Posts By SolarQuotes Founder Finn Peacock

Everything You Need To Know About Solar (Grid Connect) Inverters

November 20, 2010 2017-05-03T13:50:07 by 31 Comments

Please note: As you can see from the date of this post – it was written in 2010 – it was accurate then, but now it is out of date – most inverters in Australia are now ‘transformer-less’.

In my “Dummies Guide” to Solar Power I provide a very brief (some may say shallow!) overview of what a grid connected solar inverter does and why.

For those of you who want to know more details about how inverters really work, including the nerdgasm inducing concept of “Maximum Power Point Tracking” (which is all about maximising the power from your panels), then this blog post is for you!

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Solar Inverters

How Important Is Efficiency When Choosing A Solar Panel?

November 15, 2010 2025-07-29T10:06:54 by 21 Comments

I get a lot of emails from people asking “Which is the most efficient solar panel on the market?”.

Last time I checked, the awesomely awesome Sanyo HIT 195DA3 (note: now manufactured under the Panasonic brand) laid claim to the most efficient panels in production at a whopping 20.5% panel efficiency!

(And before you SunPower fans swamp me with emails – yes, I understand that this is including light coming into the back side of the panel, which is would require special mounting – see the pic below. On a typical roof, the Sunpower E20 327W will be the most efficient at 20.4% panel efficiency)

Mounting a solar panel to allow "backside irradiance"

An example of Sanyo HIT solar panel mounting to maximise efficiency.

But whilst solar panel manufacturers like SunPower and Sanyo battle it out for the “most efficient panel” gong, the question we really need to ask is: “Is the most efficient panel the best option for your roof?”.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Solar Panels Tagged With:

Why Electricity Prices Are Rising…?

November 15, 2010 2014-01-05T18:52:21 by 1 Comment

Click the image to enlarge… (it’s worth it!)

Filed Under: Solar Policy Tagged With:

Which Electricity Company pays the most for your solar electricity?

October 25, 2010 2017-05-03T13:51:26 by 1 Comment

Update: Feb 27 2015: Please note the date on this blog post is October 2010 – so the information is out of date.

The best way to find good electricity tariff deals for solar owners in 2015 is the surprisingly good government website:

www.energymadeeasy.gov.au

Go to that website, click on the red ‘residential’ button, enter your postcode, check the ‘offers available to solar owners’ box and follow the prompts.

A company offering very good Feed In rates ($0.12 in some areas) is “Click Energy”.

———————

 

Those nice folk at the Alternative Energy Association have just released a really useful survey.

They paid someone to go round every electricity company in Australia to find out which company will give you the best deal if you have a solar energy system on your home.

My advice: read the survey for each state and switch to the company that:

a) pays the most

and

b) has the most solar friendly terms.

For example some companies may offer a great rate per kWh, but only give you it as a credit on your bill. Others may make you fill out a zillion forms before you actually receive it.

The one thing that people can get stung on is if their electricity company forces you onto a higher “peak” rate for your electricity once your panels are installed. The survey asks about this – so read the answers carefully before deciding to switch!

The good news is that there are electricity companies out there that will give you a good rate but not force you onto a higher rate for the electricity that you do buy. You can have your cake and eat it Hooray!

The links to the survey for each state are here

Here are the questions they asked of each electricity company:

  • What is your Premium feed‐in tariff rate offered (c/kWh) ?
  • Is any excess credit paid out at the end of 12 months?
  • Is this an automatic process, or is the customer required to apply to have this paid out?
  • Is there a time limit within which the customer must apply?
  • Is the customer paid the entire value of any outstanding credit or is there a minimum credit balance a customer must exceed before being eligible to be paid?
  • Is there any fee levied for being paid out any excess credit?
  • What happens to any remaining credit not paid out?
  • Does the customer retain ownership of all outstanding Renewable Energy Certificates, GreenPower Rights and/or any other present or future environmental rights created by their system?
  • Is the premium feed‐in tariff linked to any specific retail offer(s), or is the customer free to choose from all of the retail offers and tariffs they would be eligible for if they weren’t receiving the premium feed‐in tariff?
  • By entering into a contract for your premium feed‐in tariff, are the retail service charges affected / adjusted in anyway?
  • Is the customer able to retain any existing dedicated off‐peak supply meters when converting to solar PV, small wind or any other form of micro‐ generation?
  • Is the customer eligible for dedicated off‐peak hot water / heating supply tariffs once accessing your premium feed‐in tariff?
  • Is the customer still eligible to purchase GreenPower for their electricity consumption?
  • Are all classes of customers (e.g. residential, business) eligible to receive your Premium Feed‐in Tariff offer, providing they are a qualifying customer under the relevant feed‐in tariff legislation?
Filed Under: Solar Installation Tagged With:

Is this the daftest solar power promotion in Australia?

October 17, 2010 2017-05-03T13:52:36 by Leave a Comment

Watching the late movie on TV last night the most ridiculous ad for solar power I have ever seen came on.

I nearly fell off my sofa when I saw that if you buy a 1.5kW solar system from these guys, they’ll throw in a ‘free’ 50″ plasma TV.

Large Plasma TV’s are, of course, the most energy inefficient form of watching telly known to man. Apart from maybe hiring your own multiplex cinema every evening.

Let’s do some sums:

Having a quick look on energyrating.gov.au tells me that a typical 50 inch plasma with typical usage patterns will suck about 850kWh of electricity per year.

So that’s 2.3kWh of electricity per day.

A good quality 1.5kW solar system in Adelaide will produce approximately 6.6kWh per day.

So that ‘free’ plasma is going to reduce the output of your $10,000 (gross of all rebates) solar power system by 35%.

And if you were planning on exporting that 2.3kWh of electricity to take advantage of SA’s generous net Feed In Tariff then you would be losing $503 per year thanks to the ‘free’ plasma TV.

What a great offer!

P.S. The number one sign of a great solar panel installer is that they actually care about your current and future electricity usage so that you will get the maximum benefit and maximum payback from your shiny new solar panels. If the installer doesn’t care about energy efficiency, quickly move on to someone that does.

Filed Under: Solar Panels Tagged With:

Daily Telegraph gets on its high horse about Solar Power and Electricity prices

October 10, 2010 2017-05-03T14:00:16 by Leave a Comment

I’ve been in Sydney for a couple of days (including a really interesting tour of Silex Solar’s impressive Solar Panel factory at Olympic Park).

I picked up the Daily Telegraph in the hotel this morning to see the front page screaming about electricity prices.

According to the paper, the only person who can bring NSW electricity prices down is the Premier: Kristina Keneally – and the Telegraph is demanding that she does something about it – or else…

Now I’m no fan of  the mob of incompetent cronies and hollowmen that has made up the NSW government for the past few years, but electricity prices are high because of massive demand and limited supply. That demand is created by the NSW public building black roofed McMansion hotboxes with 10kW air-conditioning as standard and almost no insulation or window shading – never mind double glazing.

Let’s take some responsibility for our actions and accept that if we create massive demand for something (through being hopeless at implementing simple energy efficiency measures) we shouldn’t be surprised if the price goes up.

The Telegraph’s solution to all this is for the State Government to hand out hundreds of dollars a year to people with high bills and stop encouraging people to invest in solar power by scrapping NSW’s Solar Bonus (Gross Feed In Tariff).

So let me get this right: the journos at the Telegraph think that the solution to high electricity prices is to reward the people who use the most electricity, and stop rewarding those people who choose to generate their own?

I say: just leave the market to sort itself out. High electricity prices (combined with intelligent rebates for energy efficiency) will encourage more people to be more energy efficient, which will reduce the demand for electricity and increase the supply from solar power, which can only push electricity prices down.

And don’t forget that the majority of the increase in electricity prices is to fund the building of more wires and poles to cope with “peak demand” periods. These peak demand periods are basically when the sun is at its hottest in the afternoon and everyone’s air conditioners are running full throttle. Power output from residential solar panels peaks at exactly the same time, helping to reduce peak demand. And because the solar panels are on your roof and any power exported will be used locally, they don’t need pylons and hundreds of km of power cabling to get the power to the end user.

Filed Under: Solar Policy Tagged With: ,

ACT announces improved Feed In Tariff

September 17, 2010 2016-05-31T14:53:42 by Leave a Comment

The ACT government made a welcome announcement about their, already generous, Feed In Tariff, last week.

The main points were:

The FIT now applies to “community owned” solar systems. That means that if your roof is shaded and you want to club together with others in the same position and install a system on the local RSL (for example) there is nothing to stop you getting the FIT and sharing the rewards.

Or if you live in units, you can get a shared system on the roof of the unit block.

The Feed In Tariff will be applicable for systems up to a whopping 30kW, so it becomes quite an interesting investment proposition in today’s volatile market. ( This solar calculator will crunch the numbers if you’re interested).

They also announced FITs for large scale solar. here are the details:

  • An overall scheme cap of 240 MW of generating capacity;
  • Large scale generation category for generators larger than 200 KW (category cap of 210 MW);
  • Medium scale generation category for generators between 30KW and 200kw (category cap of 15 MW); and,
  • Existing micro generation category (household rooftop) up to 30KW (category cap of 15 MW).

Some of the funding has come from the axing of plans to fund a $30 “Solar Facility” in ACT (whatever that was meant to be – probably was gonna be a bunch of public servants running around and racking up platinum frquent flyer accounts writing reports and attending conferences on how to reduce CO2 emissions – if my experience at CSIRO was anything to go by…)

In summary – great news from the land of the public servants – now we just need Julia Gillard to make all their legislation redundant by announcing a national FIT … we can but hope.

Filed Under: Solar Policy Tagged With: , ,

Solar Installer Reviews now live

September 11, 2010 2014-01-05T18:53:31 by 31 Comments

Because you asked for it – we’ve done it.

Over the last 4 years we’ve collected over 11,000 (and growing) reviews – mostly good, but a few bad and or ugly – of solar installers all over Australia, whether they are clients of ours or not.

My experience over the last few years is that most installers are honest, hardworking and passionate about doing the right thing by the customer and the environment. But there are always a few bad eggs in any fast growing industry. Now those guys have nowhere to hide. You gotta love this internet thingy!

You can now see these solar installer reviews online – just click the solar installer menu above, then use the search box when you get to the “solar installers” page.

If there are any installers you *really* want to see reviews for that aren’t there – let me know.

And if you would like any features adding to the review pages – let me know through the comments…

Filed Under: Solar Installation Tagged With:

German magazine tests 10 solar panels

September 4, 2010 2014-01-05T18:53:50 by 3 Comments

In September 2006, respected solar power magazine, Photon International, bolted 10 different solar panel manufacturers panels to a test rig in Germany and measured the performance of those panels over 12 months.

The panels they tested were:

  • Photwatt
  • Solarworld
  • Shell Solar
  • BP Solar
  • Solar Fabrik
  • Isofoton
  • Kyocera
  • Sunways
  • Sanyo
  • Sharp

The results of the testing were that the difference in power produced across all the solar panel brands was 9.85%.

The results are shown here:

Solar Panel test

From Photon International Magazine September 2007

As you can see Photwatt panels came top.

Interestingly the Sanyo panels which many vendors claim are the “best of the best”, came second last. Apparently Sanyo’s excuse was that the magazine were supplied with defective panels, oh and the dog ate their homework too I imagine.

The well known brand “Sharp” came a surprising last place.

Of course this test was 3 years ago. I imagine that the losers of this test have upped their game in recent years. The latest issue of the magazine has some more recent results in it as soon as it arrives in the mail from sunny Germany, I’ll let you know the latest winners.

Wouldn’t it be great to put the top 10 most popular Australia panels through a similar test (including the many ‘own-brand’ panels). Let me know if you think that is a good idea in the comments. If I get enough interest I may organise such a test myself. Watch this space…

Filed Under: Solar Panels Tagged With: ,

Is Global Warming a Hoax and Solar Power a waste of time?

August 27, 2010 2014-01-05T21:07:29 by Leave a Comment

Most of my websites are all about energy efficiency and also using technologies like solar power to get your electricity bills down.

Of course, a huge motivation to do this is that many people believe that CO2 emissions damage the environment though global warming.

Other people are motivated financially. Others just like the thought of taking responsibility for generating the power that their household uses.

Whatever your personal view on Global Warming, you can’t have failed to sense a growing scepticism about the issue recently.

A lot of folks are wondering whether the whole thing is just one big hoax by vested interests. For example: Scientists who want research dollars. Or Pollies who want an excuse to collect more tax dollars.

So what’s the truth? Is it a hoax, or if you don’t believe in mass conspiracies, are the majority of climate scientists simply getting brainwashed by the research dollars waved at them?

Well, anything is possible!

I certainly live my life by the adage, that if the government, says something is a given – then usually the opposite is true…

Example BS pedalled by the government:

• the US Banking System being safe as (sub prime) houses,
• the need to be protected by internet censorship filters
• first home owners grants make houses more affordable
• Canberra is a nice place to live and work ☺

My personal take is that, yes a lot of politicians do get very excited at the thought that they can tax us more and use Global Warming as an excuse,

And yes – some scientists have a very vested interest in GW being real, but… I’ve never really been one for conspiracy theories.

And the mind boggling size of the conspiracy you would need to subvert the thousands of scientists who have contributed to the peer-reviewed science is just mind boggling. Forget the moon landing being a fake – this would be on a whole new level.

The other thing that has convinced me of the reality of global warming is a Pommie journalist called George Monbiot.

If, like me you don’t have the time or patience to read through the science and decide for your self if it is sound, you could do worse than to read Monbiot’s opinion. ( a quick Google will find these articles)

He has read the science, formed a very objective opinion. And he is scared witless about what the future holds.

He now makes it his mission to question the arguments against GW head on. He recently went into verbal combat with one of the world’s leading global warming sceptics, Australian, Ian Plimer on Lateline.

Have a look at the video and see what you think– If nothing else it is a fascinating showdown:

Ian Plimer and George Monbiot Battle on Lateline

Filed Under: Solar Policy Tagged With: ,
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