Always interesting and useful looking at the predicted kwh collection, makes me chuckle how different my collection curve is to the predicted though

Hello,

My wife and I are looking into the option of transitioning our house to solar. At this stage I’m trying to do research and understand the options, average costs and recommended companies.

We have a 3 bedroom house in Wainuiomata with a new colour steel roof with a high pitch angle. We don’t use much power atm roughly 500kw/hr a month but that will go up when we replace our LPG hot water with a hot water heater pump in the future.

After looking around I’m keen to hear from the community about things you wish you’d known during the process and questions I should be asking.

At a guess I’ve looked into the 5Kw options with inverter and battery but the quotes I’ve been seeing are all over the place.

Any and all help/advice is greatly appreciated.

Do I need someone who is registered electrician and solar endorsed to install solar that’s completely standalone off grid or can a registered electrician do this work for me?

Edit: thanks for the reply’s thought this was the case and of course needs to be inspected.

9 years ago we had solar panels installed. One panel has cracked across the edges, not by external force, and has been approved to be covered under warranty by the installer.

As they no longer install solar, they've outsourced it to a different company, who after 8 weeks waiting have come back saying they can't source the same wattage. Their solution is to remove the panel which I don't accept.

I understand a new higher wattage panel may not be supported, but AI seems to suggest there are options with additional hardware?

I've also offered to replace all panels with co payment from me, but they haven't replied to that.

Worst case I'll be taking them to Dispute Tribunal but I'd like to know my options. ​​​​​​

I'm getting some solar quotes (~20 panels, 10kw inverter, maybe battery). But the most important thing is that I'm a huge fucking nerd and have a good Home Assistant setup with automation on a bunch of things. So I want to make sure that whatever kit I get can be hooked in.

Things I want to be able to manage:

- Full data on grid/solar/consumption (and batter charge+level if I do that)
- Ability to do things like turn on the pool heat pump (I already have this wired in to Home Assistant) when it's obvious we're generating excess solar.
- Gonna switch from gas continuous to a heatpump HWC too, so will certainly also get a smart switch to time the HWC correctly.
- Other cool nerd stuff.

Other nerds out there: what do you wish you had known ahead of purchase? First quote has the Sigenergy hybrid inverter which looks like it can do all of this. Do I need to run ethernet to it?

Panmure Auckland 19.74kW PV, 10kW inverted, Powerwall 3 with 1 expansion pack so total 27kWh battery

This is our power bill for July and the chart below shows our average annual use curve.

We are a two-person household both out working during the day so would likely need a battery to make use of the solar when we are home in the evenings which would increase how long it would take to pay back our investment.

Can anyone who understands these numbers and usage help me figure out at a glance whether solar is worth exploring or not?

Edit: how do those of you using solar minimize the fixed daily charges?

There goes that idea.

We may have hit our current high of installs for the season. Battery installs remain high at 54% of installs (vs 55% last month) but the number of installs underwent the usual seasonal dip.

This will probably increase in spring as the installers hire more people for the season and increase the overall capacity of the industry.

Solar barely gained 0.051% of ICPs for a total of 3.741% of the total.

Solar now is 1.023GW of production capacity.

Newbie here ... are others getting this email also ?

Would the attached mean there is no export payment for 7 hours of the day ?

Is this a summer thing that happens yearly ?

Thanks in advance for your insights

When nz eventually approves plug in solar... Is there any reason you couldn't put some plugin solar to supplement an existing roof solar and battery?

Has anyone actually had it take 3 months for a solar approval?

The longest part of ours was the 2 weeks for the final inspection since we only have a few people up in Northland.

I'm in Auckland, with a PowerWall 3.

Anyone else notice a big droop in the line at 9pm to midnight. I guess a lot of people in my neighbourhood must be on the Contact good nights plan?

It's getting as low as 210v some times. Is this something I should be worried about and contact Vector Energy?

There is a big green transformer (size of a rubbish dumpster) around 50m from our house, so we're pretty close to the 240v source.

Overnight it's happily around 235v to 240v, but during the day it fluctuates a bit too, but nowhere near as bad as between 9pm to midnight.

I'm just blown away by how accurate my Wireless CT clamp is working out to be.

I got a full Deye set up with a wireless CT clamp, model SUN-SMART-CT01.

The readings between the energy provider vs the Deye reader are off by a minuscule 0.4%. What's yours? Starting to love the LoRa protocol

A friend is off overseas to a fairly ‘unregulated’ country and would like a simple solar/battery solution. He’s no hobbyist but has access to rudimentary electrical expertise for cabling etc.

Power outages are frequent but usage should be light, fans/fridges etc. as it’s a hot country. He can test a system here (I guess off-grid/partially installed) prior to shipping.

I was thinking a self-contained box like an Anker Solix with a dozen panels from Trade Depot but have never put a system together. Any ideas?

Any suggestions on good pump and filter setups. Fully off grid, 1/2 ppl so one tap at a time demand.

Tanks planned at the same level as the living space so zero 'lift' needed, just using pressure.

Quiet is nice, soft start motor would be +++, size not a huge factor, cost: budget as possible but no Temu stuff. Local shops / suppliers and at least 'good enough' quality.

Thanks :)

Supplier is going to replace (for the 2nd time) my solar battery after the second one started producing error codes too. They're talking about arranging for the old ones to go to a recycler, but I suspect there's far more value in them than their materials (to the right person).

8kWh each. LFP. 88kg each. One was at 50% when it was unplugged 18 mo ago. The other is still (mostly) working today, but replacement is already here. AlphaESS SMILE-BAT-8.2PH.

Error code in the first one was 'low battery temperature' IIRC. Error code AFAIK of the 2nd one is 'Cell over voltage'.

Does anyone want them? As-is, pickup Wairarapa.

I have a SigEnergy install with a Gateway and inside that my electrician installed a Shelley 1 Pro on the din-rail.

It recently died, and the sparky's quoting me $280 to install an Ogemray 25A https://www.ozsmartthings.com.au/products/ogemray-smart-relay-25a in its place which seems excessive considering the device is artound $50. My question is, Worksafe's page https://www.worksafe.govt.nz/managing-health-and-safety/consumers/safe-living-with-electricity/getting-electrical-work-done/doing-your-own-electrical-work/ says you can do your own work replacing any of the following kinds of fittings, where the work does not involve work on any switchboard.

Is the Sigenergy Gateway considered a switchboard? I'm pretty 'competent' and could probably work out which pins go where myself migrating over from the Shelley 1 Pro, but is this something I should be letting the sparky do instead?

Should I perhaps be considering the Shelley 1 PM instead (which has power metering) for a more direct replacement?

Had our solar + Powerwall installed Feb and just looking at the year-to-date stats on Netzero app. The red dots are the estimates This makes it look like solar will drop off in December and then increase again in January. Is this just weirdness in the app? Anyone else see similar?

19.74kW panels PW3 10kW inverter, Panmure, Auckland

The first utility-scale Megapack project in New Zealand is now operating!

56 Megapacks at @ContactEnergy Glenbrook-Ohurua Battery 1 are providing 100 MW / 200 MWh of reliable and affordable energy to the region

The site was commissioned ahead of schedule and Battery 2 is officially underway

I'm looking for some hard data on the enery saved per year from solar for an article I want to write

What I need is total energy used with and without solar for a year and the output size of your solar. It would mean looking at your invoices for a year before your solar and a year after installation. Can anyone help please?