r/solar

Waiting on an engineer to call me tomorrow. Had a door knocker (immediately skeptical) ask about adding solar panel to my newly built pole barn with metal roofing. I am doing my homework to see how good this program is. I was already told I don’t own the panels. They have a guaranteed output. A battery backup is included. I was hoping others could guide me in what to ask and look out for.

Panels have a 15 year life line, then what?

How many customers do you have in my region?

What happens if your company closes?

Who recycles the panels/battery?

Damage liability?

Selling house with their panels on it?

I recently purchased a home in Illinois (comed). the solar panel was installed in 2023 and is fully paid off. I got my first bill - and realize that I needed to do some things to connect the solar to the grid (I had no idea of this).

I just want to make sure I do it right! I know some rules changed and am trying to figure it all out.

unfortunately the company that installed the panels is out of business (sun power).

is the best thing to do to start with comed and ask them what I need to do?

As the title says i want to add a 20 amp breaker to power a split ac. I would not be doing the install myself as I am not an electrician but would like to get an idea if this can be done?

I currently have a franklin solar system with an Agate and aPower 2 battery. I wanted to add an ac unit which required a dedicated 20 amp breaker.

My current setup is as follows that was wired by the solar contractor.

During day, solar produces and powers the house, surplus goes to the batteries and then gets exported to the grid after the batteries are charged.

During night, batteries power the house, imports from the grid if the batteries are depleted.

During an outage, batteries only power selected equipments.

So if i wanted the ac unit to function the same as above meaning gets powered by solar at day, batteries at night and stop power during an outage where does one put the breaker?

My handy man says he can only put the breaker on the main panel like normal how it is does. He does not know how to wire the new breaker to the agate to function like above. I am not sure but is any further wiring required between the new breaker and agate so that it pulls from the batteries and solar when available?

Thanks

As the title says, trying to find a monitoring tool for my old SunPower system installed in 2015.

My system uses some sort of a power line connection that is hardwired into my router.

I tried to use SunFlower, but the app couldn't find anything, I haven't tried the SunStrong (or whatever) because I don't like the idea of paying $100 a year to see production.

Any recommendations for setting up SunFlower on an old system or a different system I could use in it's place that doesn't cost too much.

Thank you.

Now that the solar panel tax credit is gone, and with solar panel tarrifs, I think the cost structure favors concentrated solar. This would be concentrated solar (mirrors) with cogeneration / (combined heat and cooling).

You can get 10ft radio dish antennas (C Band) for like $500, and if covered with a reflective thin film, we can get (60sqft x 1kw/9 sqft) 7kw of solar power at 100% efficiency reflected onto its focus point (solar photovoltaic is 20%). Easily combine 10 of them in a circular pattern and that is 70kw focusing on a single point. A 70kw array for like 5000$. The focus point would contain a heat exchanger and combined with an absorption chiller which would then provide cold air / hvac via using thermal energy to pressurize the refrigerant instead of a mechanical compressor. the absorption chiller could be easily built from a heat exchanger material and a salt solution as the working fluid, lithium bromide aqueous. Additionally the co-generator can also provide steam for heating water and central heat / radiator heat. Another huge advantage is you dont need batteries to store power, you can store generated power for free via tanks of hot oil or salt.

It seems steam / rankine cycle turbines are too expensive so generating power would be too costly and AC is probably the biggest power bill so it would remedy that easily. Cogeneration with solar mirrors is the way to go it seems! I may consider doing this due to the removal of tax credit and high solar panel tariffs.

Details are 17 cents per kw/hr and 0% escalation for 25 years. Monthly payment of $147.32.

Total cost for a system producing 10,399 kw is $44,196

Has anyone had experiences with ION? From what I'm reading, there are mixed reviews. One of the benefits of them is they are a large company so they are less likely to go out of business and leave me high and dry as far as customer service, etc. However, I've heard a lot of people had bad experiences with them and the PPA model has drawbacks.

Any advice is appreciated, I have 5 more days left to cancel with them as I just got the quote yesterday, I made sure they included a free, zero-cost zero-hassle cancellation clause into the agreement so I could bail on it if I didn't like the deal.

Hello, my house uses around 145-155 kWh of power our bill is in the 800-900 every month, we’re in central Florida. Was looking around trying to see what our best cheapest option is to cut the bill out fully or even in half. Was looking at a anker solix system but a fully system is around 40k not I counting solar.

Any suggestions are very much welcomed.

Edit: our main AC unit uses around 50-60kWh, no EV, Pool pumps around 8kWh a day. We have around 6-8 fridges and mini fridges and freezers those use around 8-10kWh a day. The second ac unit about 18kWh a day

Edit edit: we have a emporia 16 ct monitor but we have maybe around 30 circuits in main panel so I’m not fully sure where we are using all the power only about 70% of it is known

I'm working with two quotes that are near identical in size.

Quote A: 15.4 kwh system with SEG 440 panels (36k)

Quote B: 15.5 kwh system with Trina 445 panels (35k)

Quote A company says Trina warranty claim service is hard to work with and often doesn't respond. Any validity to this? Feels like a sales tactic but I have no experience. The panels seem near identical.

Any thoughts on which panel is superior -- because quote B is slightly cheaper and larger, although it's incredibly close.

We have reliance PB30 + Interlock kit (I think that’s what it’s called. To be able to hook up a generator or a backup battery unit sort of a thing to power the house.

Is this something that could be used to connect solar or wind to power the house?? Or so we need something different to add to make solar panels or wind turbine kind of a thing to the house?? I am so new to this, please be kind. I’m trying to learn. Thanks!!

We had a sales rep come by. One of my family members agreed to a meeting with him. In advance I looked a bunch of stuff up online so we know what to ask the guy. Anyway longer story short onto my question:

The sales rep says the electric company only buys full panels of electric back. Where is I thought (and if I Google) it seems that they buy the excess electric and it get micro-monitored.

We're most likely not going to do that because it is a lease for 25 years (we could also buy it out right) and they are only saving us about $90 but we still have to pay that grid connection fee so in reality it's down closer to $60 or less per month savings.b the only advantages when power goes out we'd still have power and we will be able to run all through the night if we needed. He said if we want our price even cheaper he could remove a solar panel but then we would have no over provisioning.

Which one of the above is correct? Do they buy back our electric on a micromanaged level or do they only buy full solar panels worth of electric at a time? He's saying they just give us a payment once a year if we had extra panels to sell them.

The system he gave us has two batteries and 18 panels it over provisions or electric by about 10 or 11%. He's saying the electric company wouldn't pay you anything because they only buy a full panels worth of electric and in order for that we'd have to add on more panels.