It is NOW or Never for the microfit Solar Panel System

The roof mounted Ontario microfit system started at 80.2 cents per kW, then 54.9, then 39.6, then 38.4 and soon it will be down to 29.4 cents per kW.

How much can you earn per year from a Microfit Solar Panel System

You can earn about $5000 per year from a microfit solar system dependent on your layout up to a maximum of about $8000 per year based on 39 cents per kW hour.

Still the costs are about the same if not more than when we installed 2 years ago at 39.6 cents per kW.

You will have to pay the $1500 connection fee for Hydro-One, engineering analysis of your roof, local building permit charge per panel of $10, plus higher installation and higher panel costs due to the drop in the Canadian Dollar.

If you have availability in your area.  If the numbers work out for you at 38.4 cents per kW then you

MUST ACT NOW!!

I remember when people baulked at 80.2 cents and others refused the 54.9 cents contracts.

I find it interesting that rates are dropping so low, you would think that the Conservatives won the last election.  The Ontario Energy Review Board failed to monitor or put limits on what Hydro One charges for connection fees.  They even allow them to charge you $6.10 every month when Hydro One pays you for the power that you produce.

If you are thinking of going Solar then I recommend that you read this blog starting from our first post.

Avoid straight string inverter systems.  You can read why to avoid them in my blog.

Avoid people who just want to rent your roof area and pay you pennies for it's use.  You can get a line of credit loan for about 3% interest and still make money.

Avoid people who do not use SolarEdge inverter systems with optimizers.  Make sure you specify Schletter Racking systems.  Make sure that your roof is less than 7 years old before you install the system and put in the best roofing that you can with the best backing system under the shingles for the entire roof area.  Also make sure that they seal all of the penetrations and use alum or SS flashing materials available from Schletter also.  Recommend that your system be wired for 2 strings per inverter for future expansion.  Get the extended warranty for the inverters.

Get 3 quotations including Flexible Solar.  Recommend next generation poly panels from Canadian Solar.  See my review on these panels.

GETTING EVERY THING IN WRITING - ALL OF THE DETAILS AND DO NOT PAY LARGE AMOUNTS OF MONEY UP FRONT.

On a 10 kW system with no shading, you should be able to produce 12 MW per year depending on your roof pitch and location.  Email me or call me if  you have any questions.  You can google my name and use our photography link.

West facing solar panels are no good...or that is what we were told!

Designing a Roof Mounted Solar Harvesting System"

Getting our fundamentals correct will result in the best or optimum solar panel harvesting system.

We have 4 orientations that we can use for solar panels.  Unless under extreme conditions, I would never use north facing panels.  You will get some energy harvested from north facing panels, especially in the summer months but it is far from ideal.

A microfit solar panel harvesting system injects a limitation of 10 kW inverters into all design considerations.  There is a limit of what the electrical lines feeding your house can carry.  For a 200 A system that is around 16-17 kW or so peak or maximum power output.  The lines are under ground which keeps them cool which is a good thing.

Anything that limits the amount of solar energy hitting your roof, like fog, clouds, shade from trees, poor roof angle, etc, hurts you. We have a 22.5 deg roof which we can not change.  It is great from April to September and poor at other times of the year.  That said, it is optimum when we have the longest days and most sun energy to harvest.  One feedback comment recommended 30 deg was ideal and that seems to me to be good or correct.  A 45 degree slope will help with snow melting off in the winter.

My Golden rule is this:  Grab or harvest all the sun's energy when ever you can.

Maximize your output first from your south facing panels followed by east and then west facing panels.  OPA should strongly encourage harvesting from the east and west because of the electrical peaks that need to be met at this time of day.  They do not do that.

If you are new to solar, South facing panels give you your best ROI or return on investment.  East and West facing panels are great from sunrise to sunset respectively, and help significantly to harvest more energy when it is need the most before your south facing panels get going.  You need a combination of all 3 to maximize energy production.  Of course, solar trackers would be the best but that is not a roof mounted system.


We were initially told that west facing panels do not work well.  That simply is not true at all.  We need west facing panels to produce power for the 6 and 7 pm peak demand.  In the summer, west facing panels start producing over 100 W as early as 10:30 AM  and of course continue until sunset. East facing panels stop producing around 5 pm.  South facing panels also have reduced output after 6 pm.  Choosing solar panels that produce the best off axis harvesting is also an important decision.  See my reviews of some solar panels, especially the newest generation of poly panels.

I noticed in Windsor area that in the fall, we get early morning fog and dew on our panels.  This makes having some west facing panels important to have as you lose the effect of your east facing panels on many days.  We are seeing excellent results in August, September and hopefully the other fall months as well.  I will admit that the fall of 2014 was very poor.  2015 is looking for +20% for September over 2014.  It all depends on how much cloud cover we get.  The sun light is always there.

The sunlight has to travel further though the clouds in the fall/winter/spring because of the lower angle of the sunlight due to the tilt of the earth on it's axis.  Add the shorter days for that time of year and production will diminish.  On over cast days, all of your panels work about the same, including any north facing panels.  I am against north facing panels for obvious reasons.

With the microfit limitation on inverter output, you want to reach maximum inverter output as fast or as early as you an and to maintain that output for as long as you can.  SolarEdge is outstanding for this as you can mix east, south, west facing panels with no penalty.  The smart inverters simply turn off some panels when maximum power levels are reached and the bus voltage is increased at this time to help lower the current flow and hence reduce the power line losses.  The inverters themselves do not seem to get hot ever.  The microfit program should never have been limited to 10 kW but rather 50 kW and individual limitation based on the maximum allowable current flow back to the transformer.  For our house that would be 15 kW but we can only dream of that.  Never add more inverters to your system.  We put our two 5000 W inverters on the north side of our house to keep them cooler in the summer and to reduce exposure to rain and snow.  They are also beside the electrical meters with easy disconnect if needed.  When shut down, bus voltage drops to 1 V dc per panel and NOT 600 V by some manufacturers.

In conclusion, choosing the right inverters from the start like SolarEdge will give you the opportunity to produce the maximum power from your system.  Remember this, at 39 cents per kW, if you harvest only 1 kW hr more  per day, you will get $3000 over the twenty year contract.


Beware of contractors.  We have had no problems with Flexible Solar.

Review of Sundial Trax Inc London, Ontario Reid Aldridge and Keith Luckhardt

Review of 

SUNDIAL SOLAR TRAX INC. (Reid Aldridge and Keith Luckhardt) London, Ontario microfit solar panel installers London Ontario

Another group we recently had to deal with tried to play these games:

1. Billed for time not even on the job
2. Sat on roof for more than 1 1/2 hours saying that they didn't know what to do.  They were shown the four wires that had to be joined together as soon as they arrived and had to be instructed step by step on how to do the simplest job.  They had wired the original system.
3. Caused the problem in the first place by not following the engineering specification so that they could save some time and wire.
4. Tried to charge $30 for a $1.50 part and over charged for other parts while lying about the real cost
of the parts.
5. Estimated 1 man hour for job and tried to bill for 7 man hours while they played around (that is called stealing).
6. Refused to run wire through the attic as they had done before.- damaged roof
7. Told me to my face that he does not markup the cost of materials yet markups reached 2000%
8. Tried to play the game, we forgot parts over 5 times so that they could increase the time on the job: Again, that is STEALING

Note:  One of the first things that a tradesman learns is to organize their work.  You get all of the parts you need for the job and put them in you tray.  You do all the work that you can on the ground first and then go up to the roof.

9. Laughed every time they tried to extend the time to do the job
10.  No respect for customers and having a job

We had to back charge them for not running the wire where we told them to and have to hire someone else to finish the job.  A back charge is a reduction of the invoice because the job wasn't done to specifications.  It normally means that you have to remove the work that was originally done and re-do the job making it costly.  You don't have to pay twice for doing the same job.  I worked as a Tradesman for 10 years.  Do the job correctly and you will not have this problem.  I also do not pay for someone doing the above nonsense.  This is childish behavior from a person who has retired and should know better.  He thinks that he is smarter than other people and it is all a game to him.  I had a much better opinion of them until this day.  Your mileage may vary.  We gave them hot coffee when it was cold and cold pop when it was hot.  This behavior was not accidental but intentional.  Apparently they had made a lot of money earlier in the day.  My guess is by triple charging people.  You make pennies in the solar business and have to watch your costs closely.

A manager in Ontario Hydro taught me this:

"If it appears a certain way, then it usually is that way."

They drive a big white diesel truck with a large trailer.  It is just fine for someone to write off the cost of their vehicle.  It is not right for you to pay for their toys.  In this case, the large truck is used to pull his boat.  You should not have to pay for that.  I call the smart one GREED (Reid Aldridge and Keith Luckhardt) his laborer.  They hail from somewhere near London, Ontario.  Two more people who will lie to your face and steal from you.

Who would hand over $40,000 for them to install your solar system?

 Email me if you have bad dealing with them.

If you are using these people, use them through a middle man and get the cost up front.  They will try every trick in the book to over charge you as they did not make any money last year and want to double/triple up this year.

HIGHLY NOT RECOMMENDED  5 STAR GREED RATING

Trust is a key element when hiring people to do work for you.  They can do a fair job when working for other people.  On this day they decided to get Greedy and to try to steal from us.  Job was NOT done according to our requirements.  Told never to return to our house and if we see them, then the police will be called.  I FIRED BOTH OF THEM.

What was the job they had to do?

The original engineering specification stated two strings per inverter.  They installed 1 string per inverter saying it was better and not needed.  (see my blog on why this is not true).  The job was to return the system to two strings per inverter as per the original specification and all wires to go though the attic.

You simply have to cut each string some where in the middle, join the two lines and run 4 more wires back to the inverters,  The system was naturally divided on this account where it went from the south roof to the east/west roofs over the garage.

Time needed to cut the four wires --- under 1 minute.
Time to join two strings together with MC4 fittings  about 5 min.  (there is a 3 min video on U tube showing you how to make the crimp MC4 fittings).  With the right tool, you can strip the wires in 5 seconds.  I have such a tool and the MC 4 crimp tool also.  There were 2 MC4 fittings required in total.

Time to run a wire back to the inverters No more than 20 min through the attic.

Time to make connections in a electrical box on the roof no more than 20 min.

Total is less than 1 man hour.  

They arrived at 1:45 pm and Reid tried to tell me that he arrived at 1:00 PM  I said to myself, He just lied to me, what ELSE is he lying about?

They did nothing for the first 1 1/2 and then did the dog for the next 1 1/2.  I had to show them the wires to cut 3 times and how to pot the lines and validate the strings back at the inverters.  They claim to be the experts.  Total time billed 7 man hours.  Total time on the site 2 hours 45 min.  Not working is called stealing by one of the electricians that I spoke with.

Reid knew exactly what to do.  He is not stupid just Greedy.  The helper is color blind and can't do any wire connections.  He had worked the night shift and most likely went to sleep in the truck out of sight.

Reid spends most of the winter on some southern island and dosn't return until April.

The previous year they gave themselves a 25% pay raise.  With the way they charge people, they want to get paid $150 each per hour.  Neither one of them is an electrician.

They love to tell people we charge for two hours up front and $150 per hour after we arrive.  If you pay for two hours of work make sure you get two hours of work and then pay more if the job really takes that long.  They are just charging people triple time.  Don't buy into this scheme.

I learnt this in life.  If they steal from someone else, then they will steal from me also.  If they lie, then they most likely also steal.

Note:  Get yourself proper material quotations from an Electrical Supply Company and document everything that was done.  Any Judge will then be able to see though their dishonesty.  Hold back any funds that you know are dishonest.  Pay them for what they did and not for what they didn't do.  Back charge them if they didn't do what you told them had to be done and then must be done by someone else.  Personally, I don't believe a word that they say anymore.  I FIRED BOTH OF THEM!!

The Union Mindset

This reminded me of a small job done in Ontario Hydro.  The electrician had to connect 3 wires.  He took 8 hours to do the first 2 wires and billed 4 hours overtime for the last connection at time and half.  All of that work could have been done in 15 min.  He exploited the system.  

How to Weed Out Dishonest Solar Panel Installers

We live near Windsor Ontario.  We entered the nefarious business of Solar Panel Systems with much fear and trembling.

Here is a Review of some local Windsor area people with a bad track record:

1.0         Consumer Alert Against Certified Solar Windsor (Click to see): 

These have got to be the absolute worst thieves and liars around.  Ripped off over 300 people, took their money and never installed any thing.  This was one of the first installers to contact us.  They have ripped off over 300 people who trusted them and believed their lies.  They wanted us to give them up front, $35,000 .  That should set off warning bells.  You should only give people money when the product arrives to protect your self.

Others they put up expense systems that do not perform.

GREED RATING 5 STARS

2.0 Unconquered Sun

Online customers reviews all say the same thing.  Lying to their customers.  Did the same thing to me.

GREED RATING 5 STARS

Review of 

3.0 SUNDIAL SOLAR TRAX INC. (Reid Aldridge and Keith Luckhardt) London, Ontario.

Another group we recently had to deal with tried to play the games listed below.  They drive a big white diesel truck with a large trailer.  It is just fine for someone to write off the cost of their vehicle.  It is not right for you to pay for their toys.  In this case, the large truck is used to pull their boat.  You should not have to pay for that.  I call the smart one GREED (Reid Aldridge and Keith Luckhardt) his laborer.  They hail from somewhere near London, Ontario.  Two more people who will lie to your face and steal from you.  Who would hand over $40,000 for them to install your solar system.  Email me if you have bad dealing with them.

Many people who lie to you and make up stories have been doing that for a long time.  You shouldn't really have to pay electrician  rates for non-electricians.
They can do a respectable job when working for others.  They try to over charge on material markups (2000%), and hours worked. They simply can't be trusted when working on their own.  Score

GREED RATING 5 STARS

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Listing of Contractors Who Work For You:

1.0  Flexible Solar of Windsor, Ontario

We only found one company in our area that gave the best and most honest recommendation

for our Solar Panel System

Recommendation:  5 STARS

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NEVER, NEVER, NEVER, GIVE LARGE AMOUNTS OF MONEY UP FRONT TO ANYONE.


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There is a process that MUST be followed to protect yourself.  

You should firstly educate yourself about solar energy.  Then get an application to OPA for a contract.  You must get your approval before spending any money.  Many rural locations are NOT approved because the wind turbine people have taken all of the capacity away. 

Secondly, you must have a roof with the proper orientation and area to hold or support solar panels.  Next get your quotations from at least 4-5 people.

Read the reviews on line.  If they are lying to you they most likely lied to some one else before you.

If it sounds to good to be true it usually is.  A 10kW system will only produce a maximum of about $5000 per year.  Never use micro inverters.  Only a SolarEdge type of system is recommended.  All components should be stainless steel or aluminium. 

We can learn from the strangest people in life.  The Mafia's most famous statement is "you give me no respect".  You don't lie to or steal from people that you respect.  If an installer lies to or steals from their customers, then they should be put out of business.  You should never knowingly risk $40,000+ with people like that.

Finally you want a system that is flexible, reliable and will give you the best return on your investment.  The only one that I found that meets that criteria is a SolarEdge based system.  You can read my other posts on this one.

Working with Contractors:

Beware of this one:  We need two hours pay to come to your place and then you pay us say $150 per hour once we arrive.

This is translated as:  We want to charge you double or triple of what we should if you are stupid enough to hire us.  If you fall for that one watch out.

If the people do not do any work or work extremely slowly, then only pay them for the work that they actually did.  This is called stealing.  People who charge high  rates of pay have to be watched closely.

Over charging for materials.    On large items, 15%.  Do not pay extreme markups.  If an item costs $1.50 and you are charged say $30 again that is stealing.

Get the estimate in writing.  

If they don't do  what you asked for, then you can back charge them the cost for having someone else come and fix the work that they did.

One of the first things that a tradesman learns is to organize their work.  You get all of the parts you need for the job and put them in you tray.  You do all the work that you can on the ground first.

Best month of the year for solar harvesting near Windsor Ontario

Hi, again.  In my original post back in 2013 I mentioned that May would be the best harvesting time of the year, or least that was what I was told.

On paper, the best month should be when the days are the longest and when the sun is over head perpendicular to your panels.  That said, the weather, or rather, the cloud cover will determine your best month of the year.  I also notice that in June the Sun sets and rises north of west and north of east.  We have some trees in our front yard that I never thought would bother us but they do in June.  West facing panels are not the demons that they were presented out to be.  A balanced system with south, east and west facing panels is the best.  It is important to have some west facing panels to help out the grid in the evening.

High temperature has about a -5% effect on your panels in the summer.  In the winter even with the extremely poor roof angle, a really cold day with a nice wind can make the panels produce maximum output for a little while.  The days are too short to produce a lot of power in the winter and the snow has to be cleared off of the panels.  You can harvest 250% more in summer than in the winter months.

For the past  two years JULY has been our best month.  This year will be a new record for us of around 2.455 MW hours.  Last year was 2.127 MW hours.  The last two weeks of sun really helped 2015.  Like wise the record rain in June reduce our output by about 300 kW hours.  Our peak day record was 103.8 kW hours this year.  This is a non-tracking fixed roof mounted system.  Only a SolarEdge system will work like this as the output of one panel does not effect the output of the string.  Micro inverters also will not work well in our system.  We simply have two 5000 W inverters giving us our 10 kW microfit system.


We are doing our share to help reduce the global CO2 levels and even drive a hybrid Ford C-Max to boot.  We thank the Good Lord for shining on our roof this year.

I did notice that on some really hot  days that the wind was under 3 mph.  That meant that solar panels were the only ones helping the grid that day and Not the wind turbines.  Our line  voltages were also lower showing the lack of wind generation.

Cutting our CO2 Emissions

A recent Toronto Star post stated that using wind turbines and solar does not reduce CO2 emissions.

Every watt of power from wind or solar panels gets its energy source from the Sun.  The sun produces NO CO2.

I do agree that there are problems integrating such energy sources into the grid.  Storing energy is difficult.

The problem with the review is that the CO2 problem is Global one and not just a Canadian one.  Unless all countries like China, USA, etc who are building a new coal burning station about every week use none carbon energy producers then the problem will only get worst.  Google ocean acidification to see the first stages showing about the problem.  This is now starting to effect the global food source and can result in horrific future food shortages.

It has been my observation that the rich don't want to do their share.  Why would they?  That means living like others and not flying around the world on a wimm just because you can.

Coal can be used if the gases produced are scrubbed.  That adds cost and is not normally done.

Unless there is a major problem people will continue to ignore their carbon foot print and live like they always have.  By that time it will be too late to reverse the damage done.

Another equal problem is world population growth.  Here, China and India will very soon have over 2 billion people each which each person has a CO2 AND a methane foot print.  This is equally as important as stopping the burning of coal.  I don't see a bright future for your children or grandchildren.

Everyone every where must do their part or the world will be far worst off.  As the world warms up more methane is being released and the snow ball effect will take over.

One of the big problems that I see if good old greed.  Every where I see people with their hand out to try to capitalize of these new energy sources.  This includes charging for building permits to install solar panels, greed of many installers, greed of Hydro One charging $1500 just to connect you to the grid.  The list goes on.

How to add solar panels to your SolarEdge system

When installing your system, if you have more than 20 panels per inverter, you should use two strings verse one string.

Before doing any work, make sure you clearly understand what you are doing and to get all of the parts ahead of time.  A few extra bolts and nuts is always a good idea in case you drop something.

NOTE:  Your roof also must be able to handle the added weight.

NOTE:  You can't do this with micro-inverters.  This is a big area where SE blows away micro-inverters.

What is the Maximum Number of Panels per String?

SolarEdge will tell you 25 panels per string.  Use this when ever possible.  You can however normally get 27 per string and in some cases 30.  I do not recommend using more than 27 or so as you may have trouble in the winter.  The system simply works best with two strings with the panels equally divided per string.  Adding a new string is not difficult.  See below.  

Adding a second string to these inverters is also a simple process.  Always use the best wires and equipment and follow the electrical code.  Your local electrical supply company can be an excellent source and technical resource to guide you in the right path.  For example, I recommend only using 10 gauge electrical wire for your DC circuit.  All AC work should be done by an electrician.  You do not have to touch the AC system with an installed microfit system.

When choosing the wattage rating of your optimizers, I would go with at least 400 W.  Yes our panels on the west/east roof have 300 W optimizers but with the next generation of solar panels, our 304 W CS panels will out put around 340 W on a cold winter's day.  I will have to move the CS south panels to my 400 W optimizers.  Luckily I can do this.  When I built the system I opted for 300 W Optimizers on 250 W panels.  These are okay with my Heliene 300 W panels but the next generation CS panels produce at least 10% more power on average.  I could envision the CS panels with a 60 degree angle on a cold winter's day producing 360 W peak power.

Tools Needed:

Hammer, chalk line, hammer drill/ nails, roof sealant, drill/bit, fittings for panel clamps, tool to open MC4 fittings, MC4 wire crimp tool, wire stripper, Voltmeter DC to pot wires.  13 mm wrenches

Many times you can use your 20V hammer drill to loosen and tighten the panel hardware.  Always check that your roof mounts did indeed go into the wood rafter by tightening with a hand tool so that you can feel the torque as the bolt bites the wood.  Then check it out visually in the attic.

You also need to have a basic understanding of series electrical systems.  Possible Google and learn what you don't know. 

 Remember that there are two different clamps that hold your panels to the rails.  The inner clamps and the end clamps.

I recommend using 400 W optimizers, good for 200-400W panels.

Internet to find videos to install panels, MC4 clamps, ect.

See my ladder blog and use the best ladder that you can buy.

I use a rope tied to one of my anchors to make it easier to go up on my roof.

 I also lay a 1x6 board on the eve troughs to prevent damage from the ladder.

How to Add one or more panels to a string

First determine your existing string limitations.  Secondly try to balance both inverters if you have two inverters.  

Always be careful when working on your roof.  I do not recommend working on roofs with a pitch greater than 30 deg with out proper harness.

SE have some strange power recommendations per inverter.  Generally because of the superior design of the SE inverter/optimizer system there really isn't a maximum number of panels based on wattage.  SE simply turns panels off when you reach the maximum of the inverter.  That is a great thing and something that is needed in order to maximize your system output.  I know of a system that peaks early in the day, around 11 am, 2.5 hrs before solar noon.  That person's combined inverter output is 11.1 kW for 2 5000 W inverters and maintains this for about 5 hours on a good day.  Her peak output power record is 103.8 kW hrs for one day.  She provides power for that day to supply 6 or more houses that do not have solar panels.  Her projected annual solar harvesting is a very impressive 20 MW.  A local millionaire in Windsor has 25 similar 10 kW microfit systems.  In fact most of her neighbours do not have solar panels.

Now that you have your new optimizer and panel you first have to install you rails that support the panel.  We use rails and roof mounts from the same company.  Schelter in Windsor makes the best system.  You can go online to their site and  pick the parts that you need.

When installing your roof anchors, first locate your roof  truss and layout your mounts.  I use a hammer and nail and my chalk line.  I first find my ends and then every 4 feet install a mount. by using two SS bolts hand tightened to ensure that they are in the rafters and after wards visibly verify that that is true.  I also recommend you add sealant just before tightening and cover the mounts with the SS flashing or Alum flashing.  

Once my mounts and flashing are in, I add the rail mounting hardware and cut the rails to length.  I leave at least 2 inches extra.

Next I ground the rails and add my optimizers directly to the rails.  The optimizers need to be grounded to communicate with the inverters.  Using the little green things to hold the nut makes this job a wiz.  Every thing is in series.  You can either buy pre-cut wiring complete with MC4 fittings on line or make your own.  There is a 3 min video on U-Tube to show you how to use these simple, water tight crimp fittings.  If you are doing it yourself, buy a good quality crimp tool and line stripper.  I recommend using no. 10 gauge wires.

Caution:  Before opening any existing string, TURN OFF the inverter.  Wait until the voltage on the inverter is down to min.  Remember, every optimizer adds 1 V so if you have 10 panels you will see 10 V.  You can buy MC4 fittings on line for less than $1.50 each pair.

You system should have been installed with + and - MC4 fittings.  Using the blue or black tool, open up the closest circuit, pot your new circuit to see that it is correct.  If you are adding 5 panels, you should see 5 volts.  You are now ready to tie in you two new wires.  Make sure that you hear that click.  Now go back to the inverter and measure the voltage on your circuit.  You may have to open the circuit on the inverter so that you can pot it.  If you only have one string that will not be required to open the circuit.  The inverter will show you the voltage in the display.  

Now the inverter must talk with the new optimizers.  That is called PAIRING the panels.  This is a very simple procedure found in the SolarEdge Manuel.

Sorry that I have not included pictures, or step by step instructions but the total procedure is very simple.

The ability to have up to 50 panels per 5 kW inverter makes SolarEdge an outstanding system.  You will normally find that your roof limits you to 30 panels per inverter.  What I love about SE is that when you peak out your system, SE simply turns OFF the panels that are not needed.  You can mix 300 W and 400 W optimizers and 250 W and 300+W panels.

What I see in my system that 10% of the days are sunny and the system peaks early and long.  80% of the days we do not peak and could use some more panels.  We NEVER exceed the 10 kW nominal rating of our system.  We do not recommend that you ever exceed this when you have a 10 kW microfit system.  Remember the line coming into your house is most likely limited to 200 A or around 15 kW max.

  We need to maximize the output of our system to help to do our share to lower the carbon foot print of this county.  Around Windsor Ontario, a roof mounted 10 kW microfit system can produce a max of about 20 MW per year.  One rich guy has 25 such systems and is making about $400,000 per year after he removed all of his systems and re-installed them with SE, Schletter Rails, and the best 280 W panels that he could find.  We must let the free enterprise system work, by allowing people to make a little bit of money from their solar systems so that we can lower the carbon foot print of this county.  If he was on the current contract, he would make less than $200,000 per year with 25 systems.  He has to pay taxes, etc.  You do not get rich today.  Those big wind turbine people make money also.  So do the farmers who can retire on what they get paid.

retired P.Engineer of Ontario.  Proceed at your own risk.

SolarEdge system design Insights

Solar PV System Design:

As you have been reading my blog, you will see that SolarEdge is the only Inverter/Optimizer/PV harvesting system that makes any sense at this current time.  When ever you have more than 16 or so panels on an inverter, you should always use two strings.  I have come up with 4 good reasons for doing so.

4 Reasons to use 2 Strings per Inverter

The min number of panels per string is 8 and the maximum is  around 28 (25 SE).

1.0 By running two strings you reduce your power losses in your wires by 50%.  That could save you as high as $1500 over 20 years.

2.0  Having 2- 10 string panels verse 1 20 panels on a string will allow you to easily expand your system without much difficulty.  A 10 kW system would still be limited by the inverters.  That is how every other power plant is designed.  You can not track the sun's path, but you can increase your gross harvesting and help slow the CO2 growth. 

3.0  I was recently informed that the optimizer can fail and take out the circuit.  This would be a rare event but two strings will reduce your cost to find the faulted optimizer, improving maintainability. Optimizers when they rarely fail, normally fail without taking out the circuit.  I don't know how they are wired but an internal meltdown would most likely take the string down.  Don't worry about this but design the maintainability by using two strings.

4.0  Having two strings, the Inverter just works better at controlling the power curve.  A very good reason in it self for having two strings.  SolarEdge recommend two strings.

The only down side is if your panels are covered with so much snow that you will not turn on.  We clean our panels in the winter so that the system keeps working all year so that is not a problem for us.

Your installer may try to tell you that two strings are not needed.  You don't have enough experience to tell them other wise.  They just want to save the cost of wire and labor.  Put 2 strings per Inverter in you Engineering Specification for the above reasons for maintainability and overall system performance.  Makes sure that it is part of your contract in writing before you sign the contract.  If people want, I can post my Engineering Specification.

One Smart Designed Inverter

If you have enough solar panels to exceed the rated output of the Inverter that is a good thing.  The Inverter just turns the panels off that it doesn't need until it needs the power.  It does NOT dump the power to a resister and the Inverters always run cool, even in the summer on a hot day. It does another thing also.  The range of the DC voltage is 350 to 500 V.  When it detects that it is operating at maximum the Inverter increases the DC voltage from around 365 V to under 450 V.  The reason it does this is to reduce the amount of current flow, not power coming into the Inverter.  When you shut off the system, you still get 1 V per panel so the system is safe for Firefighters.

There is one very rich guy in Windsor who runs 25 microfit programs.  A few years back, he removed all of his systems and installed solaredge with some 40-50 panels per system.  He harvests the maximum that he can and gets paid the 80.2 cents per kW and not the current under 39 cents.  He would earn around $400,000 per year estimated or 20 MW per system per year.

I hope that these insights will assist you in getting the maximum out of your system.  The world is in really bad shape due to high CO2 levels, see my other blog.  

Go Solar.

Is CO2 Really a Problem?

Acidification of our Oceans:

Hi again.  I would like to share some information that recently became available to me.  One of my areas of expertise is Industrial Water Treatment.  I watched in horror a program about acidification of our Oceans.  I believe the area in question are pockets of ocean along the west coast of North American and other coastal areas in other countries.  These areas are not receiving the full mixing of ocean currents.

I keep hearing people say, we don't need solar or wind power.  Nothing could be farther than the truth.  Some people talk about a tipping point.  That is a point when you exceed, you can not go back and all hell starts to happen.  I believe that we have already passed that tipping point on the West Coast.

CO2 or rather 30-40% of it is absorbed by the Oceans.  We thought that that was a good thing.  Ocean pH. is normally 81.-8.2.  It has a bicarbonate alkalinity of about 120-150 ppm at this pH.  C02 forms carbonic acid  when dissolved in the water.  Every ppm of CO2 removes two carbonate atoms.

A oyster hatchery experienced 100% die off of their crop about 3 years ago.  They were totally puzzled until someone said check the pH of the sea water and they found it to be 7.6.  That is about 60 ppm of alkalinity.  Below a pH of 7.8 corals will not grow.  I used to have a salt water reef aquarium and sold products to raise the pH and to help people grow their corals.  These hatcheries are seeing a 50% drop in harvesting or  survival of shell fish in the Ocean due to this drop in pH from a normal level of 92%.  As it gets worse we will see a global decrease in the fish and shell fish populations. 70% or more people depend on the oceans for food.  The low pH effect the low level plankton survival in the oceans.  WOW or rather OH SH..T

FYI a pH of 4 is equal to 0 ppm of alkalinity.

We have already passed the tipping point.  It wasn't 400 ppm CO2 but much lower point.  China keeps burning coal like crazy along with the USA.  300 ppm could have been the tipping point for the oceans.

Simply put, the world is in big, big trouble.  We need more solar and wind generation or non-carbon based energy production.

Our crazy Federal Government is talking about buying Carbon credits.  Take that money and seed crushed limestone on the ocean where the pH is low.  You would most likely not see much happen but it would be far better than giving or buying stupid carbon credits.  This is an enormous problem.  Even squid need pH about 7.8 to form a small Calcium Carbonate bone the size of a grain of rice to help them keep their balance.  Below a pH of 7.8 and it does not form normally.  In the ocean you are either squid food or squid.  Many larger predators eat the squid.  All that will be left will be the jelly fish.

Note: CaOH would be the best but it is produced by driving the CO2 from limestone, just like how cement is made.  Thus all you would do by using this is to add more CO2 to the atmosphere.  By the way, with all of the cement that China is using, they have an enormous carbon footprint from cars, coal burning electric plants and the huge industrial growth of concrete buildings never mind the huge methane foot print of 1.3 billion people.

Conclusion:

I personally along with my other experts never thought that this would be happening now.  Lower your carbon foot print.  If you can, put solar panels on your roof.  We are now in a very, very bad point in time.  You can  add that I did not speak about increasing the global temperature.  This is the other problem.  Wait until the north starts to warm up and all of the methane gas is released which is even worst than CO2 at keeping the heat in.  This will be a run away cycle of destruction.  I don't see many people listening or even caring.

If you think after reading this that it sounds bad.  In reality is it is 1000 time worst than you may be thinking.  Be prepared for massive starvation across the planet as the rivers dry up in India and China runs out of food.  Both of these two countries will have 2 billion people each in another 10 years.

Review of Canadian Solar 305 W - 72 cell Poly-crystalline Solar Panels

23 March 2015

Introduction:

I am a retired Professional Engineer with an Ontario Microfit solar panel system.  I try to review various solar products to give the general public some feed back on the different panels out there.

First Impressions:

The panels arrived over 12 days ago, all in good looking condition.  The first thing that I noticed was a center support bar that added point load support in the center of the panel.  This panels look professionally made with screws in the ends holding the rails together.  The backing material is most likely EVA which may or may not give us some problems in the future.  I would have preferred Kynar or equivalent backing material.  They are warrantied  for 25 years.  It doesn't cover installation or shipping.  You can read my other blogs on the best backing material to use.

We have some 300 W. Heliene {H} Panels which we like, one mono Silfab and the rest 250 W poly.  The CS panels have been on the roof for over 10 days so the initial burn in should be over.  The Heliene panels are about 1 year old.

Sunday was finally a great solar day with very few clouds.  I positioned 3 CS and 6 H panels on the south roof and 3 CS panels with 2 H panels on the West roof for comparison.  Our roof pitch is only 22.5 deg so we are about 20 deg from perpendicular at this time of year.  I observed a peak of 304 W from one of(t)he CS while one H panel produced 270 W located at the roof line in the best location. All of the CS panels performed well and close in output to each other.

Results:

The Canadian Solar (CS) panels harvested as follows:  South:  2.21, 2.05, 2.15 kW. 

                                                                                         West: 1.68, 1.62 1.53 kW (first 2 panels get more sun as the sun slowly moves around our array in the am.)

 Heliene (H)  harvested:  South 1.96 (best position), 1.94, 1.91 kW

                                 West: 1.35, 1.4 kW

Discussion:

As you can see, the new CS panels blew away the H  panels.  Compared to the 300 W H panels, the 305 W CS panels are making about 330 W.  The H panels compare well with our other 250 W poly panels.  The improved performance is due to the fact that the CS panels are using the next generation poly-crystalline materials (according to my seller).  These panels are truly rated on the PTCUSA standard as all panels should be.  That would be the H panels at around 270 W(300 W STC) and the CS at 305 W (PTCUSA).

The low light harvesting of these new CS panels is outstanding.  The average output on south is 2.137 kW and for H is 1.937 kW  Or CS averages 10.3 % better on South exposure and 13% on West exposure.  This may decrease in time but that equates to a 330 W equivalent for South.  I will repose this in one month.  The day was cold which helps to keep the sky clear and the panels working great.  I want all of my panels to do this great.  For fixed roof applications, these are the best that we have seen  If other are also using the next generation poly-crystalline material, expect equal results. It is my understanding that CS have 3 plants that make their own crystalline.  That is a big advantage.  I have been waiting to see some type of improvement in poly for the past 3 years.  Off axis light is IMHO normal for all panels, especially east and west orientated.  IMHO, for most applications mono is out, it is too directional except for trackers.

The peak power production, low light and total kW harvested is just fantastic.  They are exceeding all of my expectations except for the backing materials.  You may be able to get a different backing material at a slightly higher price.

Poly-crystalline panels are generally the preferred type of panels except possibly when using a solar tracker.  So for fixed roof installations, the low light properties are outstanding for these CS panels.  The CS panels on the west roof produced the same amount of harvesting as did most of our 250 W south facing panels.  

 I can truthfully say: "Just loving it".  They help us even more to do our part in reducing our CO 2 foot print.

BUY Canadian Solar CS6X-305P None Ontario Poly Panels

All power levels from the SolarEdge monitoring system.

Thanks for dropping by.

May 11 2015 UPDATE:  Still seeing the same great results compared with existing panels.  WOW.  IMHO these are the best solar panels that I have ever seen.  Sept 2015 still going strong - Loving It.

On a ROI basis they are the best solar panels currently on the market.

NOTE: You can't buy Sunpower panels and they have a huge up front cost and are tied in with a terrible racking system and an outdated inverter system for most applications  SP have the best cell but it is the total system that counts and ROI.

Currently Strongly Recommended Sept 2015