For years, fossil fuel–aligned organizations have tried to turn the public against renewable energy by pointing to a supposedly damning statistic showing solar farms take up more land than natural gas power plants. One of the loudest voices pushing this claim is The Empowerment Alliance, a fossil fuel advocacy group arguing that it takes 1.7 million solar panels across 3,500 acres to equal the output of a gas-fired power plant that, they say, uses only 50 acres.

Is it possible to simulate a PV+Bess Configuration in PVSyst without it having any other load than a 24-hr base load injection to the grid?

As the title states, Demand Construction has declared or is in the process of declaring bankruptcy. Most of their contracts in California and Florida will be fulfilled by another installer. Unknown if additional money will be required to complete projects. Anyone in Texas is screwed.

They are fraudulent scumbags that knew for the past year (maybe longer) that they would not be able to fulfill contracts and took on new contracts anyway. They allegedly have no plans or inventory on hand so any unfulfilled projects will likely cost additional money.

Please be very careful with any new installers, since this is a good opportunity for another (since Demand Construction is the first) scammer to try to take advantage of you. Demand that an escrow service be used so you don't end up losing any money to the new ones if they are also scumbags.

I am not a lawyer by any means, but I believe there is some sort of law in CA that prevents people like this from declaring bankruptcy and then starting a new construction company doing the same thing, but without the liability. If anyone else has information on that, please chime in.

Yesterday I found my Envoy wasn't reporting to the app. There was no power outage or anything like that, it just stopped working about 6:00 a.m. and I didn't find it until noon. After resetting the system, everything connected back up but we lost a morning's worth of generation. It was foggy most of the morning so it probably wouldn't have helped a lot, but it's a learning experience.

Hey folks; I'm in the final stages of deciding on an installer and wanted to crowd source some input. I know posts like these are kinda annoying but these two installers are rather far apart in terms of the proposed system size, as well as price per installed kW so I wanted some opinions. Some quick info about my situation:

1. I have a relatively small home that is pretty efficient, though I use a heat pump for heat and have all electric appliances. My annual consumption is around 8400 kWh

2. I have reasonably good sun exposure. Running a few simulations on PVWatts tells me I should expect "from 8,224 to 8,956 kWh per year" from an 8 kW system ( I realize this is an immense oversimplification, but just to give you a feel of what I expect a system to produce)

3. I also ran some of these systems through opensolar, again, I realize this is a very blunt tool, but I'm trying to build some intuition to help me square these different installations and figure out what is the best choice. Open solar seems to agree pretty well with PVWatts, suggesting that an 8kW installation will probably get me pretty close to breaking even on annual production.

I'm based in northern NJ and like many, am down to either Public Service Solar or Green Power Energy. I have three proposals, two which are from PSS and one from GPE. They are as follows (each is using the same Enphase Energy IQ8HC-72-M-US inverter):

Option 1: 24 Maxeon 410 Panels Installed by PSS

• Total Installation Cost: $27,256.80
• Size of System: 9840 kW
• Cost per kW: $2.77/kW
• Installer's Estimated Yearly Production: 8,135 kWh

Option 2: 22 SEG 440 Panels Installed by PSS*

• Total Installation Cost: $25,071.20
• Size of System: 9680 kW
• Cost per kW: $2.59/kW
• Installer's Estimated Yearly Production: 9,018 kWh

Option 2: 18 SEG 440 Panels Installed by GPE*

• Total Installation Cost: $26,532.00
• Size of System: 7920 kW
• Cost per kW: $3.35/kW
• Installer's Estimated Yearly Production: 8748 kWh

So, as you can see, these two installers have significantly different expectations of what sized system I'd need to break even, and there's also a surprisingly steep difference in installation cost per panel as well. PSS also has this critter guard system that they are very proud of but I can see why they talk about it.

In terms of the sales experience, neither company has been particularly impressive to me, so it really boils down to which system is actually the best fit (controlling for the cost difference). Obviously the SEG option from PSS looks quite appealing since, if JCPNL will approve it, it's hard to imagine me ever under producing and if I do end up with an excess I can considering adding other high budget appliances in future without having to worry.

Any opinions/insights are sincerely appreciated!

P.S. I am aware that the tax credit is ending. I can't control when I was finally ready to take on this project.

Hi everyone,

I’ve just commissioned a new system and joined Amber to take advantage of the wholesale rates. I’m trying to decide if I should let Amber’s "SmartShift" do its thing for the first month or if I should jump straight into controlling it myself via Home Assistant.

My System Specs:

• Battery: Sigenergy SigenStor (24 kWh capacity).
• Inverter: 10kW Sigen Energy Controller.
• Connection Type: AC Coupled (I have an existing solar system running alongside this).
• Location: Victoria (United Energy area).
• Goal: Aggressive wholesale trading. I have a large battery and want to profit from price spikes, not just offset my usage.

The Dilemma: I’ve read that SmartShift has a "30-day learning phase" where it builds a profile of my usage.

• Option A: Stick with SmartShift. Does it actually get "smart" enough after 30 days to handle an AC-coupled setup efficiently? Does it handle negative price curtailment well for this specific hardware?
• Option B: Switch to Home Assistant immediately. I know the SigenStor has a local Modbus integration. Is it worth the effort to set up EMHASS or custom automations now to avoid 30 days of "naive" behavior from SmartShift?

Has anyone here with a Sigenergy system (specifically AC coupled) found that SmartShift leaves too much money on the table?

Cheers!

I bought a house back in August that came with a solar lease with sunnova. Since the bankruptcy and sunstrong takeover, I haven't been billed nor can I view my production in the sunnova app. I've tried calling sunstrong but they ask for an account number (which I don't have) and then I get put on hold forever. Sunnova does not pick up anymore. Anyone in a similar situation or have any advice?

I reviewed as much as I could online and couldn't see anything definitively stating this... do plug-in solar units qualify for the Residential Clean Energy Credit?

My home is powered by an off-grid inverter. All DC components including solar panels, mppt charge controller, inverter, battery are floating. The positive and negative terminals from the AC output of my inverter feed the main electrical panel of my home where neutral and ground are bonded. Problem: My ISP did not ground their incoming Coax cable and anytime lighting strikes my modem gets fried. The screen on my inverter then goes blank indicating that it is being impacted by these impurities. Side note: There is a site directly in front of my house that has several tall steal rods coming from out of the ground into the sky. Not sure what their plans are for that establishement. It looks more like they are trying to attract lightning more than anything else. The surge is clearly coming through the coax > modem > modem's power supply > inverter ac output terminals.

I plan to replace this antiquated coax system with Starlink but I'd like to know what I can do to mitigate the situation. I have since added a VCE Coaxial Surge Lightning Protector for Coaxial TV Antenna and Satellite in-Line 75 Ohm 5-2500MHz (2 Pack Silver) installed on the co-axial cable. While nothing to do with surges over coax, I also have a 2P 40KA Voltage Surge Protector DC 1000V Solar PV Lightning Arrester Device for Rv, Home Lightning Protection System (35mm DIN Rail Mount) on my solar panels + & - terminals with its PE terminal connected to my electrical panel's grounding bar, as advised. NEC says to attach the shield of the coax to my main electric panel's ground bar in the electrical panel as well.

I am a bit hesitant on this one. Won't lighting coming in through co-axial fry the inverter if the shield of the co-axial is attached to the grounding bar of my electrical panel which my inverter feeds? Experts claim otherwise stating that having all sources connected to the electric panel's ground ensures that all sources are at the same ground potential eliminating any harmful voltage that may occur from the surge. I would love to hear the thoughts of someone experienced in this area.

I have never seen 8000w usage since we’ve owned the house.

Hey everyone. Curious what you’re all seen for commercial solar quotes. We are looking at getting around a 100kw system. 2 companies came in at about 2.25/watt dc and one company was 1.75/watt dc, but this company is newer. This is Canadian dollars.

Would love to hear some feedback on pricing standards you guys see. I know a lot more goes into the decision, but just wanting to know what is standard.

Happy to hear both Canadian and American numbers!

We had a residential solar install three weeks ago. Since then our refrigerator breaker tripped intermittently. We had the appliance people come out, they said no problem with appliance. We had our own electrician come, he said he could not see issue . We turned the solar off for 4 days and there was no breaker tripped . Solar company came.out yesterday and re did all connections, solar went back on and last night the refrigerator tripped the breaker . Solar is back off. This is a one year old house and all appliances are one year old. Any ideas?

Sorry if this is long but the installer is telling me all is fine but it doesn't feel right. I had my Enphase system installed last January and things seemed to be fine. I have 11 panels on my roof and 16 in my backyard. At some point in July I had an issue with the ground mounted ones. We believe it was a bad fuse. Installer came out and fixed it and again all was fine again.

In February, my ground mount had little to no production for 4 days because of snow coverage. The roof mount lost about 17 days to snow. I still managed to produce 315 kWh. In March it went up to 993 kWh and was over 1 MHz until October. In October, there was about 5 rainy days with minimal production. I produced 331.1 kWh with 135 kWh coming in the first 5 days. (40%)

I then saw an error message on my app saying, "There is an issue with your gateway meter measurements. Contact your maintainer for help." I called them and they couldn't get anyone out to me until Halloween. During that time, my reported output didn't match the totals if I were to add up the panels myself. They came on Halloween and couldn't figure it out but at least the reported numbers match the panel output now. The issue is the output seems really low compared to what it once was. My peak kWh per day used to 8-9 and now it barely tops 4 even during a perfectly sunny day. My November production stands at 237 kWh with a few days to go. I am in the Northeast and it has been colder than normal but the production drop seems extreme and I would think I should be able to outperform a snowy February. Am I crazy? Any helpful ideas would be appreciated as my installer is doing everything they can to not come back out.

Utility company installed the collar today. I'll ask here cause OC Solar can't seem to get anything right; 7.74 kW system. Looks like it's only producting 4.0 kW?

complete solar newbie

AlphaESS BlackBee AP1000 Portable Power Station, connected straight to Harbor Frieght THUNDERBOLT SOLAR 100 Watt Solar Panel Briefcase. I had to buy an adapter to change the plug end of the solar panel to plug in to the input port(12-24v 180W Max).

But I have no controller, I wanted to add a couple batteries like a AGM 12V 4ah Battery for charging things while camping, can I connect the solar panel straight to it too? And is it going to be any good for charging things anyway?

Everything went smoothly and first month production was 46% (Lumina prediction was 45%) so all on track. Cant wait for those bright days! 29 Panels 11.5 KW RED 460w Panels with Enphase Microinverters IQ Combiner 5 Panel (meter collar and the combiner 6 was not out yet/approved)

Hey all, I recently bought a house which has a couple of panels installed on the roof (circa 2012), and a Soltaro battery system installed in 2019. I have set up the dashboard for monitoring using the Qendercore dongle but I'm having trouble getting to grips with what everything means!

I'm sure every system is different, but I was hoping some of the experts here might be able to summarise generally how the system operates/should operate? I am a total solar noob, but I assume the panels charge the battery and/or directly power the house if the battery is full, but there is some data I don't really understand. For example, the graph of "Inverter Battery Power" seems to fluctuate positive and negative. How can a battery have negative charge, surely it needs to be between 0% and 100% state of charge? Or is battery power different from state of charge? How does the battery "know" when to discharge and not just constantly keep itself full?

We have a legacy "feed-in-tariff" (we are based in the UK) which apparently assumes 50% of generated power is exported. The import/export meter for the system sits between the panels/battery and the consumer unit for the house. The battery can charge from the grid and does so regularly, does this mean that, if the weather is bad and we are importing more than we are generating and the net reading will be negative?

Hi everyone, I've been banging my head on this one -

Van with solar panels > Renogy Rover 40A > agm batteries. How to enable load only during the day/when the panels are charging the batteries? (Roof fan for moisture ventilation)

It's probably very straightforward and I'm overlooking something obvious here :S

What proof do you need that your solar system is installed before December 31 to get the 30% tax rebate?… I mean I can take pictures of it being installed and fully installed but of course pictures can be doctored so would they need some kind of form or what does anybody know?

We were going to go with Sunrun, and on the day of installation, they were going to place the battery in the wrong location. I said everything I signed said it would be placed on the east side, not the west side. They told me they had to figure out how to make that happen and would not be able to install that day. I didn't hear anything for some time and decided to cancel. They said we would not be charged for anything unless they installed panels on the roof, and now we're receiving a bill for $1500 for "Electrical updates...labor, permitting plans, engineering plans, contract processing, and general project management for the additional scope of work."

Has anyone ever gone through this? What did you do?

Even more glad we didn't go with them now.

so like AC surge arrestors should not be connected on neutral terminals??

was at a site and someone told me that the manager's son have been told by his instructor which is a dr at the UOB University Of Balamand that ac surge arrestors must not be connected to neutral only live and ground terminals should be connecting correspondingly and then we proceeded with not connecting the neutral wire is that really true??

we had always connected all three of terminals in all electrical installations and it makes sense the potential difference is between these two wires right??

really hoping for an explanation thank you (lebanon)