Some solar companies are claiming that their Tier 3 panels are really Tier 1. How can you identify real Tier 1 Solar panels?
For many years now I’ve been banging on about “Tier 1 Solar Panels”. My recommendation has always been that you should spend a few hundred dollars more for Tier 1 panels, so that you can massively reduce the risk of having crappy solar panels installed on your roof. [Read more…]
If you’ve been offered really cheap solar panels, please check that they are not grey imports.
Recently, a number of people have asked me about parallel or ‘grey’ imports of solar panels.
Parallel imports are defined as products (in our case, solar panels) that are imported unofficially by someone other than the manufacturer or their official Australian distributors.
Interestingly, in this day and age with so much online and internet based trade, the lines on this issue have become a little blurred. Some manufacturers will supply you directly with their product, but the majority do not. Most panel manufacturers have carefully developed formal partnerships in place with Australian companies who distribute their panels and provide technical and warranty support for those panels.
Why is parallel importing a problem? [Read more…]
I’m getting a lot of comments on Facebook at the moment along the lines of: “Solar needs to stand on its own two feet without subsidies of any kind”.
What these commenters (and our government) seem to miss is that fossil fuels in Australia – and around the world – are massively more subsidised than renewables.
This cartoon fresh from First Dog on the Moon, first posted on treealerts.org, sums up the situation nicely:
Back to absolute basics today on the SolarQuotes blog!
Here’s an infographic I got drawn up that explains the fundamental concepts you need to understand before buying solar for your home.
Yes, yes – I know for many of you dear readers this is completely obvious! But trust me, many folks out there starting on their solar journey do not realise that solar hot water panels don’t produce electricity.
Feel free to reproduce, republish and share to your heart’s content. The more knowledge out there the better for everybody!
Solar Power For Your Home: The Basics
The 3 isolator brands that have been recalled: PV Power, Avanco & NHP
We’ve recently had a number of phone calls from people who have heard about the national solar isolator switch recall recently announced by the ACCC, and are worried about their solar systems.
Huh? Energy Prices Are Going Down?
How much of that quarterly cheque you cut to your local electricity supplier is actually paying for the energy you use? According to a new scathing news story from ABC and confirmed with data from the Federal Treasury, under half. Surprisingly, 51% of your monthly payment is, in fact, going to fund the unnecessary rebuilding of a now bloated Australian power grid. [Read more…]
This post comes courtesy of Trevor Berrill. Trevor is Principal of Solaris Sustainable Homes and is a 30 year veteran of both renewable energy and energy efficiency. It is a honour to have him contribute to this humble blog. Here Trevor describes how a good solar installer should install solar panels to a metal roof and how bad installers, in a hurry can do the wrong thing and leave you with a leaky roof!
Over to you Trevor.
Holier than thou? How to avoid leaks in the roof! [Read more…]
Should Aussies follow the American way when it comes to solar leasing?
Are Americans are getting their butts handed to them with long-term solar leasing? And what can us Aussies do to come out ahead?
It seems the suits perched in the top floor offices on Wall-Street are finally taking notice of solar energy. And that could spell bad news for American consumers.
American energy firms like SolarCity, a growing solar-energy giant based out of California, have been offering long-term, relatively affordable leasing arrangements to consumers for years; either by financing the installation of panels or charging users by the kilowatt-hour and selling the remaining power back to the grid.
But those arrangements are about to get a whole lot more expensive now that they, and firms like them, are going public. Why? Because their shareholders, many of them massive hedge funds and banks, are demanding an American-sized profit which can only be attained through skyrocketing costs to consumers. [Read more…]
Recent research by the Australian Solar Council shows that the average Aussie that has installed solar has seen an average 65% reduction in their power bills. And to pre-empt a gazillion comments – yes – this is achievable with a crappy Feed-In -Tariff too!
They have produced a great infographic which sums up most of the benefits of solar that the anti solar brigade wish weren’t true. Here it is:
The joys of solar power. Cue solar nark’s teeth gnashing!
As a true solar geek, I can’t think of anything better to do at 7:30 on a Friday evening, than log in to my solar panel monitoring system. While most folks are settling down to Friday Night Footy, you’ll find me checking out how much power my 6kW of micro inverter solar panels are producing as the last rays of evening sun scatter across my roof.
As I logged in tonight to see a respectable 1.2kW being pumped out, I noticed that the monitoring system was providing a great example of one of the benefits of microinverter technology.
If you have a gander at the live monitoring screenshot below you’ll see that I’ve highlighted the position of my wood burner’s flue and the approximate shadow it casts as the sun goes down.
The red circle is my flue. I’ve drawn on its 7:30pm shadow.
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