Harrisons Solar vs Other?

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Krullos

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#293722 10-Feb-2022 09:26

Hey All,

I'm looking to add Solar + Battery storage to our property in the next couple months.

I've been quoted by Harrisons just over $31K installed for:

- 15 x 390W JA Solar M60S20 panels (5.85kW) - they've calculated we can fit a max of 15 panels on our garage roof

- 1 x Fronius Primo 5.0kW Inverter

- 15 x Tigo TS4-A-O Retrofit Optimisers

- 1 x Tesla Powerwall 13.5kWh battery and Gateway

I was initially drawn to Harrisons because of their finance deals, but it's now looking like we'll be able to purchase the system outright.

My question is, for $31K can I get a similar performing (or even better?) system elsewhere than what Harrisons is quoting?

I believe Harrisons almost has the monopoly on Tesla Powerwalls in New Zealand, and the ability for whatever battery system we have to be able to power all/the majority of our house in a power outage is important to us.

I should add - location is Wellington Region.

We have a Nissan Leaf and I'd happily swap the Powerwall/Battery option for a Vehicle2Grid (V2G) setup, but haven't seen any available/offered in New Zealand yet

Thanks in advance

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#2864525 10-Feb-2022 09:41

Storage will add to the price considerably. I had a solution quoted by Harrisons but they lost interest once i started asking too many questions. I have settled with Power Technology and they price was very comparable. I did not go with battery storage though but will have all the bits done so it is easier to put it on if needed.

darkasdes2

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#2864530 10-Feb-2022 09:45

I went with world solar for my parent's install, we didn't get a battery but have the option to add it in the future.

When I got a quote from Harrisons, I found the rep to be quite arrogant

timbosan

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#2864549 10-Feb-2022 10:24

I had a quote from Harrisons (Auckland) and the rep was excellent - provided details to all my questions, was polite and knowledgeable when doing the site visit, made recommendations based specifically on my house, shading, etc. Battery was a question but for me the price wasn't worth it.

There where also different pricing options depending on the type and quality of the panels, and the option of starting small and adding later.

Only reason nothing has proceeded is the house needs a rewire first! Still has old single core for some of the lights, and the recommendation was to get that out of the way first.

eonsim

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#2865064 10-Feb-2022 21:30

We went with Harrison's last year in Hamilton, price was slightly higher than other quotes we got, but the panels (REC) were significantly better. We ended up paying ~ half of what you were quoted for a 5.1kw system with REC Alpha panels and a few Tigos. I've heard from other friends who recently got systems from them that the Powerwalls were quoted at around $16-17k, so in that case what your paying for the panels + inverters + tigos is about the same as we paid for 14 REC panels + 5 Tigo + a solar diverter. An extra panel + 10 extra tigos sounds about right to make up the price difference with REC panels.

I know of around 4-5 people that have gotten solar in Hamilton in the last few months and all of them have ended up going with Harrisons after getting multiple quotes. Communications with the Reps have varied a bit from excellent to okay depending on who they've been talking to.

barclayg

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#2865067 10-Feb-2022 21:36

+1 for Harrison's Auckland rep (Shannon??). Zen Energy also seemed pretty solid (albeit cheaper product).

Lightforce (popular at the moment) really rubbed us up the wrong way - very aggressive sales tactics and hints of dishonesty.

We ended up going with a specialist solar electrician who had lower markups and was therefore cheaper for an REC/Fronius (grid-tied) setup.

CYaBro

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#2865092 10-Feb-2022 23:05

Harrison’s took forever to get back to me when I made contact.
Must have been a few months at least.
Then when they finally did they didn’t have a rep coming our way for a while and would be in touch when they did.
Probably a few months later when they contacted again and the rep was going to be in Dunedin and would stop at our place (Oamaru) on the way back to Timaru later that day.
Rep contacted about 3pm that day and were going to be too late to stop in and would have to reschedule.
Haven’t heard back from them again.
That was end of October.

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rogercruse

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#2865145 11-Feb-2022 09:06

We had solar panels fitted to our previous home and we reckoned that it reduced our annual electricity bill by about 25%. During the day, the power generated was mostly used to top up the 300 litre hot water cylinder.

While we did consider adding solar (and batteries) during the design phase of our new built home, we got heat pump for our hot water and HVAC and signed up for Electric Kiwi and their 'Hour of Power' promotion. The hot water is only ever switched on during the HoP. So, we have most of the advantages of solar without the up-front costs.

boosacnoodle

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#2865182 11-Feb-2022 10:01

Harrisons in Christchurch were fantastic for me. Sourced some panels (Cat) and inverter (SMA) through my work at a good price. Install with Harrisons and my kit was around $8k all up. Fantastic.

camo786

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#2865186 11-Feb-2022 10:14

Consider with that size system, you may not have any unused power to charge the battery,

I did a 20kw system with LightForce for not much more than that, with no battery

We have a larger than an average house with a pool, & 3 heat pumps, and work from home, so we use all the power the system generates

You might find it hard to justify the battery, this is likely to double the cost of the system

timbosan

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#2865240 11-Feb-2022 10:25

barclayg:

+1 for Harrison's Auckland rep (Shannon??). Zen Energy also seemed pretty solid (albeit cheaper product).

Lightforce (popular at the moment) really rubbed us up the wrong way - very aggressive sales tactics and hints of dishonesty.

We ended up going with a specialist solar electrician who had lower markups and was therefore cheaper for an REC/Fronius (grid-tied) setup.

I dealt with Nerum - Nerum Bonesetter - Harrisons Solar

Krullos

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#2865243 11-Feb-2022 10:28

camo786:

Consider with that size system, you may not have any unused power to charge the battery,

I did a 20kw system with LightForce for not much more than that, with no battery

We have a larger than an average house with a pool, & 3 heat pumps, and work from home, so we use all the power the system generates

You might find it hard to justify the battery, this is likely to double the cost of the system

I run a couple home servers, plus the Nissan Leaf so we're not a small energy consumer - the last 12 months was just over 27,000kWh consumed, so about 74kWh per day on average.

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MikeAqua

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#2865251 11-Feb-2022 10:40

They are the same corporate group as Harrison's carpet.

My experience with them was they were great on quotation. When it came to installation time, the job was handed off to a contractor, without specific instructions for apartment access (pre-arranged time slots for lift lock out and trade vehicle parking). When these problems emerged the people that provided the quotation simply stopped responding to communication.

When we had minor defect with the carpet, they didn't respond, neither did Harrisons corporate help me. I ended up getting it fixed at my own expense (~$100), because it was easier.

I understand that was carpet and this is solar, but it's the same company presumably with the same model of (IME) handing of to contractors and giving zero ducks from that point.

Mike

dacraka

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#2865356 11-Feb-2022 12:13

barclayg:

+1 for Harrison's Auckland rep (Shannon??). Zen Energy also seemed pretty solid (albeit cheaper product).

Lightforce (popular at the moment) really rubbed us up the wrong way - very aggressive sales tactics and hints of dishonesty.

We ended up going with a specialist solar electrician who had lower markups and was therefore cheaper for an REC/Fronius (grid-tied) setup.

Yes I agree that Lightforce is very sales-y.

I said I needed to discuss with my wife and he said that they usually get go-aheads by the end of the same call. I felt very rushed, which is not good. I always like to take my time with large purchases.

eonsim

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#2865402 11-Feb-2022 13:28

@Krullos if you average ~74kwh a day a 5.8KW system is going to be a bit light in power for a battery. For a 5.1kw system we were getting an average of ~25kwh a day in Jan (peak mid 30's) and 16kwh a day in September (with a bit of shading). In Jan our usage is around 30kwh a day, and we use ~15kwh of the solar generation a day, and export 10kwh (with load shifting of a spa and hot water cylinder to the solar peak). With over twice the daily usage as us, your likely to use >90% of your generation just to run the house, leaving very little to charge the battery. As such you'll likely need to get a power plan than has very low night rates or a significant number of free hours to charge the battery.

I'd highly recommend you look at asking if there is any where else you can put some more solar panels (west or east rather than north?), or are there bigger (450-500W industry panels with 144 cells not 120) or higher efficiency panels (400W+) you could fit on your roof to increase your generation. Or can you put some panels on the roof of the house with a smaller invert as well, ie have 5.8kwh on the garage and another 2-3kwh on the house?

Or is the purpose to the battery to provide blackout protection? In which case given your potential load and the size of the battery you really will need a critical circuit set up that only has the essential devices on it, or smart plus/relays to turn off everything else when running off the battery as you'll likely only get ~3-4 hours of back up out of it at your average hourly usage when using 74kwh a day...

Krullos

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#2865433 11-Feb-2022 13:42

eonsim:

@Krullos if you average ~74kwh a day a 5.8KW system is going to be a bit light in power for a battery. For a 5.1kw system we were getting an average of ~25kwh a day in Jan (peak mid 30's) and 16kwh a day in September (with a bit of shading). In Jan our usage is around 30kwh a day, and we use ~15kwh of the solar generation a day, and export 10kwh (with load shifting of a spa and hot water cylinder to the solar peak). With over twice the daily usage as us, your likely to use >90% of your generation just to run the house, leaving very little to charge the battery. As such you'll likely need to get a power plan than has very low night rates or a significant number of free hours to charge the battery.

I'd highly recommend you look at asking if there is any where else you can put some more solar panels (west or east rather than north?), or are there bigger (450-500W industry panels with 144 cells not 120) or higher efficiency panels (400W+) you could fit on your roof to increase your generation. Or can you put some panels on the roof of the house with a smaller invert as well, ie have 5.8kwh on the garage and another 2-3kwh on the house?

Or is the purpose to the battery to provide blackout protection? In which case given your potential load and the size of the battery you really will need a critical circuit set up that only has the essential devices on it, or smart plus/relays to turn off everything else when running off the battery as you'll likely only get ~3-4 hours of back up out of it at your average hourly usage when using 74kwh a day...

Yeah, excellent points.

I'm looking to upgrade the panels to get Harrisons' 405W LG panels which would bump me up to just over 6KW of panels.

The garage is detached and about 10M from the house at the front of our property, so I'm not sure how easily we could add panels to the house and feed them into the Powerwall, etc. that will be located in the garage (power from the street comes through the main board in the garage and the house is on a sub-board). I'd be open to increasing the capacity of panels onto our house too, if that's easy to do?

The main desire for the Powerwall/Battery is short-term power supply in a power outage (in such case I'd be powering down non-essential services with smart relays as you suggest), and maybe some clever battery filling during off-peak times to use during peak times (not too sure how clever we can get with scheduling that yet). We have special EV-owner rates from the power company so get extra cheap power after 11pm.

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