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I decided it was time to look into solar power. I have been thinking about it for some time now as my brother has been setting up stand-alone solar systems up north in Queensland for years and has been an ongoing topic in our phone conversations. I live in a small town out in rural Western Victoria around 350Ks west of Melbourne.

On this particular day there was a phone call that turned out to be someone from a solar power company who were offering systems to my area. After a few attempts to shut the call down, they're terribly persistent, not taking no for an answer, they were actually a solar company so I thought to myself 'what the heck' and decided to give them a try - at least see what they had to offer - get a quote - no harm done I accepted then arranged to meet with one of their reps at my home. The guy arrived a week later we sat down and began the discussion. The offer was for a 3.3kW system with 10 x 330W Canadian mono panels and a Feronius inverter for $8500 with the STC rebate of $2000. Seemed a bit excessive as I had been pricing solar panels, inverters, railing, wiring, switches for a while now due to ideas of planning to build my own stand-alone system sometime in the future with totals (incl labour costs) being well under this figure.

Anyway, I told the guy thanks very much that I'll be in touch.

So, the journey begins. Mission, to find the most cost effective solar power solution for my home.
Next step is to get more quotes and make some comparisons.

Went online to a solar website and requested two offers for quotes. With the two that were offered one was from Jim's Energy Solar the other company didn't respond. The deal from Jim's Energy Solar was as follows - $5670 total being a 3.24kW system consisting of 12 x 270W Q.Cells panels, a Fronius inverter and an STC discount of $1764. So right away $5670 was a much better price than the previous $8500 with a saving of $2830. Drilling down into this deal I discovered a hidden cost of $800 which turned out to be for travel expenses that didn't show until I questioned the discrepancy to the final balance. OK so there are travel costs involved what I need to do now is get some quotes locally where there shouldn't be any travel costs.

Of all the local places I tried only one offer came through (excuses were sorry not in our service area?) and it was from Keppel Prince Solar who are located in Portland. Their offer was as follows - $6250 total for a 5.6kW system comprising of 20 x 280W poly Talesun panels, a Solis inverter includes an STC of $3,311.00. So, the offer was quite reasonable with no hidden travel costs. At the time I hadn't heard of the Solis inverter but after reading online reviews and forums found that it was quite a reputable one. So, I decided to go ahead with this offer, signed the contract and paid the deposit.

A few days later a friend from Melbourne sent me a pic of an advert from his news paper with an offer for a 6.2kW solar system for $4499 so I decided to chase it up as I were still in the cooling off period with Keppel Prince Solar. Now this seeming too-good-to-be-true offer was from a Sydney based company Captain Green Solar (CGS) and resulted in the following - $5099 total being a 6.5kW system consisting of 21 x 310W JinkO mono panels with a GoodWe 5kW inverter and an STC of $3700 a saving of $1151 over the other. The reason the difference from the advertised price of $4499 to the final price of $5099 is plus a $400 travel cost (they threw in an extra panel which upped it to 21 to compensate) and $200 (negotiated) for a split raised frame. Being impressed with the deal and the savings made I signed the contract and paid the deposit then cancelled the Keppel Prince contract.

Feeling so warm and fuzzy about the deal now 7 weeks on and still no sign of an installation out of the blue I received a phone call from CGS telling me that the installation will not begin until I upgraded my switchboard and that they would charge $1200 to have this done. Wow! Floored me and felt kicked in the stomach as I'm on an extremely tight budget and will find it very difficult to raise the amount they're asking. My switchboard is the old ceramic base type but have replaced all the fuse wire ceramics with plug in circuit breakers. Note that CGS knew about my switchboard layout well before signing and payment of deposit through the pics I'd taken and sent to them and also Keppel Prince viewed my switchboard on site and made no reference to it needing an upgrade. Anyway, I got the call on a Friday so had to stew on it over the weekend before I could do anything about it.

First thing Monday I visited a local electrician, Bob Menzel from Portland, and told him what had happened. He shook his head and being across many solar installations and after viewing pics of the switchboard indicated that it was not unsafe and in keeping with most houses in the area. He said the solar company probably needed more room to place their solar switches. With that he offered to change some switches around that would allow enough room for the solar switches to be positioned. Somewhat relieved I sent an email off to CGS explaining the proposed change to the switchboard and received a response saying they'll put it to the installer.

In the mean time I decided to have a look at the terms and conditions on CGS’s website and sure enough there it was: Para 3 section (h) "In addition to the Purchase price, you may have to pay any unforeseen costs necessary to install your System (if any, not shown in the original quote). These costs will be known to you either during a pre-installation inspection, technical phone inspection or on the day of your installation. We will require your consent of any additional costs prior to the installation."Hmmmmm, got me by the short and curly’s. So worst case on the day of installation they can hit you for any extra costs and put it down to 'unforeseen’. Seems to be a one-sided argument to me.

Moving on - so it turns out the CGS installer had accepted my solution but demanded a signed disclaimer from my electrician saying that he (the installer) would not be held responsible for the switchboard should it fail the solar installation inspection. Hmmmmm again - bolics! I would have to say that this is becoming a nightmarish situation for me definitely not a pleasant experience. My star rating for them has now dropped to 3 stars on www.productreview.com which is a sad state for CGS as it's the installer causing all the pain here.

The electrician came to my home and looked at the switchboard and the wiring behind it. As he discovered everything looked ok, wiring was where it should be and was reasonably neat and tidy. He said that all he could do, as specified earlier, is relocate the two components across to make room for a solar switch and certify it to ESV (Energy Safe Victoria) standards but definitely will not be signing any disclaimer. OK - at this point it seems I have no other choice but to go with the solar installer’s initial demand to fully upgrade the switchboard. At least then the solar installer would be totally responsible for the outcome of the final inspection and there should be no extra cost passed on to me if it fails. If I went with the first option it would be at a risk of a failed inspection then I'd be held responsible for the extra costs of rectifying, travel and another inspection.

So there it is stuck between a rock and a hard place.

I decided to contact Energy Safe Victoria to get a ruling on this from them. The following is a response in answer to my question to them 'does a switchboard need a full replacement upgrade if it has ceramic based elements and a new solar system is to be installed?' and their answer...
"There is no specific requirement to retro fit or upgrade an older style switchboard because of the age of the property or the switchboard itself. As you have had the switchboard inspected by your electrician and he is satisfied that it complies, I don’t see any issues. The inspection of the solar power installation, I believe, will relate to that portion of the electrical installation only".
In other words, the inspection for solar should focus only upon the newly installed solar power switch at the switchboard back to the inverter and panels.

There's been a change of heart by the installer? The offer is now that my electrician makes his change to the switchboard and only needs to provide a 'Non-Prescribed Certificate of Energy Safe (COES)' - pity this wasn't offered in the first place? Would have saved a lot of grief, heartache and time if it had. I asked and received confirmation from the solar company that once the certificate had been received by them installation could begin.

Now it seems my electrician has dropped the case and not returning any of my calls? wtf! Thanks very much 'mate'?? Now, I'll have to find another electrician. More delays!

So, I eventually came across another local electrician in Ben Rose who was more than happy to do the job. After inspecting the switchboard he quoted a price that was reasonable which I accepted and then arranged to have my switchboard made solar ready in about a weeks time. Phew! - Thank goodness for that!

It's 2 weeks on and the switchboard is now 'Solar Ready' with a COES certificate thanks to my new preferred electrician, Ben. I've sent the certificate and pics of the modified switchboard to CGS and am currently awaiting word for when installation can begin.

Solar installation began on the day after the switchboard was modified but there was a catch. For some reason the solar installer wouldn't install 7 of the 21 panels on the north facing pergola roof as arranged before signing of the contract? Instead we came to an 'agreement' of 2 strings (1 x 10 panels and 1 x 11 panels) on the west side of the house roof. OK - not exactly as I wanted but you can't argue with the installer right? As it turned out installation was relatively straight forward with no reference to the switchboard layout and no 'unforeseen' costs which was a relief. All that is left now is the inspection.
I since found the reason why the pergola roof with the 7 panels wasn't used and is that the total of the open circuit voltages of the 14 panels on the house roof comes to 567Vdc (where Voc=40.5Vdc and 40.5 x 14 = 567Vdc) which exceeded the maximum input voltage to the inverter of 550Vdc.

My solar system is up and running and pumping power to my home and out to the grid. I will need to contact my power retailer, Alinta, to arrange a FiT refund of 11.3cents/kWh on my power bill. My next power bill will also have an added one-off cost of $60 from my power distributor, Powercor, to enable the smartmeter to record power flow to the grid.

I have set up the wifi connection from the inverter to my router through to the Goodwe portal such that I am now able to monitor data associated with my solar array. Data values such as total voltage and current from the 11 panel string Vpv1 & Ipv1, total voltage and current from the 10 panel string Vpv2 & Ipv2 and power from the inverter all in two minute intervals for around 10hrs every day. It's the middle of winter here in Heywood Vic so the current and power figures won't be outstanding but at least I can get a clear indication of what to look out for. In doing so I have come across a minor intermittent discrepancy with Ipv1 in that for some reason the current on Ivp1 drops to zero amps where Ivp2 remains steady on greater than 0 amps at intermittent intervals? Refer to the data sheet below...

I sent an email off to CGS support describing this condition and received an answer the same day saying it was a cloud based issue. Now looking at the data more closely I discovered a re-occurring pattern of Ivp1 dropping to the zero amps. Looking over a 3 day period I could see it happened at similar time periods on each day which sorta does away with a clouds issue and points more to an inverter issue. Not convinced with the CGS's answer I decided to send an email off to Goodwe support in China and received a response a few hours later saying that they would monitor my portal and make changes to the inverter remotely if needed. Looking over the charts made with data from the inverter I can see that the issue has been resolved by Goodwe remotely the day after I sent the email to them. I'm truly impressed by the response from Goodwe.

It's been a month since installation and not a word about when the inspection is to happen. I decided to give the inspector a call and was surprised to find that he had already done the job and sent the paperwork off to CGS. So CGS has been sitting on it for over a week now without a word? I gave them a call with the response "We'll get back to you". Three days later still no response so I called them again this time on different number and with a more positive response in that they have sent the paperwork off to my power distributer Powercor, and they will send a copy to me. CGS must have sent it right after my phone call to them because Powercor sent me an email saying they had received the paperwork for my case and are now waiting for a response from my power retailer Alinta about an hour after I made the call to CGS?

Over the last 2 weeks there's been a lot of to-ing and fro-ing between CGS and Alinta Energy. Initially it was CGS to get the paperwork off to Powercor then it was Alinta who needed a phone call to get them to get back to Powercor. My last phone call to Alinta informed me that Powercor would be arranging a day for someone to visit my premises to re-configure the smartmeter for solar. I can see that my smartmeter is already registering what kWh is being sent to the grid so not sure what that is all about? Alinta sent me a form the ‘application form standard feed-in tariff (Victoria)’ which I had to fill in and send to them before they would respond to Powercor. So, finally I get an email from Powercor saying they had serviced the smartmeter and that now I would be paid for what was being put out to the grid or Feed-in-tariff (FiT). In doing so they zeroed the kWh readings on the smartmeter for both incoming and outgoing which means all that was put out to the grid since installation (some 300kWh's worth) has fallen into a Black Hole. Oh well - everything seems to be in order now so all's left to do now is set up the charts in Excel to monitor the solar energy generated, energy sent out to the grid and energy taken from the grid in kWh's on a daily basis and also to view the next power bill.

I have constructed the charts in Excel as seen below...

The top chart shows the solar pattern over a 24hr period on a good sunny day in winter (in Rual Western Victoria). The bottom chart displays the accumulated energy generated and consumed over this period.

 

My first bill from Alinta with power to the grid entries shows a FiT of $9.96 and that Powercor charged me $60 to re-configure the smartmeter. This puts the total amount to well over what I usually pay a month but expect this to drop severely in the coming months.

A couple of things regarding the solar credits earned and the power retailer...
1) Solar credits earned is not paid out in cash unless you change retailers (see 2). It is debited over the winter months where power costs from the grid exceeds the solar credits to the grid.
2) If you change power retailers the credit gained from the original power retailer may not be transferable to the new power retailer or debited to your bank account. Check this out first before you make the change.

It is now over six months since having my solar panels installed and during that time have accumulated a solar credit of $118.76. This means that my last four monthly power bills ended up with a credit balance where as before solar they were a debit amount of around $90. Below I have included a chart that depicts the solar power distribution over the period.

The chart shows that over the period an average of ~4kWh was taken from the GRID, ~24kWh was sent to the GRID, ~30kWh was generated by the panels with a load at the house being ~12kWh.