Posts By SolarQuotes Founder Finn Peacock

SunGrow Inverter beats SMA in Latest Inverter Reviews

March 15, 2012 2016-06-23T00:31:23 by 75 Comments
sungrow and sma inverter

Chinese Sungrow Vs German SMA Inverters: Which ones are best?

Note: This post is just one opinion on Sungrow Inverters. Click here for lots of Customer Reviews of Sungrow Inverters to see how they have performed in Australian homes over the last few years.

If you are considering buying a Sungrow Inverter over an SMA inverter – then you should also check out customers’ SMA reviews. You’ll see that, in practice, SMA inverters are more reliable. This is to be expected, since SMA are double the price of a Sungrow!

Now back to the post…

Yesterday I received my latest issue of the solar industry bible, Photon International  via airmail all the way from Germany. Whilst many people may get excited by the latest issue of Top Gear Australia magazine or Better Homes & Gardens, I’m one of those odd people that gets my kicks looking through the latest solar panel and inverter specs.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Solar Inverters Tagged With: ,

Samil Inverter Review: German magazine gives top marks

March 13, 2012 2017-05-02T10:48:08 by 20 Comments
Samil Power Solar River Inverter

The Samil Inverter got a great review in the German Photon Magazine in August 2011

Samil Inverters are very popular in Australia. They are great value, and have great specifications on paper. However I get a lot of emails asking me if this Chinese made solar inverter is any good.

It is a fair question. The inverters are a lot cheaper than their German made competition (like SMA), and are a relatively new player in the market. Plus there are a lot of solar salespeople out there that are peddling the (somewhat xenophobic) line that all Chinese made solar components are crap.

So what’s the truth? Are Samil Inverters any good? [Read more…]

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Old School Solar Sales Tactics That You Should Not Tolerate

March 9, 2012 2017-05-02T10:52:23 by 1 Comment

Solar Power is a very new and very fast growing industry. That makes it an exciting thing to be part of, and attracts a lot of interesting, enthusiastic and hard working people, most of whom believe passionately in what they are selling.

Unfortunately it also attracts people and companies that appear to have no other motive than to make as much cash as possible in as short a period of time as possible. Now there is nothing at all wrong with trying to maximise the profitability of your business. That’s just good business. But if you are maximising your short term profits by throwing your ethics out of the window, then that is wrong, dumb and short sighted. In the 21st century your actions will catch up with you.

That is one of the main reasons I started collecting Solar Installer Reviews.

Over the past 4 years, I’ve found that the common theme amongst the bad ‘uns in the Solar Power game seems to be their old school, hard sell, sales tactics. If you’ve ever been cold called by a solar power company knocking on your door, you’ll probably recognise some of these tactics. I personally believe these tactics are wrong, counter productive, insulting to the customer and have no place in this industry. See if you agree:

[Read more…]

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How Does Temperature Affect Your Solar Inverter Power?

March 1, 2012 2017-05-02T10:55:07 by 26 Comments
Inverter positioned badly

Don’t mount your inverter where the sun can cook it!

If you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time you are probably already aware of how high ambient temperatures negatively affect solar panel performance.

But did you know that when it gets hot outside, those scorching Aussie temperatures can also cause the efficiency of your solar inverter to drop? [Read more…]

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Learn About The Adelaide Solar Cities Project

February 28, 2012 2017-05-02T11:00:09 by Leave a Comment

If you live in Adelaide and want to learn what the pollies are spending your taxes on then come along to the Australian Solar Energy Society, South Australia Branch’s public meeting tomorrow 29th Feb in Goodwood and say hello!

  SOLAR CITIES – PUBLIC MEETING

Speaker:  Dario De Bortoli, Adelaide Solar City Program Manager

When:  Wednesday 29 February 2012 commencing 7:00 pm

Where: Goodwood Community Centre, 32-34 Rosa Street, Goodwood 5034

(Location Map:  http://is.gd/ZrLFfX.  Car Park, Tram, Train and Bus services all conveniently serve this venue)

Cost:  $5.00 payable at venue door – all welcome!   (AuSES Members – Free)

Reservations:  To assist with catering, please provide your name and the number of people in your party via email to AuSES.Adelaide[AT]yahoo.com.au

This presentation will discuss the background to the Solar Cities Program, the expected benefits, targets and progress to date, community engagement strategies, the solar trial, the cost reflective pricing trial, energy efficiency initiatives and the home energy assistance program.

Presented by: Dario De Bortoli, Adelaide Solar City Program Manager

Dario is an employee of Origin Energy Ltd and is responsible for the management and ongoing delivery of the $65 million Adelaide Solar City project.

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Solar Panel Size: Is Bigger Better?

February 23, 2012 2023-09-13T13:47:25 by 19 Comments
a 410W solar panel

A 410W solar panel. Look at the size of that thing! (image: TopSun)

The Size of Solar panels is definitely increasing, there’s no denying it.

A couple of years ago the average solar panel was 165W. Today the average is about 240W. The biggest one approved for installation in Australia at the time of writing is the whopping Topsun TS-S410. This giant amongst solar panels has these super sized stats: [Read more…]

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8 Reasons To Get A Site Inspection Before Buying Solar Power

February 21, 2012 2017-10-20T13:10:56 by 7 Comments

a solar inspection

If you are considering putting some solar panels on your roof, then I strongly recommend that you have a physical site inspection before getting firm quotes.

Since I started SolarQuotes many years ago, we’ve handled hundreds of thousands of quote requests and over those years the most frequent complaint I’ve had from people looking for quotes is:

“This solar installer won’t even give me a ballpark price for a solar system! He’s insisting on coming round to my house first!”

[Read more…]

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The STC Price: Is Your Solar Installer Ripping You Off?

February 17, 2012 2018-05-09T11:20:28 by 55 Comments

A solar crook

Short Answer: Probably Not.

Longer Answer:

Ah, the joys of STC prices! Every so often I get an email from someone who is desperately worried that their solar installer is using the STC price to rip them off.

The suspicion is usually kicked off by one of two things: [Read more…]

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Solar Panels On Roofs Facing Different Directions? Then You Need To Do This.

February 9, 2012 2018-05-09T11:21:51 by 103 Comments

Here is a photo I took of a house around the corner from me.

A House With Solar Panels Facing Different Directions

As you can see, it has solar panels on 2 separate roof areas. In solar jargon, you would say there are 2 “strings” of solar panels.

The main string is facing North, which is the best roof orientation for solar panels. These panels should get the optimum amount of sun throughout the day.

The smaller string is facing East. These panels will get 15-20% less sunlight than the panels facing North.

Obviously the installer could not fit all the panels on the North facing roof. Fair enough.

If your home will require solar panels on multiple roof areas, which face different directions, then you should use a special type of inverter to ensure that you still get good system performance. [Read more…]

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Understanding Solar Panel Specifications Part #2: Power, Tolerance & Efficiency

February 6, 2012 2018-01-29T22:36:17 by 14 Comments

In Part #1 I went into great detail about why the “Max Power” quoted on your solar panel specification sheet and the real max power you will actually get from that panel are very different numbers. I showed you how to calculate a more accurate max power by using some little known temperature specs.

In this post I’ll go through the other important numbers that you should look at when comparing solar panels.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Solar Panels Tagged With: , , ,
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