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Thread: Hybrid Inverter Solar Panel System - Is it worth the outlay?

  1. #21
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    Thanks george65.

    Really helpful information for us all! A lot of these solar panel deals and dealers that are advertising all these super duper deals on facebook are guaranteed problems I would reckon! - we did assume - and they are certainly coming across as fly-by-nighters.

    We will look at companies that have been around for a while and where you are paying for better quality. Totally agree with you!

    We had sungrid panels with our previous system that are ten years old now. The panels were made in Germany (BUT they were put together in China - this was ten years ago!). Sungrid now are working at installing in India. We really had no complaints regarding the sungrid company.

    Regards.



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    Quote Originally Posted by David071 View Post
    The panels were made in Germany (BUT they were put together in China - this was ten years ago!). Sungrid now are working at installing in India. We really had no complaints regarding the sungrid company.
    A lot of good panels are made in China. It's not that you have to watch, It's the chinese panels you have never heard of before that are made to be a commodity that can be sold but how long they last or well they perform is virtualy irrelevant as long as the price is right.
    There are only a handfull of panels that aren't made in china but as long as they are Name brands and been around a while like the one you had, That's OK.

    I think it is "Sunpower" panels that are supposedly one of the very best ( and exy) along with LG that are made in china. LG is considered the ultimate by a lot of installers but I have seen a good amount of pictures of the junket OS Holidays LG takes them on so I'm not surprised they get recommended. They are a good panel but for the price they would want to be. Not to say they aren't without flaws and certain parts of their warranty and exclusions seem very Sus to me.

    A lot of their recommendation as well is because they have 25 yr Warranty but as I have pointed out, that really doesn't mean a lot in the real world.
    It's not the panels you have to be as fussy about as the inverters.
    Last edited by george65; 04-05-20 at 09:48 AM.

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    Quote Originally Posted by wotnot View Post
    A bit OT but there's actually a bit of a rort going on with 'mobility scooter' batteries, or so I've been told.
    I tried to look that up. Far as I can see they might be Getting them through the NDIS or similar but I couldn't find anything specifically to a yearly replacement.
    I'd be onto that if there were such a program.

    My father just got a " Cripple Parking" sticker for his twin Turbo Mercedes land Rocket so would be eligible. I'd buy one of those mobility scooters with stuffed battery's, get them replaced and flog the thing off again. Be good coin in that.

    Dad's said for years if he needs one of those Motorised wheelchairs to get around in it's going to have a Subaru Turbo engine in the thing to make it worth while and of Course it will have to be AWD.
    Could be a Viral YT vid in that! :0)

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    Sorry for reviving the old thread, but it's spot on topic.
    I'm wondering if anybody has any good recommendations for hybrid inverters?

    I'm already running some cheap chinese units. one packed it in a few months ago and while I wasn't expecting a good result I did expect it to fail and set it all up for an easy win with consumer affairs. So despite them agreeing, they have no way to enforce the law and don't even know how they could. As I said, not unexpected. I can easily repair the inverter but I'd sooner pay more for reliability with systems in the future. It's cost vs warranty and life time.


    As for hybrid systems, I tend to agree with George that for ordinary people, it's just not worth it.
    However, if you're creative and a scrounger like me, you can make batteries work for you. Buy them cheap on the surplus market, but also being aware of exactly what it is your buying and how to tell the difference between good, average and poor batteries. I've seen a few people get cheap batteries with a reasonable amount of life left in them and they just abuse them and they're dead in weeks. Start from lead scrap price and work up from there. If you pay $30 for a 50kg battery, then you will never lose money even if it is dead.
    The more you pay the more you risk and the more you should expect from your testing.

    I've have SLA batteries last out to 15 years. 7 years is a reasonable expectation, so look at the voltage, current, age and shape of the batteries.
    Once you have some, then quest for cheap electricity begins. If you have you're own off grid solar array, then all good. Run it within reasonable limits and it will save you money. Abuse it and well that money is wasted on education. If you grid tie it then you can program the inverter to run both on and off grid. Again, this will save you money, to a point.
    You of course have to realise what you set out in the cost of an inverter and batteries to what you use.
    A simple example is if electricity is 30c/kWhr then you need to work out how long to break even. If your hybrid inverter is $700 and you spent $300 on batteries and got ~10kWhr storage and $300 on say 2.5kW of panels. You spent $1300 and need to get about 4300 hours of use out of it to break even at 1kW. (less time for higher power).
    So if you used it for about 4 hours a day in discharge at 1kW you'd break even in about 3 years. Not really worth it, especially if you're paying a grid connection fee.
    More batteries, more capacity or more power use, more life out of your batteries etc the quicker the payback.

    Using 2kW for 4 hours per night runs the batteries harder and they wear out sooner. If get 2 years out of them, then you're ahead. But that still depends entirely on how much you paid for them. So you can see it really is like gambling on the stock market or the future market. You can come out way in front if your resourceful and clever or with a turn of bad luck you can get completely arse raped.

    In the case of my cheap chinese inverter, I paid $700 for it. Which was dirt cheap. I ran it for almost a year before it crapped it. My power bill on my grid connect house was $200/quarter if used no power. That's what the fvckers charge me to read the meter. So you can see that I broke even with a broken inverter. That means all the electricity I got for a year was savings. I know how much power I used on this inverter from the logs. It was just over 4MWhr for the year. I saved about $1200. So I'm in front.

    Which is the reason why I'm looking for another inverter and one that is more reliable. If it is three times the price, say $2100 then I expect it to last three years. If there is a 3 year warranty with the same performance, then I'm in. 5kVA for $3000 with a 5 year warranty then that will pay for itself.

    I know what works and I know what breaks. I just don't want an inverter crapping out in the middle of winter. If two chinese inverters are a fraction of the price and give me double redundancy, then a good inverter needs to stand up to that. And I can easily back a good inverter with a chinese one. If either craps out, I've got a good investment on the backup.

    I really need to build myself a big arse redox flow battery. 100kWhr of capacity and I could live like a king.
    Yes I am an agent of Satan, but my duties are largely ceremonial.

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