Solar options for home in 2022.

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1585 posts

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#3342789 14-Feb-2025 09:41

In my quest for solar, another quote came in with the SigEnergy offering.

7.04 kW Solar with Battery Energy Solution including:
16 x Hyundai HiT-H440LE-FB solar panels rated at a 7.04 kW DC maximum
output
1 x Sigenergy 5.0 SP inverter rated at 5 kW AC output
1 x Sigenergy SigenStor BAT 8.0 battery operating at 7.8182 kWh cycling
capacity
Installed with mounting system and protection devices
Energy monitoring system

$21,500

The little things make the biggest difference.

HarmLessSolutions

969 posts

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#3342791 14-Feb-2025 09:46

fastbike:

HarmLessSolutions:

If I was exporting that much I'd be looking for a supplier with a better FIT than 9.3c/kWh. Octopus would be paying close to double that, or even more if a reasonable part of that was occurring during peak periods for those companies that pay a premium in that regard.

Crikey, that was a slip up. 2441kWh ! at 17 cents per kWh. Sorry for the confusion.

That sounds more reasonable. Thanks for clearing that up.

The 'invisable' ROI is the amount of electricity you've generated and self consumed.

In our case January was 664kWh self consumed with 603kWh exported and 185kWh imported (according to SolarAnalytics).

The values for those were $215, $102.50 & $49.50 respectively with a $10.40 credit resulting from Octopus, which serves to confirm the advantage of self consumption over export. Incidentally the savings/income we've derived from our set-up over the last 18 months has the self consumption vs export running at ~3:1 in favour of self consumption.

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

tweake

2391 posts

Uber Geek

#3342923 14-Feb-2025 17:26

EgorNZ:

tweake:

the problem with stuff like that, is they will cover the loss by making others pay more. for eg those with ev's would benefit from overnight charging, at the cost of those who are at home during the day.

You're suggesting that the power co's make more money if someone charges their EV at peak time just because they might charge a higher tariff. But the reality is the wholesale cost of electricity varies widely with the time of day and so it's likely more profitable for them to sell you power at a discount night rate than to have you charge it at peak time on a flat rate tariff. So it doesn't necessarily follow that they'll need to recoup lost profits elsewhere.

those companies will never do it for free. they are not cost plus, their cost is irrelevant. they use any excuse to charge whatever they think they can get away with. if they discount one area you can bet they will make it up or use it as an excuse to make more elsewhere.

EgorNZ

50 posts

Geek

#3342955 14-Feb-2025 18:02

tweake:

those companies will never do it for free. they are not cost plus, their cost is irrelevant. they use any excuse to charge whatever they think they can get away with. if they discount one area you can bet they will make it up or use it as an excuse to make more elsewhere.

You missed my point. I appreciate your cynicism and generally I agree that the large gentailers will use their market power to extract as much profit as they can. But what I'm saying is differential pricing doesn't necessarily result in any reduction in profit for the energy company. These plans usually come with a higher peak rate in exchange for the lower off peak rate; the result is that customers are incentivised to shift their loads to more closely match wholesale costs, rather than the energy company averaging it out. When customers take advantage of this they might end up with a lower bill for the same units, but you can bet the energy company made a larger margin.

Interslice

159 posts

Master Geek

#3342956 14-Feb-2025 18:17

timbosan:

Interslice:

Has anyone bought a solar package from anywhere like Trade depot and had it installed yet? Thinking about getting solar installed and their pricing seems good from what I can see even with a battery. Just wondering what a straight install would cost after you purchase one of their packages would be as I would need to get a green loan from the bank.

I have been looking at solar, primarily Micromall, before Trade Depot released their products / pricing. I have been chatting with Paul @ Micromall and he is very quick to reply and to supply pricing for installs. The system I am looking to have (12-16 panels, no battery, 6kw inverter) they offer 2 option - self install or full install. Pricing is $1500 and $2800 respectively.

From what I can see on the Trade Depot site, installs are $5000, and it LOOKS like they use the exact same hardware as Micromall, and no option for the self-install.

Thanks for that. I think I might see if I can get an install on the Micromall gear, it does look better to me and the install price you have there is a lot cheaper than Trade Depot who say it's $6k to install.

Interslice

159 posts

Master Geek

#3342957 14-Feb-2025 18:21

fastbike:

Interslice:

Has anyone bought a solar package from anywhere like Trade depot and had it installed yet? Thinking about getting solar installed and their pricing seems good from what I can see even with a battery. Just wondering what a straight install would cost after you purchase one of their packages would be as I would need to get a green loan from the bank.

Why would an installer put up gear that they have not supplied ? They miss out on the markup, and they are on the hook for installation problems. I'd start by finding a friendly installer and then asking them if they would be happy to install that gear, and if not getting them to recommend / supply gear that they are familiar with. In that package, the inverter is Deye (which is a budget entry level brand) but the panels are some no name item. And there is no detail of the brand/quality/quantity of the mounting kit. Depending on your roof, and where you live it might be sufficient or it might be completely unsuitable.

P.S. Your bank will want to see a quote / invoice so asking on this forum is not going to get you a loan.

Uh yeah thanks for the advice man. I thought this was the site that gave out bank loans?? My mistake.

HarmLessSolutions

969 posts

Ultimate Geek

Subscriber

#3342959 14-Feb-2025 18:31

EgorNZ:

tweake:

those companies will never do it for free. they are not cost plus, their cost is irrelevant. they use any excuse to charge whatever they think they can get away with. if they discount one area you can bet they will make it up or use it as an excuse to make more elsewhere.

You missed my point. I appreciate your cynicism and generally I agree that the large gentailers will use their market power to extract as much profit as they can. But what I'm saying is differential pricing doesn't necessarily result in any reduction in profit for the energy company. These plans usually come with a higher peak rate in exchange for the lower off peak rate; the result is that customers are incentivised to shift their loads to more closely match wholesale costs, rather than the energy company averaging it out. When customers take advantage of this they might end up with a lower bill for the same units, but you can bet the energy company made a larger margin.

The wisest strategy IMO is to use your solar generation to isolate yourself from the effects of pricing measures forced upon you by your supplier and where possible use that pricing to your advantage. That can be done by maximising your self consumption, which results in effective increased value of your generation with each supply price rise, and avoid focussing on how much you can export as your FIT can be reduced at the whim of your supplier at littel notice in many cases and is always less than your supply price.

The ultimate insulation from variations of supply and FIT rates is by way of cutting ties with electricity suppliers altogether by going off grid. As supply and FIT rates move out of favour for solar enabled customers the costs involved in increasing solar capacity and storage sufficiently to enable energy self sufficiently moves increasingly closer. As the prices of battery storage including by way of V2H/V2G continues to drop the electricity supply market needs to be wary that the risk that their customers will abandon them is a reality.

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

HarmLessSolutions

969 posts

Ultimate Geek

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#3342963 14-Feb-2025 18:42

Interslice:

timbosan:

I have been looking at solar, primarily Micromall, before Trade Depot released their products / pricing. I have been chatting with Paul @ Micromall and he is very quick to reply and to supply pricing for installs. The system I am looking to have (12-16 panels, no battery, 6kw inverter) they offer 2 option - self install or full install. Pricing is $1500 and $2800 respectively.

From what I can see on the Trade Depot site, installs are $5000, and it LOOKS like they use the exact same hardware as Micromall, and no option for the self-install.

Thanks for that. I think I might see if I can get an install on the Micromall gear, it does look better to me and the install price you have there is a lot cheaper than Trade Depot who say it's $6k to install.

Just be aware that for whatever system you decide on the ability to monitor its performance is crucial if you want to gain maximum income from it. Having a solar installation that doesn't enable you to see how efficiently it's performing denies you the information required to know if your generation and/or export rates are being compromised by grid voltage issues so you'd be unaware of a potential 10-20% compromise on your solar 'earnings'. Having good quality components and software puts you in charge of your 'power station', and if lacking you're likely p*ssing your investment down the drain.

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

Interslice

159 posts

Master Geek

#3342987 14-Feb-2025 19:52

That does make sense. Thanks. Still just figuring it out at this stage.

timmmay

20575 posts

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#3343088 15-Feb-2025 08:23

Is anyone able to give me a rough estimate of install costs for a residential mid sized solar system in 2025? I want to own it and don't want to do any of it myself. I wouldn't think a battery would be worthwhile at this stage, but I might want to add one later as prices come down some more.

Wellington suburbs
Color steel roof in good condition with a large sloped north facing area on a fairly good slope, plus smaller but still reasonable sized east and west facing areas
I work from home, we use a lot of heating and cooling in our older but well insulated house
5 or 6 showers a day from electric hot water, and about 10 loads of washing per week, often done with warm water
Winter consumption approx 1300kwh/month, summer 1000kwh/month

We're currently paying $0.14c/kwh, when that expires in a few months that looks like it'll go up to about $0.24c/kwh. That will cost us an extra $1500 a year - total I'm guessing $4800 per year. I also expect power is going to keep going up.

Any idea about payback period? I'm guessing by the way power keeps going up it's not going to be all that long. A friend who installed solar 10 years ago said his payback period was around 7 years.

Stu1

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#3343095 15-Feb-2025 08:49

timmmay:

Is anyone able to give me a rough estimate of install costs for a residential mid sized solar system in 2025? I want to own it and don't want to do any of it myself. I wouldn't think a battery would be worthwhile at this stage, but I might want to add one later as prices come down some more.

Wellington suburbs
Color steel roof in good condition with a large sloped north facing area on a fairly good slope, plus smaller but still reasonable sized east and west facing areas
I work from home, we use a lot of heating and cooling in our older but well insulated house
5 or 6 showers a day from electric hot water, and about 10 loads of washing per week, often done with warm water
Winter consumption approx 1300kwh/month, summer 1000kwh/month
We're currently paying $0.14c/kwh, when that expires in a few months that looks like it'll go up to about $0.24c/kwh. That will cost us an extra $1500 a year - total I'm guessing $4800 per year. I also expect power is going to keep going up.

Any idea about payback period? I'm guessing by the way power keeps going up it's not going to be all that long. A friend who installed solar 10 years ago said his payback period was around 7 years.

Going though the process at the moment as well, solarman is really good local installer. Midrange anywhere between 16 and 20k. You can try this site https://www.seanz.org.nz/optimiser or the genless site. Payback for quote in 2021 was around 9 years. I am in Upper Hutt a lot of sun in summer , winter not very good production. Getting new quotes this month . Interested in what quotes you get

timmmay

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#3343100 15-Feb-2025 09:15

Thanks Stu. I wonder if I can get my wife to go for that. Can anyone who has an average system give some idea how much their power bill went down in summer / winter, without going crazy time shifting your power usage but with some accommodations?

dantheperson

174 posts

Master Geek

#3343104 15-Feb-2025 09:43

timmmay:

Is anyone able to give me a rough estimate of install costs for a residential mid sized solar system in 2025?

If you just go with the one array on the north roof, that should qualify as a "simple" install and so:

Harrisons 5kW system, premium european inverter, chinese panels $11500
https://www.harrisonssolar.co.nz/solar-systems/5kw-solar-system

Tradedepot 5kW system, 10kWh battery, well known chinese budget inverter, chinese panels $14999
https://tradedepot.co.nz/5kw-smart-hybrid-inverter-with-solar-panel-and-battery-installation/

HarmLessSolutions

969 posts

Ultimate Geek

Subscriber

#3343105 15-Feb-2025 09:50

timmmay:

Thanks Stu. I wonder if I can get my wife to go for that. Can anyone who has an average system give some idea how much their power bill went down in summer / winter, without going crazy time shifting your power usage but with some accommodations?

Some ballpark numbers for you, our system is 9.5kW of panels feeding into an 8.2kW Fronius inverter. We have our panels mounted on trusses on a large shed on a rural property so north facing with 39 degree tilt. No battery storage but we charge 2 EVs and have a HWC diverter. We also have pumped water supply. We have a log burner for heating but no wetback.

Last year we generated 11,800kWh, consumed 7,280kWh of that, exported 4,475kWh and imported 3,780kWh. Our Octopus power bills over summer run at about $25CR and in the depths of winter we nudge $100/month. It's usually about Apr/May before our Octopus account 'uses up' our summer credit balance.

We also had ~5kW of solar at our previous rural property which generated about 7,500/year.

In regards to your time shifting comment the most convenient way of optimising in this respect is by way of automation. Solar diversion enabled devices such as HWC diverters and diversion capable EV chargers (e.g. Evnex) are crucial in maximising your self consumption which is key in getting the best return from your investment. In our case we have both diversion methods installed which play a big part in our 'earning' 3x as much from offsetting import by way of our self consumption vs export. Self consumption should be your primary target as that will always trump export rates.

Don't be fobbed off by your installer to go for a HWC timer as you will see significant amounts of import due to intermittent cloud cover at times when the timer is forcing the HWC to heat which isn't the case for a diverter.

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

timmmay

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#3343109 15-Feb-2025 10:17

Thanks all. It sounds like a midsize solar system would significantly reduce our bills and a payback would be less than 10 years. I guess it's a toss-up between paying high electricity bills and keeping money invested, or reducing bills.

I guess those two prices are plus installation?

Is there any advice around whether a battery is worthwhile? Obviously it lets us time shift our power which has big benefits. In the winter even though we preheat the house during the day we have a lot of usage in the evening. I wonder if the ducted heat pump would use the battery fairly quickly and cycle it every night, meaning the battery probably wouldn't last all that long.

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