Solar options for home in 2022

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#3486271 1-May-2026 16:14

Amazing how quickly solar production tapers off going into winter.

Start of April we had some clear days and got to 50kWh.
Yesterday and today another couple of clear days and struggling to get to 35kWh, and we're not even in the middle of winter yet!
Granted our panel angel isn't great for this time of year.

March we made 1.24MWh and April only 800kWh.

Opinions are my own and not the views of my employer.

ScuL

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#3486273 1-May-2026 16:30

What's everyone's take on Lightforce? Any positive or negative experiences?

Haere taka mua, taka muri; kaua e wha.

billgates

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#3486275 1-May-2026 16:36

razor2000nz:

Had our first quote in,

22 x 470w AE solar panels, 10.34kW

1 x 8kW Sigenstor hybrid inverter

1 x Shelly 1PM Gen3

$18k, now to decide if that good value or not. 4 month lead time for install though.

Would be keen to hear peoples thoughts on pricing

A bit more context

Chch, 2 adults 2 kids, No one home during day apart from school holidays Ducted heat pump/cooling 4 bed 200sqm Electric hot water Induction cooktop, single story. New build.

this is a quote and install my colleague went ahead with in Waikato.

Do whatever you want to do man.

timmmay

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#3486276 1-May-2026 16:41

CYaBro:

Amazing how quickly solar production tapers off going into winter.

Start of April we had some clear days and got to 50kWh.
Yesterday and today another couple of clear days and struggling to get to 35kWh, and we're not even in the middle of winter yet!
Granted our panel angel isn't great for this time of year.

March we made 1.24MWh and April only 800kWh.

Yep, day length is getting shorter quickly, and we've had some bad weather. Peak panel output is down from summer, I was getting 6.3 - 6.5kw in summer, today we didn't even reach 6kw.

Dec: 1.33MHw (peak)
Jan: 1.27MWh
Feb: 1.11MWh
Mar: 1.0MWh
Apr: 0.8MWh

Our system was installed mid April last year so can't do year to year comparisons yet. Here's some numbers from last year though:

May 25: 640KWh
June 25: 450KWh
July 25: 575KWh

Production since installation 11.4MWh, reducing our bill by $2489 according to the inverter app. Given the $15K install price that's a 6 year payback period, but I expect that will come down as power prices rise, and if feed in tarrifs reduce that could impact things as well.

Loismustdye

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#3486326 1-May-2026 17:43

billgates:

razor2000nz:

Had our first quote in,

22 x 470w AE solar panels, 10.34kW

1 x 8kW Sigenstor hybrid inverter

1 x Shelly 1PM Gen3

$18k, now to decide if that good value or not. 4 month lead time for install though.

Would be keen to hear peoples thoughts on pricing

A bit more context

Chch, 2 adults 2 kids, No one home during day apart from school holidays Ducted heat pump/cooling 4 bed 200sqm Electric hot water Induction cooktop, single story. New build.

this is a quote and install my colleague went ahead with in Waikato.

does that include install? Unless it’s incorporated into the panel cost ($450 is a lot per panel)

billgates

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#3486380 1-May-2026 19:38

Yes that included the install and was part of the solar panels cost.

Do whatever you want to do man.

fastbike

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#3486397 2-May-2026 07:46

CYaBro:

Amazing how quickly solar production tapers off going into winter.

Start of April we had some clear days and got to 50kWh.
Yesterday and today another couple of clear days and struggling to get to 35kWh, and we're not even in the middle of winter yet!
Granted our panel angel isn't great for this time of year.

March we made 1.24MWh and April only 800kWh.

Here's a chart of the house PV (11.8Kwp with 10kW Solis inverter and 68kWh battery) for the current year. To put the comment above into context we are now only 7 weeks away from the shortest day so we are entering the "darkest" quarter of the year - in 3 months we will be getting more sun.

Otautahi Christchurch

Quoban

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#3486400 2-May-2026 08:35

ScuL:

What's everyone's take on Lightforce? Any positive or negative experiences?

We used Lightforce in Auckland around 1 year ago. They were so busy that we didn’t receive a sales consult from one of their traditional salespeople, but an install engineer from another region. This worked out brilliantly as he could answer all my technical equations and explained things really well.

After deciding to go with them, the process slightly fell apart - each of their teams and individuals are awesome to deal with, but their backend CRM isn’t the best. After multiple emails chasing for an install date, the response was eventually ‘Dynamics didn’t send the email’. As a user of Microsoft Dynamics in a past life, I can 100% understand this. How frustrating for them (and me, the customer too).

Once that was all sorted, things went very well!
awesome install team, very tidy cabling, explained each step along the way.
We’ve recently upgraded the Battery capacity of our Sigenergy system too (through Lightforce Auckland), adding an additional 9kwh battery (so 18kwh total).

We have 25x 500w Trina Solar panels, 10kw Sigenergy Inverter, 18kwh Battery and 7kw Sigenergy AC EV charger + gateway.

dantheperson

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#3486886 2-May-2026 23:51

There's been a few days like this lately. Feels a bit ominous for the long term FIT rates, or is there something else at play?

jjones

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#3486889 2-May-2026 23:59

Quoban:

ScuL:

What's everyone's take on Lightforce? Any positive or negative experiences?

We used Lightforce in Auckland around 1 year ago. They were so busy that we didn’t receive a sales consult from one of their traditional salespeople, but an install engineer from another region. This worked out brilliantly as he could answer all my technical equations and explained things really well.

After deciding to go with them, the process slightly fell apart - each of their teams and individuals are awesome to deal with, but their backend CRM isn’t the best. After multiple emails chasing for an install date, the response was eventually ‘Dynamics didn’t send the email’. As a user of Microsoft Dynamics in a past life, I can 100% understand this. How frustrating for them (and me, the customer too).

Once that was all sorted, things went very well!
awesome install team, very tidy cabling, explained each step along the way.
We’ve recently upgraded the Battery capacity of our Sigenergy system too (through Lightforce Auckland), adding an additional 9kwh battery (so 18kwh total).

We have 25x 500w Trina Solar panels, 10kw Sigenergy Inverter, 18kwh Battery and 7kw Sigenergy AC EV charger + gateway.

My experience, they are a nightmare to deal with. Their aftersales and support is abysmal. I will go elsewhere. Their sales people will do a lot of misrepresntation just to make a sale.

fastbike

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#3486900 3-May-2026 07:18

ScuL:

What's everyone's take on Lightforce? Any positive or negative experiences?

Why would you use a company where the person selling you the system is not part of the installation team.

Otautahi Christchurch

fastbike

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#3486959 3-May-2026 09:23

Here's a screen shot of my summary spreadsheet for 2025 performance. For background, a GZ member lives about 20km away and had a publicly facing PV portal which I asked if I could export data from. I also asked for the installed kWpeak, slope and orientation. That enabled me to build a spreadsheet model using Niwa SolarView to adjust the reference site production figures to reflect a likely PV output for my two installations (house and stand alone garage).

The complete site went live on 3 Jan last year so I did a month by month comparison for the actual performance, including the reference site over 2025 to allow for seasonal and weather fluctuations.

Here it is - interesting my model was conservative with the house out performing the model around 10%, and the garage about double ! The garage has a poor orientation and some shading, does this mean that a north facing site is less important with modern panels ?

Otautahi Christchurch

mark0x01

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#3486991 3-May-2026 12:26

Solar will be installed later this month, and I have missed a good start with the last few weeks of nice clear sunny days.

I've used some hourly use history from my Home Asssistant to see if a TOU plan would offer any benefit.

This might change once solar is taken into account, but not there yet and being a Low User doesn't seem to help.

So the results:

Not off to a good start when looking at July to September 2025 - there was no difference in cost between the Ecotricity Anytime and TOU plans.

Between 35-40% use is during peak times of 7AM-11AM and 5PM-9PM and that could be hard to shift.

A more stepped TOU plan might work better, but I don't think trying to train the wife to follow it is going to work out too well 😄

kangaroo13

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#3487001 3-May-2026 13:04

fastbike:

---

Why would you use a company where the person selling you the system is not part of the installation team.

This business model has worked out OK for me dealing with a local company in Christchurch - Sunrise Solar. They seem to deal with (at least) one local sparky who is the guy who goes in and does the installation. Their sales and support guys seem to be knowledgeable and responsive, and appear to have a very good relationship with the electrician they used on both jobs I had done.

HarmLessSolutions

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#3487002 3-May-2026 13:05

mark0x01:

Solar will be installed later this month, and I have missed a good start with the last few weeks of nice clear sunny days.

I've used some hourly use history from my Home Asssistant to see if a TOU plan would offer any benefit.

This might change once solar is taken into account, but not there yet and being a Low User doesn't seem to help.

So the results:

Not off to a good start when looking at July to September 2025 - there was no difference in cost between the Ecotricity Anytime and TOU plans.

Between 35-40% use is during peak times of 7AM-11AM and 5PM-9PM and that could be hard to shift.

A more stepped TOU plan might work better, but I don't think trying to train the wife to follow it is going to work out too well 😄

Maybe consider restricting HWC powering during peak export tariff hours. We're often generating significantly well before 11am and I manually disable our diverter until after 11am but a timer could be set to do the same. An extra 5.75c/kWh on our Ecotricity EcoSolar plan but it all ads up.

https://www.harmlesssolutions.co.nz/

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