Going Solar

I have decided to give Solar Energy a punt.

Buyback rates aren't fantastic, and aren't likely to get better with the current influx of large scale commercial solar farms hitting the grid.

However, having purchased an old Gen1 Leaf as a local runabout, it did make a bit more sense to charge it from the sun.

Initially it has an 8kW inverter with 7kW of panels, but can be expanded to 9kW of panels in the future, as well as adding battery.

Although it was ordered some weeks ago, it has yet to be installed. In fact the response from the supplier since paying the deposit has been pretty poor.

I'll update as this progresses, and fill in the missing details.

We now have an install date, but still a few weeks away so the system might finally be installed 11 weeks after the contract was signed.

It looks like solar install times have been pushed out due to demand after the last round of electricity price increases.

Well it has taken one day short of three months, and a few installation date postponements, but the solar installation is finally completed and it is operational.

A last minute upgrade to 21 x 450W panels, which filled up all the north facing roof, gives up to 9870W of PV to feed the 8Kw inverter.

The first few days were really sunny, and produced around 60KwH of power, which is exceptional for winter.

Two weeks later:

**The Good

While the solar generation for the last few weeks has been good, with nearly 300kWh being generated, the issues have not inspired much confidence in the supplier and their choice of contractors.

**and the Bad

The inverter goes into fault mode as the sun comes up about half the time, and the panel installation created a leak that had water pouring out of a downlight the first time it rained.

The leak has been "remediated" with a large dose of silicone, but the cause of the faulting remains elusive.