of solar, make sure to get the bird-blocking stuff to go between the shingles and the panels. Got pigeons nesting between the two, which was pretty sucky until I put some stuff up.

Also, if you're in a snow area, look into having the panels overhang your gutters a little bit. Probably doesn't make a real difference, but I always felt that helped the gutters not get clogged up when it snowed/melted/refroze.

Which made me think of this--if you're in a snow area, make sure to understand how it will come off the panels. When snow lets go, it's like an avalanche. Unpleasant if you happen to be coming out the door, I imagine. (Mine are on the side of the house, so no worries for me).

Dr. Meh, I get what you're saying about keeping lifestyle the same. It is fun to watch the meter run backward. I keep an excel sheet with a chart to track the amount I generate. Such a nerd.

End up generating a small amount more than I use over the course of a year, get a check for ~$8 each January or so. Maybe I run someone's TV for an evening.

The equipment there is all perfectly good and it's what I use a lot of the time. The enphase sometimes are a pain with monitoring, but that's what happens when you have module level monitoring in general, but they have been very reliable, have a great warranty, and their product has been getting better and better. Their battery stuff though has been supposedly coming soon for years and now that it's here it's still ridiculously expensive and hard to get. If I know someone is really planning on getting a battery, I'd do something else.

All the major module brands are fine. The Hanwhas look good and are a very good value. The modules last forever, so this is not a big deal, but I like that the Korean companies are industrial giants who make tons of other things and they won't go under because the prices of solar panels drops and they aren't competitive there anymore.

eta: I go back and forth on "module" and "panel". In the industry we usually call the solar panels "modules".

Yes, the “Critter Guard” is important to get as the pigeons will nest and poop under the panels and that can damage your roof. We put up the critter guard right after the install (an extra $1200) and still had some pigeons try to scope it out.

Do you have Enphase? They have an app called Enlighten that tells you exactly how much your system is generating, what each panel is producing, and you can compare the output by day, week, month, or year. It’s a really cool tool to have and might save you some time from Excel.

Thanks for this! Now I can rest assured I didn’t get stuck with junk.

This is not super common here, but it happens and it is indeed sucky. I removed and reinstalled a system once partly because of this and associated damage to the roof. I think my recommendation here would probably be "wait and see" if the roof is pretty easy to access and "just do it" if the roof is either very hard to get up on or has fragile tiles or I guess if you just don't mind the look of the bird blocking stuff and don't mind paying for it just in case.

No. My system was installed in 2008, the inverter is something called a Fronius IG.

Had a couple days it seemed like it was acting slightly weird this winter, but been ok except that. AFAIK.

There was some device I could use to monitor, but I never took it out of the box. Can't remember why I started keeping excel, but it's just "go check the meter on Sunday morning, and type in the date/reading." Have a tab for each year, the graphs all look the same. It's just a dumb habit now.

Just checked, meter read 83,713. So, over the years, I must've generated 6,287 kw I guess.

12/13 years is a nice run for a string inverter. No reason to replace it if it's working, but keeping an eye on it is a good idea.

Thanks, microbet. When it acted up over the winter, you gave me some good info to check on. Since then seems ok, but am monitoring.

So after the Lowes near me didn't have a tool rental anymore, I gave up on the drain job and called a service. Trip report crossposted from LLSNL chat thread:

I like that story

LOL

At least you got the drain cleared! And at what I would consider a decent price.

Soiling of panels is an issue most consumers don't seem to be aware of. I monitor my output daily and without cleaning output goes down about 20% within a few weeks. I guess it depends on environmental factors, lack of rain #1.

I simply wash them down with tap water once a week in the morning when its cool and the water can drain off without evaporating quickly. I don't have a cheap source for di-ionized or distilled water but that would be the ideal way to wash them down.

I was told the opposite by my neighbors. They said they never really noticed much difference whether the panels were clean or dusty/dirty. I have a two-story house and a significant issue with heights (I can’t go up more than a few steps on a ladder) so regularly going to the roof to wash the panels is out of the question for me. What about just hosing them off?