Solar System Update after 6 Year of experience.

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Updated 10/9/2024

I feel we under sized the current solar system. It was based on pass usage and the experts modeling. There were several factors that I don’t think went into the model, or the model didn’t allow for.

  1. Snow outage. One February it snowed then froze then snowed again. By the time I got the scraper the ice and snow was locked in. I lost the whole month waiting for a thaw. I’ve a long scraper now but I still lose a week in production every time it snows.
  2. I’m not sure they really calculate for the cloudy days.  
  3. Last year June production was way off because of the smoke in the air from the forest fires in Canada
  4. Outage: I’ve had Optimizers go bad. SolarEdge is quick at getting me new ones but it takes me time to get my son-in-law up to replace it. I promised my kids I won’t get up on the roof alone anymore.
  5. Outage: My Inverter went out last Sept. SolarEdge got me the new one in two weeks and because I need help to lift the 55-pound unit in place, I lost a month of production.
  6. Global Climate change. We feel we run the A/C much more than ever before, so our usage is above the old house. 

I did some additional modeling myself, based on 6 years of usage and real production. It says to hit Net Zero I need to go to 26 panels, maybe 28. I’ve asked my energy provider for permission to add 4 panels to get to the 26. The 4 I added in 2018 I didn’t ask (didn’t know I had to) permission to add them. With the current 22 panels the modeling shows me at 96% of usage, with 26 107% and 28 112%

Updated 10/9/2024

We got permission to add 4 more 320W panels from the electric company. Now to get it approved by NJ Clean Energy then update PJM-EIS the people who create me SRECs. Getting the paperwork done is harder than installing the extra panels. Finding 320W panels wasn’t so easy either. My original panels are LG and in 2019 LG stopped making PV panels. The shipping price has quadrupled, so getting similar panels from my west coast vender didn’t make finical sense. I found Renogy had 320W panels that were the same demission’s and were distributed by Lowes, thus no shipping cost.

SRECs: 12/26/2024 Just sold another 12, total income from SRECs in under 6 years I’ve made. $10,483 selling my SRECs.

The Garage with 26 panels and space for 2 more.

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