What is the best cost-effective solution to get a decent solar settup supplied and installed.
Who have you used and what was your experience?
Any advice appreciated
Thanks
Hi all,
We recently became a 2x EV family. In the past we charged our first low range eV from diverted solar, but with the second eV our 5kW solar system isn't providing enough charge for both. We'll likely get through summer but autumn/winter/spring will be a challenge.
We have some money available that we could use to upgrade the system, either taking it to ~10kW, or adding a battery. The other option is to pay off a reasonable chunk of mortgage and wait for the next govt's solar legislation to kick in and hopefully make things cheaper or at least reduce the interest rate on financed systems.
I'm working through the modelling on the solar/battery/mortgage payment options, but it gets pretty complex with time of use plan cost forecasting, etc.
Keen to hear what others would do in this situation.
I'm currently looking at installing solar and got talking to one of the guys from "Current Generation" today at the Christchurch Electrify Expo today, does anyone have any feedback on them? Unfortunately their name makes it difficult to find any independent reviews, they claim to be around since 2006 but I've not heard of them before. One of my requirements is I want something that will happily operate without a cloud connection, when talking to a couple of other installers I couldn't make them understand why I would want this, the guy from Current Generation was all good with it and directed me towards a Fronius inverter (which is where I was leaning already).
Has anybody else had a terrible time dealing with Electric Kiwi?
We just had solar installed and moved to the Movemaster plan. That was nearly 2 months ago and we are still not exporting solar. We need our meter upgraded but Electric Kiwi are basically stonewalling us.
I've contacted them multiple times and they always say "sorry about that. We'll get on to it right away" and nothing ever happens.
On Monday they said they had raised our priority and we would get an update. Again, silence!
Their customer service and inability to get anything done is the worst I've ever come across in NZ.
Can i spray and rinse my panels with this if correctly diluted? Thanks!
I’ve got a new build townhouse under contract in CHCH (expected build finished Jan-27). I’ve asked the question on if I can get the unit “Solar Ready” they’ve replied with yes and for an extra $2K.
I’m planning on living there for around 5 years or so and then rent it out after that. It’s a 3 bed 2 bath with a garage, everything will be electric with 2 of us living there.
I work for an energy company and receive a 20% discount on power already and so I’m unsure if solar will be the right choice for me.
Should I bite the bullet and spend the $2k to make future install easier (hopefully cheaper)? And would going full solar be beneficial in the long run?
10KW inverter, 10KWh battery, 14 500Wp trinasolar panels online Nov 24, 2025.
I did manage to actually record ~22KWh of electricity a month that's only reported by the meter. You've all seen it - that odd +100w-200w mystery draw when you are off grid and presumably is the power required by the inverter to perform it's normal operation. It seems to average in the 22KWh range and is also dependent on what the system is doing. This seems like something Sig could fix. All the winter drama - I could alleviate (maybe) with an additional sigstore10 battery, but there is no universe where the cost/benefit ratio makes sense.
Not much has changed since my 2Q post other than the replacement of my 4.5KW dryer with a heat pump design.
The only thing of note is that I still need to clean the panels as I do think it will increase generation a bit.
I will do a final post in January with my personal thoughts on the system. I encourage those that have not already set up tracking of their choosing to download the sheet and adjust the rates to make it their own. The math is correct.
It seems there was a bad batch of Tesla PowerWall 2's that present a fire risk. Tesla remotely drained these batteries and is notifying the owners that they need to be swapped out.
Hello team,
Looking for real experiences from fellow off griders.
I currently live fully off grid, septic tank and disposal field, rain water, solar. I live in a tiny home with 4.8kWh set of panels and about 12kWh set of batteries. Hot water and cooking is gas. I have everything else running as a normal house. Normal size fridge, tv, smart speakers, smart lights, computers, etc.
Now, I’m about to build a 3bdroom house and I a list of things I’d like to do.
First thing is I want to ditch gas and go full electric so I will need to upgrade the solar as the current will be moved to be used with the tiny home as a rental. I can get about 50 panels as a set of 30 and at least another set of 20 which I’m lowballing here as I need to calculate roof space for the new build. The 20 set would be mounted on the house roof and be used as primary. The 30 set would be mounted as secondary and feed the primary if it was mains power. I’d also add two sets of batteries.
Now to the questions. If you have experience with those below I’d love to hear from you,
- Heat pump hot water. I like the idea of the outside unit and sounds like I could make it work with about 4 panels (2kW) during the day.
- Cooktop. I think this is a power hunger but I don’t spend the day cooking so should be able to live with it. My current oven is electric and I can use whenever I need without issues unless we’re in the deeps of winter.
- I’m really thinking of heated floor in the bathroom. Would you have an idea of how much power it uses?
Please highlight anything else I could be missing. Anything you can think would be great as it could be the case you don’t know what you don’t know.
TIA, team.
Appreciate it.
I just received three quotes and was rather surprised at one company’s projection of 7% p.a. increase in energy cost over the next 30years in projecting the lifetime bill savings. The other two assumed a more realistic 3% p.a. over 20years. This just highlighted the integrity issue with the company concerned. Thought I just raise this for awareness and not to take the estimated savings at face value.
Looking forward into the potential solar policy coming in, I obviously want to pack my roof with as much solar as I can. I have a concrete roof installed 1988 on my home, a total surface area of around 144m2
What are peoples thoughts on replacing this roof with something like coloursteel, vs getting it resealed and painted and then chucking the solar on?