One steaming pile of Solar BS that you hear all the time from worst sales people in this industry – who will feed you any line to get a sale – is that polycrystalline panels are better than monocrystalline solar panels, or vice versa.
In this video I finally get off my chest why you should avoid anyone spouting such drivel:
Transcript follows if you don’t like listening to angry, sweary solar geeks, and I go into great detail about the two technologies over on the main site:
Hint: It’s a bit more complicated than you might think!
By my reckoning 25% of people buying solar power systems want to save the planet as a priority. The other 75% want to save their bottom line and saving the planet is a nice side-effect.
I get a lot of emails saying: “Help! My bills are [insert large number here] dolars a quarter – what size solar system do I need?”
The answer to this question is quite longwinded – but if you want to understand whether a solar system is worthwhile for you financially – you need to understand this stuff! So I made a video to help explain. If you are considering buying a solar system I strongly recommend watching this:
[Note: Since I made this video the Victorian and QLD Feed In tariffs are no longer more generous than the rest of the country – they are both 8c per kWh at time of writing!]
Did you hear about the Queensland proposal a couple of weeks ago that proposed an 8c per kWh GROSS Feed In Tariff? That would mean Queenslanders would have to sell ALL their solar power to the retailers for 8c (yes – ALL of it – even the stuff that they used in their home). And then buy it back for about 30c.
Yup – that would be called institutionalised theft.
Stories like that make most people want to get off the grid altogether.
So I get quite a few quote requests these days for “Off Grid” solar power systems. However most people don’t fully realise what a big and expensive step it is to cut the wires to the grid.
So I made this video to explain what it really means to go off grid in 2012. I hope you enjoy it:
Ever wondered how solar panels actually work? We all know that they convert light into electricity – but have you ever stopped to wonder just how the heck that happens? Here I do my best to explain the inner functioning of a solar panel in plain English:
Solar Hot Water is fast becoming the poor cousin of Solar PV (AKA Solar Electricity). Consumers just seem to prefer solar PV to solar hot water these days. In fact solar hot water has gone from almost zero to 1,000,000 roofs in about 30 years, whereas PV has gone from almost zero to 1,000,000 roofs in less than 6 years. There is now more PV than Solar HW out there! Unbelievable.
It doesn’t help that retailers prefer to sell PV over hot water – for a whole bunch of reasons that I’ll go into in a future blog post.
Here’s a video where I answer the question posed in the title: Should you buy Solar Hot Water or PV first?, But first I answer a much more fundamental question that creates an enormous amount of confusion out there:
And here’t the transcript for the video-phobes amongst you: [Read more…]
Discover the 3 types of solar installer that you’ll find in the Australian Market. Learn which ones to avoid, and the tricks the bad ‘uns will pull to get your business.
Or if you don’t want to watch the video, here’s a transcript for your reading pleasure.
[Read more…]
I’ve been busy making videos that answer some common solar questions. Here I talk about Feed In Tariffs and what to do if your nasty energy retailer wants to punish you for going solar…
Transcription below for those who prefer to read: [Read more…]
The Victorian government has just announced that their FIT has immediately been slashed from 25c per kWh to 8c per kWh.
Basically if you haven’t already paid a deposit on your solar system, you can’t claim the 25c FiT any more.
The details are a bit hard to get out of the Vic pollies at the moment. For example the 8c scheme starts on Jan 1 2013. So what happens to all the electricity a new solar system exports until then?
Also they say:
“The tariff will then be adjusted by the government each year in 2014, 2015 and 2016 based on the wholesale electricity price, before moving to a fully floating market price in 2017.”
Anyone care to hazard a guess as to what that actually means?
Read more from the Age here and from the horse’s mouth here.
(This post was written in 2012 – but the principles still hold true!)
Everyone loves a bargain. Especially me! But are those solar systems advertised at jaw droppingly low prices a great deal or a future headache?
I feel quite strongly about this – so I decided to make a video. Here it is.
And here’s the transcript if you prefer to read rather than watch: [Read more…]
I got a great email the other day:
“One solar installer has told me that it is best for the inverter to be as close as possible to the panels and NOT to the meter box as your checklist indicates. Is he crazy?”
Short answer. Yes – he’s crazy.
Longer answer:
As close as possible to the panels? Whatcha gonna do put it on the roof?
I get a lot of stick for this advice in one of my solar installation videos:
Sometimes I get heat for recommending that you put your solar inverter as close to your fusebox as possible.
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