By Rich Bowden
Now this is the sort of news your SolarQuotes.com.au correspondent likes to deliver. After weeks of wading through government reversals on solar feed-in tariffs, reporting on the various sniping at the edges of the solar industry and talking about savage cuts from state and federal governments affecting the Australian renewables sector, here comes a really positive development.
By Rich Bowden
A recent report by the University of Melbourne’s EnergyResearchInstitute has found that, not only is solar energy a viable form of energy, but that costs will compare favourably with traditional fossil fuel technology in the very near future.
The report, the Renewable Energy Technology Cost Review May 2011, was commissioned by government climate advisor Ross Garnaut and included the current and expected future costs of three forms of renewable energy; wind, solar and thermal. [Read more…]
I just received a long email in response to my blog post about what to watch out for with ultra cheap solar power systems.
After reading the email (published below) – It sounds to me (without knowing any other details) that the fundamental problem here may have been that the system was not properly designed by a CEC Accredited Solar Designer. (note: A CEC Accredited Solar Installer is not necessarily qualified as a Designer – so always double check). If a CEC accredited designer had done the most basic calculations on this system initially – then the oversizing problem would have been avoided.
The moral of the story: Always ask to see the design document for the system you are about to invest thousands of dollars in. And make sure that that document is signed off by a real person who is CEC Accredited as a Solar Power System Designer.
Here’s the sorry tale as told by Phill in his email: [Read more…]
I suppose some would call me a “Greenie”. Heck, I call myself that sometimes.
Like any good Aussie, I love the outdoors, the sunshine and the surf. I’m deeply grateful for the beauty and majesty of our planet. It pains me when I see it being brutalized, plundered or wasted in the name of laziness or greed.
And I do believe that we have a responsibility to be good stewards of the earth’s resources. I believe that a lot of the political and economic tension that our world currently faces could be reduced with more responsible use of the limited resources we have at our disposal.
And I believe solar power will play a central role in an improving the relationships with our political neighbours and our natural world.
But, I don’t believe solar power is the answer to all our problems. I don’t believe solar power is the great savior of our planet. I don’t believe solar power is right for everyone. I don’t believe we should make too big a deal of solar power.
Why not? Because it’s too easy. [Read more…]
Shade is the number one enemy of a high performance solar power system.
If your roof has substantial shading between 9am and 3pm then installing solar panels is probably going to be a really bad investment.
If you are confident that your roof roof has absolutely no shading, then solar can be a great investment thanks to the current handouts by the Federal and State governments in terms of Solar Rebates and Solar Feed In Tariffs. [Read more…]
How do you know if they are going to perform on your roof?
There are a bewildering array of solar panel brands out there. How do you sort the wheat from the solar chaff and be sure you are getting the best solar panels for your roof?
My advice is go thru the spec sheet for each panel and judge them on the following criteria.
If you haven’t got a spec sheet, then get another quote!
If the spec sheet combined with the quote doesn’t have the answers, call up the solar supplier and ask. If they don’t know the answers, that’s a bad sign.
The Top 10 Criteria [Read more…]
All solar panels should come with 2 types of warranty:
1. The Power Output Warranty
This covers the power from the panels. Usually if the power drops to less than 80% of the specification in the first 20-30 years, you can make a claim on the warranty.
That’s all well and good but you need to be confident that you will firstly be able to measure and prove that the power has dropped, and secondly be able to contact the correct company to get any warranty claims honored.
Ask to see the warranty details in writing. Get the installer/salesperson to show you where it states how the power from your panels will be measured if you suspect that the power has dropped, who will measure it and if they will charge you for the privilege.
Also ask them to show you where it says how the warranty claim will be handled, who is responsible for honoring it and what costs you might incur. Will they charge you to remove, ship and test the faulty panel and then ship and install the new solar panel.
If your solar installer or salesperson can’t answer these questions then that is a sign that they are badly trained or inexperienced or both.
If the warranty is covered by the installing firm, ask what the backup is if they are not around in 20 years – (This even applies to the bigger solar installers – one thing the world has learned recently is that even huge companies can go bust if the economy changes…). If you have to go back to the solar panel manufacturer, then go to the manufacturers website and see if you can find warranty details. If you can’t find the website or the warranty details that is a bad sign…
Another great question to ask is: “What % of your revenue do you put aside for future warranty claims?” and also “What % of the solar panel manufacturer’s revenue is put aside for future warranty claims”.
The final thing to check out is whether this warranty is “linear” or “stepped”. A linear warranty of 80% (i.e. a 20% power drop) over 20 years would cover you if the output dropped by more than a twentieth of that 20% in the first year (i.e. 1%), then 2% in the second year and so on… at that linear rate of 1% per year until the solar panels were 20 years old.
Linear warranties are rare, but some of the more expensive panels do have them. The more common “stepped” warranty means that, for the “80% over 20 years” example, your panels can lose 19% in the first year and you won’t be covered unless they lose another 1% in the remaining 19 years to get under that 80% threshold.
2. The Material Warranty
The material warranty (2-10 years) is usually for defects that may cause the power of your panels to drop – but don’t cause the power to drop below the “power output warranty” threshold.
So if you have a power output warranty of “80% over 20 years” and some water gets into one of your panels causing the overall system power to drop 19% – this would be covered by the “material warranty”, not the “power output warranty”.
This can be for stuff like delamination of the backing sheet, discoloration of the solar panels (can look really naff!), solder joints coming undone and bypass diodes failing.
Again – ask your solar installer or sales person to give you a comprehensive list of things that are covered by this warranty.
Finally: watch out for get out clauses
In some of the small print in the terms and conditions published by the bottom end of the solar market, I’ve seen clauses that say your warranty isn’t valid unless you get your system “serviced” every 2 years.
If you have one of these clauses, find out exactly what defines “serviced” and how much it is going to cost. This is especially important if you are buying a really cheap solar system with panels of questionable lifespan. The last thing you want is for your panels to fail after 3 years and then have the warranty knocked back because you didn’t get your panels “serviced” within 2 years!
I had a cracking couple of days at Narnu farm, 1hr south of Adelaide, a coupla weeks ago.
We go there with the kids who love it. It’s a hobby farm where the kids can feed the animals and go horse riding and all that good stuff.
As soon as you drive in, you can’t help but notice their 2kW Solar System made up of about 30 60W Kaneka Solar Panels on the roof of the office building.
So is this blog post going to be singing the owners’ praises for getting solar and doing their bit for the planet?
Short answer: no.
Being the grumpy old contrarian that I am, I’ve got 2 big problems with this particular install.
Here’s the first error with this install:
This photo of the solar system (see the panels on the roof on mounting frames) was taken at 10:30 in the morning. Can you spot the problem?
Solar panel shading
The tree on the right is casting a bloody huge shadow across almost all the panels! Ouch!
That’s bad. However my real problem with the install is this:
They have made zero attempt at energy efficiency before or after installing solar.
It is about five times cheaper to perform energy efficiency than it is to install solar to save the same amount of electricity.
So, although solar is a wonderful thing, you should always do everything you can to maximise the energy efficiency of your home or business first.
Here are some examples of really bad energy wastage that could have been addressed with minimal time or investment:
1) They are still using incandescent bulbs! Check out the photo – I haven’t seen these old things in years.
I counted about 16 of these energy guzzling devices of satan. Let’s do some really simple sums:
Assume each one is on for 4 hours per night (a conservative assumption – I saw lots of them left on all day).
The amount of energy they will consume in 1 year is: 60W x 4 hours x 365 = 87.6kwh per year per bulb = 1401.6kwh per year total.
A CFL bulb will use about one tenth of the electricity of the incandescents, so they are wasting about 1250kWh per year, for the sake of spending about $60 on new bulbs.
That energy that is being wasted is probably close to the amount of electricity generated by 1kW of solar panels – half of their solar system!
Next: Check out the fridges…
They have at least 6 of these antiques.
A modern fridge of a similar size can be had for about $500 and will use a quarter of the electricity!
So for about $3,000 they could be saving about 3000kWh per year. That combined with the bulbs should easily give them energy savings greater than the output of their entire solar system (which probably cost them about $20,000 when they bought it).
Other shockers which should have been replaced are the antique window rattler Air Conditioners and the electric storage hot water systems. The latter is especially crazy for accommodation that is most likely empty for many weeks a year, because you get hot water whether the place if fully occupied or not.
The moral of the story is: Yes – solar is fantastic. But before you get that solar system at least do the most basic energy efficiency measures: i.e. bulbs, appliances, hot water, draft sealing, window shading… Otherwise you are getting a much bigger system than you really need.
A good solar installer will talk you through all this before selling you a system.
Short Answer: no
If you are buying a solar system for your home, I would strongly recommend using a firm that will organise the new meter, grid connection (including new meter calibration) for you.
Trust me: you really don’t want to try and deal with the electricity companies’ bureaucracy yourselves, leave it to the solar supplier who has done it a thousand times before.
Here’s a story that Gary emailed me yesterday. Basically, even though he paid for the solar supplier to organise the install for him, he ended up organising the final part himself! The moral of the story is: Get in writing a date by which you will be connected to the grid with a fully functioning import export meter correctly configured for billing.
“My wife was a contracts manager for a commonwealth department managing a large staff base with a 26 million annual budget. I have been a businessman, purchasing manager and finally a business analyst with the department of defence.
We foolishly thought we were ideally setup from a competency point of view to analyse the whole solar market.
We needed all this background experience and more, including professional experiences to achieve a successful outcome with solar home generation.
Some additional comments to your questionnaire:
We were very happy with Solar Charge the company that installed our system.
They were not the cheapest, but we believe they were the best as regards quality of components, customer service and qualified careful installing
tradesmen.But in many ways the acquisition process, selection of a competent cost effective solar company is the easiest part of the whole exercise.
The most difficult parts are-
When we bundled initially with a energy retailer provider, that was a pleasant exercise, 17.9 cents net per KW hour for electricity and a similar outcome for our gas needs.
But as soon as we went to solar all previously contractually agreed bets were off and our electricity charge from the grid from [all retailers seem to be a similar cost] our charge jumps to 29.9 per KW hour from 7 am until 11 pm weekdays. our off peak charge is only 11 cents per KW hour 11 pm until 7 am in the morning.
[note from Finn: this doesn’t have to be the case see here to find a retailer that won’t increase your tariff for getting solar]
So from 17.9 cents per KW hour after discounts jumping to 28 after discounts.
but in someway it gets even harder-
To get our so called smart meter recalibrated to recognise and meter our solar generation was a nightmare from an admin point of view.
I initially was told by our retailer provider that it would take 26 working days to process our paperwork through to our distributor who is responsible for reconfiguring our smart meter.
Solar Charge told us it would cost $136 dollars which they included in their quote.
Our retailer provider told us it would cost $196 and if we wanted to speed the connect up we could pay an additional $50 to get the truck to visit our suburb out of turn so to speak.
When I got rather firm [not abusive at any stage] with the retailer with finally a senior customer service person she said her company’s performance to date was poor and she would husband our paperwork [which Solar Charge had submitted in a timely manner] as quickly as was reasonable.
Which was the case exactly in fact.
The retailer got our paperwork to the distributor in 3 working days, very reasonable.
The large distributor did the reconfiguring in 3 working days [also reasonable] from their workshops and here is the good news, at no cost.
Because these smart meters in my suburb can be reconfigured from their workshops via a computer download.
No visiting truck is required we were told.
[We need to see this in actual reality if true in future bills, I have made a record of conversation regarding who I have spoken to and the undertakings given to me].
Solar Charge has without any hesitation agreed to refund our $136 but after a few weeks period that allows for any unexpected bill arrival from the distributor [they don’t totally believe this is ttrue yet].
*Our solar installation was finalised on the 5 November and our so called smart meter was recalibrated on the 23 November.
All that is reasonable, but it would certainly not have happened without an enormous persistent personal involvement from ourselves.
Speaking to a neighbour living on her own, it took her 9 months [for some months she did not entirely understand the whole process] to get her system connected to the grid from a metering of her solar power point of view.”
Avoid this experience by getting in writing the absolute latest date at which you will have your system connected to the grid and properly metered.
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)
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?”.
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