firstly, I have a quote for the origin VPP which they will honour although trial spots have been taken, as they have some flexibility.
6.62kwh + 10kwh LG chem battery, 390w JA panels, sungrow SH5K-30 5kw inverter (total ~$10k) but also requires 5 years sign up with origin, and they can withdraw 200kwh per year from battery. on the surface seems appealing, but system was a bit smaller than I had planned but would easily meet needs.
Im not eligible for any rebates this year, but next year i will be. I had planned to just get solar this year then a battery next year.
Other quotes are an 8.8kw system (370w jinko and fronius 8.2kw inverter and smart meter) for $9k
or 7.3kw (370w canadian solar and 6kw goodwe inverter) for $6.5k
or 6.6kw (370w LG mono and 5kw sungrow inverter but SH5K-20, not newer 30) for $8.5k
would prefer a larger system than 6.6kw but that seems to reduce inverter options. Also want to add battery next year, but as i understand it, fronius is not a hyrid inverter and may end up needing further equipment.
All the panels sound like good value to me. Fronius are the better inverter. SolarEdge and SMA are in the same class. I know SolarEdge do hybrid inverters. They cost a bit more but have a 12 year industry leading warranty and because the optimisers that have a 25 year guarantee, do part of the work of the inverter, replacements are cheaper. SolarEdge optimised inverters outperform by around 5%.
Thanks mate. its good to know about Solaredge - I thought they only did micro inverters, which I had’nt really considered as my roof is well aspected and no shading, and the Fronius has two MPPTs and Goodwe MS series has 3 MPPT as well. Any thoughts on the the virtual power plant setup?
I’m in WA and here I would even recommend batteries. Too expensive to get a payback anything like solar alone (no subsidies). Even though you have no shading there are around a dozen reasons why panels will perform differently from day one including aspect to sun, damage dirt and debris. With a string inverter each panel performs only as well as the worst performing in a string. With SE optimised, as long as six panels in a string are getting sun ,they all perform on their own merit. If you buy SE you will see the differences on the free panel by panel monitoring.
SE also have in built voltage protection, that makes the low risk of fires even lower. Also protects against power surges. I had a client with two factories next door to each other. When there was a voltage surge, the Fronius inverters cooked and had to be replaced. The SE inverters in the next door factory simply shut down and restarted when the grid went back to normal
I haven’t seen the Fronius monitoring so if you know anything about it, I’d be interested to hear about it.
@coenj sounds like you have some good background knowledge about inverters but what is your household consumption? You can’t really make an informed decision about what size system you should get without taking into account your consumption (or estimated future consumption if you plan to add an EV etc?)
I’d suggest you try out the solar and battery calculator and see what direction it takes you… For example you may find a battery is useless in winter as you might not have enough excess solar to charge it, so a larger solar array will be required https://solar.cleanenergyreviews.info/savings-calculator/