Benchmark the price by $/watt installed BEFORE the tax credit. Last time I checked a couple years ago $2.80 was competitive I'm guess it's less now.I'm heading down the path to do a solar panel installation. For those of you who have walked this trail, what do you wish you had known before you had your solar panels installed? I'm gathering quotes and am looking for tips that might not be obvious and can help me make the best possible choice.
I'm using EnergySage to gather quotes, which seems to provide highly comparable quotes between vendors.
Do you need batteries? What's your daily usage? does your locality offer rebates? State?
Look at the panels they are offering. what do they look like? Are they all black? Are they silver rimmed? What do you prefer?
Do you have ANY shading at at all? Is your roof (if not ground mount) at the proper angle? If it's not at the proper angle is it ok to downrate to a lower microinverter b/c you'll never clip?
Do you want or need bifacial panels? They are rated ONLY on their front side production. I wish I had uprated my micros as I wasn't thinking clearly for my bifacial ground mount. I clip like nobody's business from 12-5....
Does the installer know the system they are installing? Do they push solaredge or enphase or others? Do YOU know the advantages and disadvantages of the manufacturer? I would NOT buy solar edge. They are not an american company and have had high failure rates. Enphase is a US company with high reliability. Some installers are still pushing solar edge b/c they are easy to install with higher margins.
Is monitoring important to you?
do you know what halfcut cells are?
It goes on and on.... at the end of the day it's really great to have solar and the optimizations above make relatively minor differences which was a shock to me...
I have a 10.5 kW ground mount array with high wattage bifacials (480W x 22) enphase micros (IQ8A) with HIGH AC/DC ratio 1.35 which is probably too high but the losses are fractional and at the end of the day I don't need it. Which means that my array will produce what I need for longer even with degredation.
Statistics: Posted by clutchied — Tue Aug 06, 2024 12:29 pm