Posts By SolarQuotes Founder Finn Peacock

What Should You Buy First? Solar Hot Water or Solar PV?

Solar Hot Water is fast becoming the poor cousin of Solar PV (AKA Solar Electricity). Consumers just seem to prefer solar PV to solar hot water these days. In fact solar hot water has gone from almost zero to 1,000,000 roofs in about 30 years, whereas PV has gone from almost zero to 1,000,000 roofs in less than 6 years. There is now more PV than Solar HW out there! Unbelievable.

It doesn’t help that retailers prefer to sell PV over hot water – for a whole bunch of reasons that I’ll go into in a future blog post.

Here’s a video where I answer the question posed in the title: Should you buy Solar Hot Water or PV first?, But first I answer a much more fundamental question that creates an enormous amount of confusion out there:

And here’t the transcript for the video-phobes amongst you: [Read more…]

The 3 Types Of Solar Installer

Discover the 3 types of solar installer that you’ll find in the Australian Market. Learn which ones to avoid, and the tricks the bad ‘uns will pull to get your business.

Or if you don’t want to watch the video, here’s a transcript for your reading pleasure.
[Read more…]

What is a Solar Feed In Tariff (Video).

I’ve been busy making videos that answer some common solar questions. Here I talk about Feed In Tariffs and what to do if your nasty energy retailer wants to punish you for going solar…

Transcription below for those who prefer to read: [Read more…]

Breaking News! Vic Slashes Solar Feed In Tariff

The Victorian government has just announced that their FIT has immediately been slashed from 25c per kWh to 8c per kWh.

Basically if you haven’t already paid a deposit on your solar system, you can’t claim the 25c FiT any more.

The details are a bit hard to get out of the Vic pollies at the moment. For example the 8c scheme starts on Jan 1 2013. So what happens to all the electricity a new solar system exports until then?

Also they say:

“The tariff will then be adjusted by the government each year in 2014, 2015 and 2016 based on the wholesale electricity price, before moving to a fully floating market price in 2017.”

Anyone care to hazard a guess as to what that actually means?

Read more from the Age here and from the horse’s mouth here.

 

Should you buy the cheapest solar system on the market?

(This post was written in 2012 – but the principles still hold true!)

Everyone loves a bargain. Especially me! But are those solar systems advertised at jaw droppingly low prices a great deal or a future headache?

I feel quite strongly about this – so I decided to make a video. Here it is.

And here’s the transcript if you prefer to read rather than watch: [Read more…]

Where should your solar inverter go and should you worry about voltage drops?

I got a great email the other day:

“One solar installer has told me that it is best for the inverter to be as close as possible to the panels and NOT to the meter box as your checklist indicates. Is he crazy?”

Short answer. Yes – he’s crazy.

Longer answer:

As close as possible to the panels? Whatcha gonna do put it on the roof?

I get a lot of stick for this advice in one of my solar installation videos:

Solar Inverter Position

Sometimes I get heat for recommending that you put your solar inverter as close to your fusebox as possible.

[Read more…]

This Growatt Inverter Review is Good.. But What About The Reliability?

The scores for the growatt inverter review

Photon Magazine July 2012 Awarded good marks to the Growatt 5000MTL

The latest issue of industry bible: Photon International has an in depth Growatt inverter review of the 5000MTL. A popular 5kW solar inverter from China.

It performs well in the efficiency tests, scoring an A grade at high irradiation (i.e. strong sun) and a B grade at medium irradiation. It ranked in the top third of all devices tested by the magazine over the past few years.

So to cut a long story short – Growatts are one of the better Chinese inverters out there. And they are certainly a lot cheaper than the European inverters on the market.

But there is a question mark over the quality control in the Growatt factory. [Read more…]

Solar Panel Tilt Frames: Are they worth it?

tilt frames for solar panels

Tilt frames maximise energy yield, at a price.

Here is (another!) really common question that I get:

“I’ve got 3 quotes for solar: The first company says my roof is at the wrong pitch and wants to charge me hundreds of dollars extra to put my solar panels on tilt frames to optimize the amount of electricity I get. The second mob say it is fine to just put the panels flush on my roof and the third guy says that, yes my roof isn’t at the perfect pitch, but the best solution is to mount them flush to the roof and simply add an extra solar panel to make up for any reduced power output.

Now I’m really confused! Help!”

The problem here is that there are 2 extremes of solar installer in my experience: [Read more…]

Samil Power Inverters: The Hyundai of the Solar Industry?

a list of inverter and car brands

Solar Infographic : If Inverters were Cars…

The current edition of industry bible “Photon Magazine” (June 2012 issue) has a glowing review of the Chinese made Samil Power Solar Lake 15kW inverter.

A couple of years ago if you were investing in a 15kW solar system your default choice would have been a European inverter – think SMA, Aurora or Delta. It would have been a very brave engineer that specced a Chinese inverter on such a big system!

However in a few short years the Chinese have learned from any mistakes made and are producing some world class solar inverter hardware.

[Read more…]

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