Free Electricity From The Sun ! No More Power Bills For Us.

No More Power Bills For Us.
We receive our power account every two months here is the West. This is our first complete power account in credit, which is very exciting they paid us $449.90 and the last account they paid us $124.45
So far in total we have received $574.35. Its so much nicer receiving money from them, rather then paying them. We need to ring them every two months and then they send us a cheque, others wise we need to wait the year and they will automatically send us a cheque. We will ring every two months as the money is better being in our account earning interest then theirs.... Any one else have solar panels and receiving cheques. If you are thinking about getting solar panels installed I would say yes do so. Its also a great feeling knowing we are doing our bit to help clean up our planet .

Our Solar Panel Update !

On December 24th we finally got our Solar system fully operational.
If you read my earlier post about us getting our second lot of solar panels in October you will know we had difficulties getting the system working to full capacity. But after Kev doing heaps of research as to why it wasn't working he worked out that our cable wasn't bigger enough .So the full story is written by my darling partner Kev below !
Our last bill period from 3rd November to 4th January was $124.45 credit, which is great news !

How did we solve it? We laid another cable single phrase 35mm2 directly from the solar inverter to our meter box bypassing our undersized cable 3 phrase 10mm2 home connection. This way we eliminated the large voltage gain being caused by the inverter output. The 35mm2 cable only had a voltage gain of 7 to 8 volts.

Helpful advice for others who want to install solar systems !

1. Check where you are located. Urban areas generally have short connection lengths from street to house. Also they usually have a large number of customers over short local distribution lines. Semi-rural and rural areas can have long connection lengths from street to house. Also they can have small numbers of customers over long local distribution line. The Power Supplier will generally have higher starting voltages to compensate for the losses in the distribution and connections lines. Unfortunately this works against the solar system generator.

2. Check with your Power Supplier what the maximum voltage they are providing at your meter and what the grid impedance is at your meter. This can affect the size of the solar system you can install.

3. Check if you can the size of your connection cable from street to your house. Even with urban areas, if your house connection cable is undersized, it may not be able take your solar system to higher output system. With older houses your cable sizes may be as low as 6mm2. 16mm2 connection cable will be the minimum size required. In semi-rural and rural areas the distance from our house to the distribution line take off point is critical. With high starting voltages and long distances may require cable size upgrading to be able to stay below the upper voltage limit (264 volts is the Australia standard).

4. Select a Solar System installers who understands what the potential problems can be and who is willing to assist in dealing with the Power Supplier.

5. Don't proceed with the installation of larger systems (>1.5Kw) unless your system installer and power supplier can give you assurance the system will work to it's design capacity.

Solar Systems Observations.

1. Solar panels are designed to operate at their maximum at 25 degrees. Their performance becomes less and less the hotter it gets over 25 degrees. e.g. 25 degrees 5000 watts 30 degrees 4500 watts 35 degrees 4000 watts. Sunny Spring and Autumn days are the best production times.

2. Solar panels don't have to face true north. Ours are 36 degrees off north and still have a 96% efficiency rating.

3. All states except NSW and ACT use gross tariff  method. The less power you use while the sun shines, the more power you can export to the grid.

4. When you export to "the grid" you are only exporting to your local distribution line. The Power Supplier's transformers are designed to download to it's distribution lines not upload it back further into the grid. That is if all your neighbour's installed large solar systems then you could have the situation where no one would be able to export to "the grid".

5. The South West of WA the average daily production for a 6 panel system is about 4 KWh(Units).

Inverter Production Readout

Graph of Production, Consumption and Grid Export
10 to 30 Solar Panels

The company we used was Solvation - A small company based in Fremantle, Western Australia.  Alex Ackerman the owner/manager was very professional, very helpful and gave excellent service. He assisted us through the whole process of our initial 1.05Kw system to the upgraded 4.6Kw system.
So any one considering getting solar panels installed we would highly recommend Alex and his team .


Solar panels 30 of them !

Solar panels 30 of them !
Last Wednesday we had 24 more solar panels installed , We had 6 already after the government rebate last year and we wanted to add more but because the ones we had installed last year were different then these new ones we had 30 installed and the electrician wanted the ones we had as they matched his 6 panels so every one was happy ! Well in that area every one was happy . The next day we spent most of the day at the beach I said to kev it will be exciting to see how many units of power we make today,I thought it should be a least 30 units(Kwh).When we got home the inverter was reading only 9 units, that's a bit strange we thought, Kev rang the installer to tell him something was wrong ,he wasn't sure what the problem could be.So at this stage we aren't sure if the problem is our end or Western powers end that's the energy provider here in the West. So its been a week and its still not working as it should. There is a fault some where we are not sure where it is at this stage. When the inverter's production reaches 3,000 watts it trips out because it reaches the over voltage trigger point (264V)! So far it has been disappointing , hope the problem gets solved soon , Kev went back to work today after 2 weeks holiday and he will speak to his work colleague who is an electrical engineer so we hope he can shed some light on helping solve our solar problem ! I will keep you all updated, I wonder has any one else had a similar problem !If so please post and tell us your story ! Kev has returned home from work and 3 people at his work all said it could be 3 different things causing the problem. One being because we have 200 metres of 3 phase cabling from our metre to our house switch board . Another reason is that western powers voltage is too high.We are waiting to hear back from the intaller ! So fingers crossed it will be simple to correct !

Solar Panels

Solar Panels.
Kev my partner and I had talked about getting solar panels installed to help save money and help save the planet.Then the federal government was offering an $8,000 rebate, so we went ahead and signed up in May and we got our solar panels installed on the 3rd of November 2009. My partner Kev has done spread sheets to monitor how much power we make and use.I'm really looking forward to the 1st August because we will finally start getting paid 47 cents a kilowatt hour (KWh). 40cents from the state government fixed for ten years and 7cents from synergy which will be reviewed every 12 months . With the price of power going up all the time, I'm so glad we got our solar panels, we currently save  25% off our power bill. We are thinking about adding more panels. I love the idea that we are making power, and doing our bit to save our beautiful planet . I look forward to getting more panels and receiving cheques instead of bills, now that does sound good ! reducing our carbon foot print .

Does any one receive cheques from their electricty supplier for more then their bills are ?
The question is : Is any one making money from their solar power ?