If you have thought about solar, the changes are you wanted to take baby steps, it is a very common way to “get into solar”. It starts often with garden lights and improving over these and then it grows. the man cave. the garage or work shop and then the excess becomes a factor into powering the home.
Going from small solar projects to home power is not really that much different as the ENA fully type tests inverters for use in parallel with the grid. But off grid and on grid are quite a bit different. you cannot plug an off grid inverter into the home that has grid supplied to it, and the reason for this is that one is grid forming ( off grid) and the other is grid parallel.
So Micro solar… Micro inverters are small and usually go with the panel, mounted under them on the frame. we are talking the legal ones, not the china magic smoke makers ( green and silver) they all come in a number of sizes but it really does come down to practical power.
I have had, on and off grid, as well as grid attached and hybrid systems, one of the reasons is for the customer and installation issues that may come along in the working day. yes this means I have had ground mount and tracker systems as well as roof mount. then I have the client installations which give a well-rounded view of solar which is combined with 17 years (on and off) with solar.
Value for money.
Solar especially grid tied is very much ” you only save what you use”. With solar power being used by yourself in home, and the excess being pushed toward the grid, you will only save on the power your using and not taking from the grid. this means the ability to make the power and the ability to use the power.
In the past ten days I have made £4.62 of solar power, well that’s just under that many days as I didn’t go on line till the afternoon on day one, it was turned off for a few hours during one day and off most of the day another. so lets say 8 days. £4.62 – That’s just under 16kWh and they are only in 56 degrees of sun time during the day and what I would say was the winter angle.
Actually the image below is a record from the software, but it transpires that the system may have spent more time off that I had wrote above…
Our Hoymiles 800W comes in at £397 as a kit. that’s at break even or 687 days for me, but I lose around 30% of the sun hours which would drop that number down to 481 days or 1.3 years. ( should be less).
[Update 01.05.24
We make around 4.5kwh per day, our day ends around 15:30 due to shading. For the month of May, we should hit around £40 of energy production. From May to September we should yield around £202. and October and November a further £40.]
The target power for our home is around 400W – we got this between 10:25 and 15:30, either side of this time is usually shading hence the 56 degrees. that’s 3.5 hours of sun. If you want to know more about angles and tilts you can view these links;
Sun Hours and Seasons: How to Angle the Panels — RenewSolar
How to Position Your Solar Panels for Maximum Energy Output — RenewSolar
My Opinion of value
Year one is going to be no value. you will only make what you paid for the hardware, do not forget this kit does not have mounting systems because every one is different, you could have £20 or £200 bill for mounting the panels and you and you could have an installation cost too. so the mileage of value will change depending on how you have completed your solar.
If we look at No other costs, you are looking at 9 years of Plus income/saving, if we annual the production its around 800kWh or £240 per year or about £1,270 over the ten years.
If we took a bank interest rate of 6 % with the same investment you would make £23.82 in interest per year, compounded to £711 over the same period, so your up £559 by having solar which is good value.
I should also say that the solar solution is NOT scalable as a grid tied system. this is down to the use, and I also did not add the growing cost of power units, I am just using 0.29p kWh. I also did not include the banks taxes. if you wanted to scale then you would need to move to hybrid solar and have more solar panels. it would be possible to scale to two kits, and have them east and west to cover more wider power, or have a solar tracker.
Winter?
I don’t hold out hope for these balcony solar system in the winter, with the narrow sun angle and the low voltage, they would not produce much at all, maybe only 66 watts.
Flexibility?
The micro solar inverter has two mppts meaning that you can have each panel facing any direction. with the short cables you could extend them and have the array moved to not lock the panels together. this may suit some types of installations rather than as a single larger production unit.
These of course are designed as a on roof system too, meaning that your entire roof array could have micro inverters, with up to 4 panels. meaning that you could have two micro inverters on a roof of 8 panels.
This then turns to the battery of the micro inverter vs the optimiser. but we refuse to sell the optimisers and you can read why on the link. But realistically the string inverter should perform better. voltage verses current in our post of string vs micro inverters will explain in more detail. the string inverter may also have a lower cost, but may lower the flexibility of the single MPPTs on micro inverters.
For small solar foot print system then you could not have many of the string inverters due to the panel requirements. therefore its the “best of what you can do” and therefore Micro solar could work for you. it is better than banking the money, green credentials too but don’t forget the installation costs as its the little bits that can add up. You may find installations from as little as £60.
Have a view? leave that in the comments below of head over the forum.
RenewSolar Forum — RenewSolar
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