123 replies to this topic

[Hydonia]

Just wanted to say thank you Andrew. We are starting to build our new house, and are now going to visit Solar Gain. Reading this has helped us see a few things, and although we have always wanted solar, felt it was out of our price range, but seeing the prices on their website, now we can get it....just have to worry about our roof space, our north facing roof space isn't that large.

Cheers,
Alize

[Cawdor]

Sounds great Alize, this will surely help keep the bill down with all the new tanks you're going to get
How long will it take before it has paid for itself (roughly)?

[werdna]

Mike: I am buying two CREE ones in a couple of days, one cool white, one warm white, and am going to test them out at home. I was wondering if anyone else had given them a go.
On Saturday I got a peak of 4.6kw If only I could get that per hour!

Alize: Good to see you give it a go. Try and talk them into giving you 4 extra panels for free...
If you get a transformerless inverter they are more efficient at lower wattages, so if you dont have enough space on a north facing roof, or if your house doesnt sit east west/ north south, you can have split the panels up on the roof so you generate less power for longer instead of more power for less time... I can give you the number of the guy we had quote us if you like?

Tim: I dont know anyone who has kept them for a year, so dont know exactly how much they generate over a decent period. If you base it on the current 16c/kwh they are not really viable, but with increasing power costs, and increasing feed back rates, the payback time will be significantly reduced.
Problem is that if I calculate power generation over the next week and base that as the average, they will take forever... stupid clouds!
Sunday was an alright day and I generated 10kw, if that was the average (not many clouds, but low sun and less hours of sunlight cos of winter... so should be close), at current rates of 16c per unit, they would take a little over 9 years. I dont think that is too bad really.
And the installer told me I would fit 6.6kw easy on my roof... hmmmm they seem to be similar to fish tanks, as soon as you get the big one you have always wanted, you start thinking where you could fit an even bigger one.!
Give me a year and I will tell you exactly what I average... Or Mike might be able to give a good average to work off...

If I built a house now I would probably run the lights on 12v, not on mains, and get one panel charging an SLA battery bank to run them.
If you lost battery power you could always top them up with mains, but I think you could get away with needing to once here in sunny Perth.
And I have been looking up some hybrid wind/solar with batt bank systems for my fish shed. Would be nice to have my shed generate its own power completely, would stop the wife nagging that they are the fault for our power bill!
Anyone know of some quiet 12/24v 5000lph water pumps I can run my sumps with?!

Andrew

[Hydonia]

Hi Andrew,

I would love the name of the guy who did yours, and was thinking aout going transformerless.

Tim,

I am not really interested in how long it takes to pay for itself, if it cuts my bill in half ( according to rough calcutaions my bill will be around 1/3 of what it is now), and I am helping with green power, then I am happy.

[werdna]

PM sent Alize

For anyone else that is interested, I am about to buy about 4 different types of LED downlights.
So if you are serious about giving them a go but dont know which one to pick I would be happy to sort out a demo for you.
Or I will just pick the one I like the best and recommend to all!
I am getting a 4w, 5w cool white and warm white and a 9w. All are available in both 12v ands 240v.

I am hoping to take $150 off my bill, and we have been really strict with our power usage as it is.
That is $900 a year, which is nothing to be sneezed at, not even looking at the whole green snob hippy turn your nose up at you neighbours crap!

Andrew

[Mike]

For those that are interested My Figures for the past 6 months are this. System installed 21 Jan 2010 . So its 134 days old

My system has produced 1053kwh in that time. So thats an average of 7.8kwh per day roughly. In them 11 days in Jan my average was 10.1kwh so I cant wait till next summer to get proper readings.
From that 1053kwh I have output only 253kwh to the grid. Reason being is that only excess power is fed back to grid. So its a total of $40.50 credited onto my bill.
The other 800kwh have been used by the house before it can get to the grid. So thats a saving of $140.88. So a grand total of $181.38 has been saved so far.

Now this is based on my house and power consumption (too high at 20-30 units a day). I also have 2 young kids at home all day. Yours may be different. If it just 2 of you at home and your working all day your output to the grid would be higher as well as your power use lower than mine. May not even get a bill.

Now the feed in tarriff as I mentioned is going up to 47c per kwh output to grid. So that 253kwh that was worth $40.50 would be worth $118.91 under the new tarriff.
Based on these figures my system with MY useage will be around 11 years. I also paid a bit more than Andrew so that dont help. REC's were lower when I bought mine.

BUT you would get the money back when you sell the house anyway. So that kind of cancels itself out.

Sorry if I have confused you all now. All you need to know is that it works.
If you do buy one, Get one with a bigger inverter than you need eg 1.5kw system get a 3 kw inverter. At least you can upgrade then. Also be aware of the chinese junk out there. Fronius, Sunnyboy, SMA, Conergy etc are German made and excellent quality with high efficiency ratings.

Mike

[angelbaby]

did you get your downlights?
I am definitely interested, need about 15.
We use 69 units a day so will def need the 5kw, and wont be expecting any going back to the grid too soon...

[werdna]

I got quite a few, in the end the best was the warm white 9w with 3 cree leds.
They cost around $30 ea, but you get discounts for 15.
I am about to order another 10 so if you want I can see if we can get a good price for a 25 purchase.
The advantage of the 9w is that you dont need to rewire the house, just straight swap the lights.

But the light generated isnt as nice as normal downlights, so I am only putting them in my hallways and feature lights, not in the kitchen or bathroom when you need good light.

[angelbaby]

I just filled out this form for the best comparable rate for solar, thought I'd share
solarchoice

the lights, the kitchen has 6 and it does need good lights in there cos we put cupboards in which casts a shadow on benches now, DOH!
Will take 15 of whatever ones you think. 10 can take the low light.

[werdna]

Also power cost went up on my last bill from 16c to 17c per unit.
Everytime that happens the pay off time reduces!

Andrew

[angelbaby]

why are they that dear? i just bought an energy saver from coles for $10 but it was a 35w=50w

Off the top of my head, relates to another forum topic I think, to do with energy saving, but...

I dont think turning the tank lights off is a good idea, or the thermometer temp reduction.
Few things I've noticed and thought about...
angels are happier when temp is high, and reduces white spot possibility
photosynthesis is created with lights on, therefore providing more oxygen to the tank via the plants.
Algae growth on rocks for my mbuna
plant oxygen- did I mention that?
it also increases the ph (I think) if lights are on longer, good for the cichlids.
So a 5KW system for me, cos saving money on lights and heat is irrelevant if you have fish deaths...

[angelbaby]

Pensioners can have it applied to their account and it is declared not income, Read it on the Womans spark FB site.

[Neakit]

Sunlight is a great source of light and best of all its free..........

[werdna]

why are they that dear? i just bought an energy saver from coles for $10 but it was a 35w=50w

That was a CFL, not an LED downlight

[marine]

I am getting solar panels installed on the 28th.
Can't wait! and they have come down HEAPS since the $8000 rebate first started.

I am getting 12 x 190w panels so on a perfect day with full sun, no breeze, 25 deg and the panels facing the sun perfectly in perfect lab conditions I will be getting 2280w!
Plugged into a Aurora 3.6kw transformerless inverter. I was going to get an SMA as I prefer them, but they have a backorder with no set arrival date, but from what I have researched, the Aurora seems to be very similar.
And then if I want to add more panels it is currently around $600 per panel installed, and no need to upgrade inverter.

Anyone else bite the green bullet on here?

My next task is to change all remaining globes to energy savers, then all my downlights to 9w LEDs.
If anyone is interested in upgrading downlights too, when I place my order I might do a mass group buy to try get 100+ buy pricing.
And build my shed finally with good insulation and get all tanks in there to reduce heating costs, which is the sole reason for wanting a fish shed... HA!

Andrew

gday cheif what company did you go through for you solar panel system cheers

[werdna]

I used Paul from Solar Gain.

They let me change their systems to upgrade inverters etc and were really good.

[angelbaby]

I used Paul from Solar Gain.

They let me change their systems to upgrade inverters etc and were really good.

I heard back from Paul, who was extremely informative, he passed me onto Ian in the Bunbury store, so far their customer service has been excellent.
I'm thinking of the transformerless inverter too, tht means I can put panels on the side and back of house hey? Because the house faces diagonally to the sun. The back roof wouldnt be large enough for the number of panels i want.
I cant wait, and I havnt even ordered yet!
Someone is going to come round and check the place out for the best system etc. Thats good!

I wish I had a fish shed!
The theatre room has just turned into one, it was called the quiet room,lol if I get all eheim air then it should still be the quiet room.
If I do put a shed up, with our limited space, then it will be to house the tonnes of fish stuff I have gathered...a thousand buckets and hoses, gravels and rocks n sponges n stuff that has over taken my alfresco and lounge room, haha

[fourdapostle]

I must admit solar seems the way. However in making a few calls; currently Synergy only pay what they charge us 17cents only%for each kw sent back to the grid and in August that all changes. Synergy will pay 7 cents, and a rebate from the govt for 40c. As I was told, if you were to get a 3kw inverter unit producing 12kw a day the sums would be easy to workout, 12x61 (days charged)x 17c atm, give you a total of $124.44 of your bill which for me would be 25%. So if you do the same calc on 47 cents it will work out $344 which would be more like 70% off the bill. All this is if it will produce 12kw a day. Even if you allowed 10kw a day it would still work out to be a big saving...
I am still looking atm. Checked out solar gain, but also nupower which seems to be a lot cheaper for complete install, but more research is needed....on my part....
all this is probably old news anway but thought i would add my two pennies worth

[werdna]

10kw on a 3kw system is pretty low.

I get around 10-11kw with 2.28kw a system on a clear sunny winter day.
In winter the days are shorter and the sun is lower as well.

I am looking forward to summer now to see what I get per day

[angelbaby]

I cant afford to have a bill as well as the repayments on the solar loan, so I gotta go all out, so to cover 69 units a day...what do ya think would do it?

fourdapostle, check out solarchoice and get their quote comparison, then look up those companies, Andrew looked at mine for me and seemed like there was like 7 grand in difference between some quotes. business promptness and smarts then price... or best price and hope for the best...havnt we all dealt with dickhead labourers before.
If Andrew is happy with that company, I'm prepared to give em a go, but if they are 10 grand more, it wont be them.