Maybe their website is way out of date. Their loss.

Apparently solar panel prices may start to trend up soon. 

timmmay:

 

Maybe their website is way out of date. Their loss.

 

I’ve had quotes from Harrison’s and few other solar installers and they’re all within a couple of grand of each other. 
Basically the same except different brands of solar panels. 

CYaBro:

 

timmmay:

 

Maybe their website is way out of date. Their loss.

 

 

I’ve had quotes from Harrison’s and few other solar installers and they’re all within a couple of grand of each other. 
Basically the same except different brands of solar panels. 

 

I had Light Force quote about $6K more than Solar Man, the only difference was a slightly larger inverter which should only be a $1500 upgrade. When I told Light Force they said it was a great price from Solar Man.

I recently got a quote from Harrisons and said to the rep that i wasn't interested in the free giveaway.  He said that they would only reduce the quote by $400.   I never went with them as I found that they never declared the exact make and model of panel or inverter.  Nor did they mention that if you wanted to add batteries at a later stage, you would have to pay for a firmware update for the inverter to unlock that capability, it would be in the vicinity of 1K for this.  Also why are they advertising Q cell panels and then offering something else.

I've gone with another company now.  Just waiting to confirm install date.

Yeah I can confirm I have been through this same exercise recently with huge variation in pricing, with largely just different brands being the difference. Between 15-40% premium for some installers.

Now since engaging with Harrisons my biggest challenge is trying to unsubscribe from all the marketing fluff which I never signed up for - ugh 

Certainly pays to do your research and shop around. Weirdly enough I ended up going direct through our electrician who (I didn't realise before this) have a specific team for solar. 

We are all cleared for take off and just waiting on booking in to swap out an old (12yo) inverter and increase our array from ~4kw of panels to about ~10kw

richrdh18:

 

I recently got a quote from Harrisons and said to the rep that i wasn't interested in the free giveaway.  He said that they would only reduce the quote by $400.   I never went with them as I found that they never declared the exact make and model of panel or inverter.  Nor did they mention that if you wanted to add batteries at a later stage, you would have to pay for a firmware update for the inverter to unlock that capability, it would be in the vicinity of 1K for this.  Also why are they advertising Q cell panels and then offering something else.

 

I've gone with another company now.  Just waiting to confirm install date.

 

Which company did you go with? 

turtleattacks:

 

richrdh18:

 

I recently got a quote from Harrisons and said to the rep that i wasn't interested in the free giveaway.  He said that they would only reduce the quote by $400.   I never went with them as I found that they never declared the exact make and model of panel or inverter.  Nor did they mention that if you wanted to add batteries at a later stage, you would have to pay for a firmware update for the inverter to unlock that capability, it would be in the vicinity of 1K for this.  Also why are they advertising Q cell panels and then offering something else.

 

I've gone with another company now.  Just waiting to confirm install date.

 

 

Which company did you go with? 

 

Sunshine Solar 

richrdh18:

 

Sunshine Solar 

 

I requested a quote / assessment from them a couple of weeks ago and haven't heard back.

CYaBro:

 

richrdh18:

 

Sunshine Solar 

 

 

I requested a quote / assessment from them a couple of weeks ago and haven't heard back.

 

I found them very responsive.  I had a call and email within a few hours of approaching them followed by a meeting within a week and they quoted on the spot.  I changed the quote a few times and had my questions answered in a timely manner. 

Mind you they have just started to advertise in the Wanganui/Manawatu region.

I had to wait 3 weeks for Harrisons to arrange a time for a quote.

I never got to a harrisons quote I know people had a similar system for similar money but I had made a decision and install started before they could even come quote. 

We contacted Harrisons prior to our original installation back in 2021. The promised site visit to scope the job never happened and we ended up using a local installer. When I raised this non-performance issue with Harrisons at a trade show a year later or so the blame was laid on their local franchisee, who had since changed. I guess Harrisons are areliant on how well their franchisees perform in any given area. 

Do these parts look reasonable to control hot water cylinder from home assistant, so I can have the hot water cylinder heating when there's sufficient solar power available? Any better ideas?

• Shelly Pro 1 Relay. I'd have liked the Pro1 PM for power monitoring but I think it will burn out after a year or two with 3kw going through it even though it's within spec, hence the contactor.
• Siemens contactor - SENTRON 5TT INSTA Contactor, 230 V ac Coil, 2-Pole, 20 A, 2NO
• ABB 1P Pole 40A Isolator Switch - so that if the Shelly / contactor fails closed we can manually turn the hot water cylinder on

My solar installer says this is simple for them to install.

I'd still like to be able to measure the energy used by the hot water cylinder, ideally in a way that isn't able to burn out. I don't really need to do this, I'd just like to, to get it into the Home Assistant energy dashboard.

Oddly enough, the https://www.smarthome.com.au/ website works fine when you're not logged in, but if you register and log in I get http 500 errors on every page. If you then log in again on a new browser it works ok. That's a weird bug.

timmmay:

 

Do these parts look reasonable to control hot water cylinder from home assistant, so I can have the hot water cylinder heating when there's sufficient solar power available? Any better ideas?

 

• Shelly Pro 1 Relay. I'd have liked the Pro1 PM for power monitoring but I think it will burn out after a year or two with 3kw going through it even though it's within spec, hence the contactor.
• Siemens contactor - SENTRON 5TT INSTA Contactor, 230 V ac Coil, 2-Pole, 20 A, 2NO
• ABB 1P Pole 40A Isolator Switch - so that if the Shelly / contactor fails closed we can manually turn the hot water cylinder on

My solar installer says this is simple for them to install.

 

I'd still like to be able to measure the energy used by the hot water cylinder, ideally in a way that isn't able to burn out. I don't really need to do this, I'd just like to, to get it into the Home Assistant energy dashboard.

 

HarmLessSolutions:

 

Not familiar with Home Assistant operation but we can easily see if and/or when our Paladin has our HWC drawing available current by the presence, or not, of an up to 3kW self consumption occurring in our Fronius SolarWeb data feed. Once the HWC hits our 72 degree preset limit the 3kW draw stops. Can't see any real purpose in quantifying every individual consumption stream except for charging our Polestar2 (for company owned vehicle tax purposes) though it's easy to extract that data from our Evnex EVSE.

 

Measuring is just so I can have a nice graph in home assistant, it's not essential. Being able to control hot water on / off from home assistant is helpful, it's cheaper than a Paladin or similar at around $250 install I guess and under my control - which has upsides and downsides.