I don’t know much about solar panels yet and I’m still trying to educate myself but I want to know first what brands should I look in? I’m from the Philippines and I’m looking for a good company that will assist me all the way.
Hey there @jcordon7
Good on you for looking into it. I would recommend by starting with our short eBook. It will point you in the right direction with brands, and many other things.
Let us know if you have specific questions after reading this.
Hi,
We are in The Philippines also. We had a terrible time finding anyone who knows even the basics concerning orientation, angle, adjustment, wire size and type etc. We had 32 panels installed by a “professional” that cost more to run than the electricity they produced. Everything was wrong! And I mean everything. We redid it all ourselves and purchased more as well, an additional 40 panels. We are now producing electricity enough to power most of the house and have reduced our bill by 50% from about p60,000 to about p30,000. I bought everything from Futrure Green Energy Technology in China. Their engineer assisted me with any questions, Cici the head of sales was super helpful also. I got most of my information on how to do everything from sites by the US Dept of Energy, Australia Dept of Energy as well as this site where we got lots of help. You can see photos at my other postings on this site. Here’s where I bought my supplies https://www.futuregreenbattery.com you can talk to Cici right from the site. They make batteries, inverters and panels. Or take Marty’s suggestions he helped me a lot as well.
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This looks good! I’ll take time to read this 
Hi the_uglydog
Thanks for the recommendation but I’m currently looking for local companies to avoid the hassle of shipping and communication and all of that. Since you’re also based in the Philippines, have you heard of Solaric? I’ve read a lot of good reviews about them.
What area in the Philippines are you in @jcordon7?
Currently living in Cavite.
Hi, I’ve heard of them although I don’t personally know about them. Here I feel you need to, at the very least, know almost EVERYTHING yourself, so you can make sure the contractor knows and actually does it correctly. Get the specs for everything in writing, and check it all continuously while they are installing it. No twisted together wires with tape, etc, everything correct so there’s no problems afterward. My wife originally contracted someone who was supposed to know what they were doing. Everything and I mean EVERYTHING was wrong. We built a special structure just to mount the panels, they installed 1/2 the panels facing away from the sun, the orientation of the panels sorta facing the sun was off by 15*, the angle was 40* instead of the correct angle based on the latitude, (about 14* for fixed panels, when we redid it, we built a simple adjusting mechanism to keep them at the best to capture the sun all year, with the entire array facing true south based on satellite imaging confirmed by the shadow at solar noon and the shadow locations at sunrise and sunset) 6 were in shade all day, the connectors weren’t installed correctly, the wires were way to small to carry the current, some of the wires were made of aluminum instead of copper and none of the wires were the proper shielded cable. The batteries needed to be at least 200 amp based on the instructions from the inverter mfgr., they installed a combination of 100 and 150 amp batteries. The output from the inverters was wired to the input from Meralco instead of the input wired to the input terminal. It was insane what was done. I talked to a number of other installation companies and NONE of them found anything wrong with the way the contractor did it.
All I can say is make sure they specify everything including the wire size and type, then make sure they are the right size or slightly larger than required, there’s plenty of sites that will tell you the correct sizes, NO ALUMINUM WIRES, all batteries must be at least the capacity required by the inverter mfgr and they all must be the same size, brand and age. Good luck with your project, it can be real good when it works right, and a total waste of money when it doesn’t. Have Marty or some of the experts on here check the specs for you before you sign a contract.