Solar options for home in 2022.

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398 posts

Ultimate Geek

Trusted

#3343265 16-Feb-2025 05:02

timmmay:

Can anyone suggest good places to get a quote from given we're Wellington based? I've already booked Harrisons and contacted Solarman.

Lightforce is a good national one, typically a bit cheaper than harrisons:

https://lightforce.co.nz/solarbundles/

If you have electric hotwater then get a solar diverter or hotwater timer installed as part of the setup, those tend to allow you to shift 30% of a typical houses energy use to solar.

fastbike

212 posts

Master Geek

#3343271 16-Feb-2025 07:50

HarmLessSolutions:

All retailers will be posting rate changes in April as they pass on lines company price increases. I'm confident that Octopus will continue to pay a fair FIT as much as the market conditions allow them to. During the course of last year they dropped their FIT tariff for a while but soon brought it back up to the 17c that we originally got from them. Nice to see a retailer so sensitive to customer expectations.

My Meridian plan has locked in all rates (day/night/fit and daily charge) excepting GST and EA levy changes for 5 years since last October when I signed up, so that is through to Oct 2029. That was one of the reasons I was looking for a long term contract to avoid getting hit with increases. I have it confirmed via email.

Otautahi Christchurch

HarmLessSolutions

972 posts

Ultimate Geek

Subscriber

#3343278 16-Feb-2025 09:17

fastbike:

HarmLessSolutions:

All retailers will be posting rate changes in April as they pass on lines company price increases. I'm confident that Octopus will continue to pay a fair FIT as much as the market conditions allow them to. During the course of last year they dropped their FIT tariff for a while but soon brought it back up to the 17c that we originally got from them. Nice to see a retailer so sensitive to customer expectations.

My Meridian plan has locked in all rates (day/night/fit and daily charge) excepting GST and EA levy changes for 5 years since last October when I signed up, so that is through to Oct 2029. That was one of the reasons I was looking for a long term contract to avoid getting hit with increases. I have it confirmed via email.

A good move in hindsight to lock in for 5 years though for incoming accounts it's worth noting that Meridian has now reduced that back to 3 year contracts. I did get quotes from Meridian a year or two back for both their EV and solar plans. The lack of overlap of advantages between the two put us off as any non-solar EV charging would have become expensive.

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

Interslice

159 posts

Master Geek

#3343287 16-Feb-2025 10:55

So just asking a question here.. would any of you advise against this. Am looking at this package here from Micromall, 12 panels, 5kw inverter and 10kw battery.

https://www.micromall.co.nz/deye-5kw-smart-hybrid-inverter-hpbc-solar-panels-10-7kwh-battery

Had a local solar installer with a good reputation say it would cost 4-5k to install making the total 13-14k. He did say that the inverter is one of the cheapest on the market and said I should get a different one but it does come with a 10 year warranty?

I just thought the pricing was pretty good on this is all. Thanks.

timmmay

20578 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#3343529 17-Feb-2025 07:35

Hi again all. I have some questions that I was going to ask the installers, but it's occurred to me that independent advice here from people who aren't trying to sell me things is really valuable 🙂 I'm interested in different opinions.

Should all panels be north facing, or should some be facing west? A quick search suggests that overall west facing panels generate 15% less power than north facing but that they produce more power in the evening when we'd need it.
How practical / expensive is it to have the system able to run the house during a power cut? Either automatically or manual switchover. I know of the risk of making power lines live, but I don't know much about it.
Is it possible to have a system without a battery, that could have a battery added to the system easily later?
Where does the equipment go? Obviously the panels go on the roof, but is the inverter in the ceiling space, on the outside wall (a friend of mine has this), under the house (which is fairly large and relatively cool)?
How practical is it to integrate with home assistant? I'd mostly like to have HA able to see current production and current usage, so it can make decisions like should the ducted air conditioning run to use up excess power.
Does solar have any unexpected impact on house insurance? I expect premiums will go up slightly to cover the increase in value.
Is it easy to add a car charger that maximizes solar use later if we decide to buy an electric car?

Some background information about our house and usage:

There's a base load that's probably higher than average because we have an well insulated but older house that needs quite a bit of heating / cooling
Summer weekdays we use most power in the late afternoon, a smaller peak in the morning, but we do run office equipment / air con plus ducted heating / cooling starts about 1pm most days
Summer weekends the power usage is more constant, from laundry I guess
Winter the morning peak is higher than the evening peak
Our roof is steeper than average, maybe 35 degrees at a guess, if that matters
We have a fairly tall range of hills to the east of us that means east facing panels may be shaded for the first couple of hours of the day
The roof is a decent size, facing almost directly north / south / east / west

dantheperson

174 posts

Master Geek

#3343533 17-Feb-2025 08:33

timmmay:

Hi again all. I have some questions that I was going to ask the installers, but it's occurred to me that independent advice here from people who aren't trying to sell me things is really valuable 🙂

I was a fan of east west split, thinking it better matches usage profile, but canned it when the neighbours house was shading the west roof plane mid winter. Subsequently i've found that the east/west split is particularly bad in winter, and it's in winter when your demand is up and production is down, so maximising your winter production, i think north facing is best as sun rises and sets north east and north west in mid winter. Interested to hear what others have found.

On that note a higher tilt of 35 is good for winter production when the sun is lower. You can have a play around with https://www.branz.co.nz/photovoltaic-generation-calculator/ to see the effect of panel tilt on annual production. What i'm yet to find though is a website that gives you an average days production at mid summer/winter/autumn/spring, so that you can see how that fits your usage profile.

Any 'hybrid' inverter can take batteries later. But do your research now. I thought i would never get a battery... but now the price of batteries has come down so much I want one. But the fronius inverter only works with two brands of very expensive batteries. If i were doing it again i'd get an inverter that works with off-the-shelf 48V batteries.

I think the equipment can go wherever you want, though the length of cabling runs is a factor. I know someone on here has theirs in a basement room, mine is on the outside wall.

Very practical to integrate with home assistant, but look up the details of the integration for your inverter / energy meter, no doubt some inverters will be better supported than others. Some (most?) inverters will only measure production, so you need an extra meter installed if you want to measure your current import/export watts.

I'm not aware of any insurance impact.

Yes easy to add a solar diverting EV charger later.

fastbike

212 posts

Master Geek

#3343540 17-Feb-2025 09:29

timmmay:

Hi again all. I have some questions that I was going to ask the installers, but it's occurred to me that independent advice here from people who aren't trying to sell me things is really valuable 🙂 I'm interested in different opinions.

Should all panels be north facing, or should some be facing west? A quick search suggests that overall west facing panels generate 15% less power than north facing but that they produce more power in the evening when we'd need it.

The Niwa SolarView tool is great to see how various orientation and tilt affects output throughout the year. E.g. For our site we have only 1/4 the output in winter cf summer, and the peak insolation is 730 w/m^2 in Dec vs 300 in June. Play around with your site as the tool will take into account any hills etc.

Otautahi Christchurch

timbosan

2159 posts

Uber Geek

#3343541 17-Feb-2025 09:31

Interslice:

So just asking a question here.. would any of you advise against this. Am looking at this package here from Micromall, 12 panels, 5kw inverter and 10kw battery.

https://www.micromall.co.nz/deye-5kw-smart-hybrid-inverter-hpbc-solar-panels-10-7kwh-battery

Had a local solar installer with a good reputation say it would cost 4-5k to install making the total 13-14k. He did say that the inverter is one of the cheapest on the market and said I should get a different one but it does come with a 10 year warranty?

I just thought the pricing was pretty good on this is all. Thanks.

Not specifically replying about the hardware, but $5K for install is WAY above what Micromall have quoted me for a similar system. They also offer two options - self install where you do the grunt work then a sparky does the important bits, and full install. For a similar system -16 panels but without battery - I was quoted $2800.

timmmay

20578 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#3343542 17-Feb-2025 09:32

Thanks Dan. I'm unsure if I want to maximise winter production, or try to maximise our usage of what we can produce. Given relatively low production in winter anyway I wonder if it's worthwhile. In summer the sun sets well to the west, in winter it's definitely much further to the north so west facing panels probably less important.

There's no shade on our roof from north or west any time of the year, just a bit from some hills to the east the first hour of the day or so.

Thanks also fastbike, I might have a look at that tool. I might just ask people here and see what the installers say.

timbosan

2159 posts

Uber Geek

#3343543 17-Feb-2025 09:34

dantheperson:

timmmay:

Hi again all. I have some questions that I was going to ask the installers, but it's occurred to me that independent advice here from people who aren't trying to sell me things is really valuable 🙂

I was a fan of east west split, thinking it better matches usage profile, but canned it when the neighbours house was shading the west roof plane mid winter. Subsequently i've found that the east/west split is particularly bad in winter, and it's in winter when your demand is up and production is down, so maximising your winter production, i think north facing is best as sun rises and sets north east and north west in mid winter. Interested to hear what others have found.

On that note a higher tilt of 35 is good for winter production when the sun is lower. You can have a play around with https://www.branz.co.nz/photovoltaic-generation-calculator/ to see the effect of panel tilt on annual production. What i'm yet to find though is a website that gives you an average days production at mid summer/winter/autumn/spring, so that you can see how that fits your usage profile.

Any 'hybrid' inverter can take batteries later. But do your research now. I thought i would never get a battery... but now the price of batteries has come down so much I want one. But the fronius inverter only works with two brands of very expensive batteries. If i were doing it again i'd get an inverter that works with off-the-shelf 48V batteries.

I think the equipment can go wherever you want, though the length of cabling runs is a factor. I know someone on here has theirs in a basement room, mine is on the outside wall.

Very practical to integrate with home assistant, but look up the details of the integration for your inverter / energy meter, no doubt some inverters will be better supported than others. Some (most?) inverters will only measure production, so you need an extra meter installed if you want to measure your current import/export watts.

I'm not aware of any insurance impact.

Yes easy to add a solar diverting EV charger later.

I'm not aware of any insurance impact.

I am with Tower and they have an 'add-on' specifically for Solar, so may pay to check if the system is covered by your home insurance.

BTW - I also reroofed and re-wired the house before even looking at solar, I am sure insurance companies will look at any claim and if things where up to code beforehand.

Kim587

128 posts

Master Geek

#3343555 17-Feb-2025 09:37

timmmay:

Hi again all. I have some questions that I was going to ask the installers, but it's occurred to me that independent advice here from people who aren't trying to sell me things is really valuable 🙂 I'm interested in different opinions.

Should all panels be north facing, or should some be facing west? A quick search suggests that overall west facing panels generate 15% less power than north facing but that they produce more power in the evening when we'd need it.
How practical / expensive is it to have the system able to run the house during a power cut? Either automatically or manual switchover. I know of the risk of making power lines live, but I don't know much about it.
Is it possible to have a system without a battery, that could have a battery added to the system easily later?
Where does the equipment go? Obviously the panels go on the roof, but is the inverter in the ceiling space, on the outside wall (a friend of mine has this), under the house (which is fairly large and relatively cool)?
How practical is it to integrate with home assistant? I'd mostly like to have HA able to see current production and current usage, so it can make decisions like should the ducted air conditioning run to use up excess power.
Does solar have any unexpected impact on house insurance? I expect premiums will go up slightly to cover the increase in value.
Is it easy to add a car charger that maximizes solar use later if we decide to buy an electric car?
Some background information about our house and usage:

There's a base load that's probably higher than average because we have an well insulated but older house that needs quite a bit of heating / cooling
Summer weekdays we use most power in the late afternoon, a smaller peak in the morning, but we do run office equipment / air con plus ducted heating / cooling starts about 1pm most days
Summer weekends the power usage is more constant, from laundry I guess
Winter the morning peak is higher than the evening peak
Our roof is steeper than average, maybe 35 degrees at a guess, if that matters
We have a fairly tall range of hills to the east of us that means east facing panels may be shaded for the first couple of hours of the day
The roof is a decent size, facing almost directly north / south / east / west

Having recently had a solar install I can answer at least some of these questions:

Its really up to you whether all your panels face north or if some face east/west. If you imagine a classic bell curve graph representing your solar production, north facing panels will give you a higher peak, some facing east/west will give you more during the 'shoulder' periods at the start/finish of the day. Often those times are when your household use peaks so it can be worth thinking about.
To light up the whole house in a power outage, you will need a battery. But as a compromise solution, some inverters allow you to add a 3kW backup power point which is isolated from the mains and activates in a power cut so you can still run some vital appliances like your fridge etc. It only cost about $300 for our system so it seemed worthwhile.
As long as your inverter can handle a battery, it will be very easy to add a battery later. The Fronius Gen24 seem to be pretty common inverters on a lot of installs and they are battery compatible.
Our inverter went inside our garage right next to the switchboard, I would suggest putting it somewhere easily accessible in case an electrician ever needs to isolate the system.
In my case no implications for insurance, just got added to the sum insured.
There are smart chargers that work a bit like a hot water diverter that will automatically feed any excess solar into an EV car battery.
Sorry I have no idea about HA integration.

HarmLessSolutions

972 posts

Ultimate Geek

Subscriber

#3343558 17-Feb-2025 09:55

We have 9.5kW of panels north facing with 39 degree tilt (= to our latitude so mid season optimised) feeding an 8.2kW Fronius single phase inverter. Our peak production is January with ~1,300kWh/month and lowest mid winter at ~540kWh.

It is worth noting that the sun rises and sets to the south of east and west in the summer and half of our panels are bifacials tilted up from a flat roof on trusses so we will be getting some gain in the summer day ends as a result of light reaching the back of the panels.

Also in regard to location of inverter if you are single phase a cable with CT clamp onto the mains on the grid side of your meter board will be required to monitor export and enable throttling to comply with phase export cap. Similar cable and CT clamps will be required for a solar HWC diverter and solar diversion EVSE so they can 'see' and react to export occurring. This can present challenges in some installations if it isn't possible to install cabling to suit. In our case we dodged a bullet by finding an existing conduit under an asphalt driveway which we managed to draw the extra cabling through. A reputable installer should be able to identify and address issues like this but for those considering self installs an unexpected problem like this can really pour cold water on your solar expectations.

Also an EVSE ('EV charger') will require a 32A feed so best located close to your meter/fuse board to minimise cabling costs.

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

timmmay

20578 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#3343672 17-Feb-2025 10:48

Thanks all, that's very useful. We had our switchboard replaced a couple of years ago, apparently the wiring is fine as well.

I guess I'll talk to the installers about east / west or all north.

Having even one plugs that can be powered directly during an outage could be useful, to keep the fridge running or charge batteries. I'll make sure the system is capable of having reasonably priced batteries added later.

That's interesting about the cables and clamps and stuff. I'll leave all that to the installer :)

fastbike

212 posts

Master Geek

#3343684 17-Feb-2025 11:02

timmmay:

Thanks all, that's very useful. We had our switchboard replaced a couple of years ago, apparently the wiring is fine as well.

I guess I'll talk to the installers about east / west or all north.

Having even one plugs that can be powered directly during an outage could be useful, to keep the fridge running or charge batteries. I'll make sure the system is capable of having reasonably priced batteries added later.

That's interesting about the cables and clamps and stuff. I'll leave all that to the installer :)

Regarding batteries be aware that hybrid inverters will support either LV (~48V d.c.) or HV (160-600V d.c). But not both. There are pros and cons to either tech, so make sure the installer knows what they are talking about. Ask for a couple of recommendations for both battery types and ask why they have been recommended, even if you're not installing them at the moment.

Otautahi Christchurch

EgorNZ

50 posts

Geek

#3343689 17-Feb-2025 11:10

Note that you can always use AC-connected batteries (like Powerwall) regardless of your inverter.

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