u/Stinky2020

That's awesome! and quite a deal. right now signature's lowest price seems to be roughly 35c/w, so yeah, a bit of a jump up in cost.

was that price before or after shipping costs? you have to add in the shipping cost to the price/w to compare apples to apples, as local wholesalers don't usually charge any extra shipping when ordering panels

yes and no. there are some american companies, but the panels being made are actually usually lower quality except for a handful. Then some top companies panels are already very pricey. then, if you take a look at the american made panels, most actual components are still sourced from china, like 70% or more will still be subject to the tariffs.

there isn't anywhere. this guy is out of his mind. unless he means grade b cell panels, and damaged pallets that go through random re-sellers. The cheapest wholesale tier1 grade a panels are going to be roughly 30c/w

your local solar wholesaler will be best. typically much better shipping costs, and no shipping if it's close enough and you can go pick up. usually best price/w as well for the quality of the panel. If not, check out signature solar, their deals aren't bad

yeah, just looked up the new one, and it still doesn't make any sense. the older ones, the fans came all the way down to the bottom of the inverter, and they only needed 6" bottom clearance. With the fans raised 6" from bottom, they are then saying that you need 12" clearance from the fans? Just odd, and might want some clarification from sol-ark themselves. shoot, I might be asking em since it really doesn't make too much sense. Another workaround, if they confirm you still need 6" under the fans, would be to actually mount unistrut on the wall to bump out the battery some vs the inverter, so when you install it up against the inv. you actually are not blocking the airway to the fans.

I can anser some things for you. You will need/want to get a separate solar inspector. Most home inspectors will not go onto the roof to look at anything. Even if they did, they wouldn't know what they are looking at. A good solar inspector will (as I have) find the answers to all of these things for you for a cost. I would do an inspection fee of roughly $500 which would be full roof walkthrough, lift panels with junction boxes to make sure of the wiring, look for obvious bad connections. full attic walkthrough to find current or past leak evidence. look at wiring/conduit. full electrical walkthrough, testing connections, looking for obvious damage. System functionality test. photos of solar panels, backsheets with manufacturer stickers, find out monitoring platform and getting new owner information on how to get into the monitoring.

As far as utility is concerned, their net metering program might not even exist anymore, so you'd have to find out what is in place right now, as you will have to re-apply for your rate/rider. As others have said, you'd have to look at your current usage, apply it to the new home, account for variables (home size difference, more/less appliances, pool/no pool, or any other differences) make the best guess as to how much you think you'll be using, and then compare that to what the solar should be producing on average. Your solar inspector should be able to give you the proposed production numbers as well (ask him). Then you could determine how much you would save vs no solar.

Original installer probably wouldn't warranty anything on this system after this age, except for a leak-free guarantee. Any other warranty would come from manufacturers, which always stay as long as the equipment hasn't moved from og installed property.

Last, strictly speaking, whatever price the house is selling at, it has the panels included in the price. Whether or not the seller did a good determining of the value of the panels, and the value of their home, really isn't your concern. Your only concern is what is the house and panels worth to you, knowing your savings, your costs, etc.

almost fender bendering, and getting air-bendered instead would be wild

That doesn't really make too much sense, as the fan is in the back of the inverter, about 6-8" above the bottom of the inverter that would be touching the battery cabinet

sol-ark 12k inverter and discover helios battery? those batteries are rated to be completely submersible in water, and doesn't even require a waterproof box above it, with or without all connections taken up, it won't matter to get water inside of that cabinet. That being said, most likely the actual water intrusion is only at the pvc male adapter, and not at the emt connectors. Tell contractor to buy a 2" gasket, and redo that pvc connection to stop that water.

Best case, and what should have been done anyway, is to drop that inverter to directly above the cabinet so not to use any conduit, then put a gasket around the perimeter of the inverter where it sits on cabinet, and then seal that after it's all set in place with a proper caulk like a rubber butyl, or geocell product

used to be able to do that, but they put a brick wall in the way now. now if you want installer access, you need to put in a NEW inverter serial number, and are not allowed to just use the # already installed at your house. so, this can still work for homeowners that already got an rma on their old inverter, and got shipped a new one, but it wont work for anyone trying to diag or fix their current inverter.

the fact that they pay per hour and not per kw or per panel is criminal. solar companies charge everything on a /watt basis. There is no excuse to not pay a base rate plus /w,kw, or panel rate. Whether or not you are w-2 or 1099, you should get those rates. Also, people are saying this is a low rate as per hr, but you didn't specify enough info to know if it's a good deal. How much experience do you have? are there separate crews to do roof vs electric? some spots even have racking crews. how many guys are on your install team? does every job start at the warehouse and end at the warehouse? (so, paid the same whether you're loading truck, driving, or installing)

sounds like they saved money by buying temu connectors, or temu crimpers and never did a tug test on the pins.

that's a pretty sweet carport! What did you use for the panel racking? It isn't unistrut, and it doesn't look like any commercial solar rails that I am familiar with

that's great. just know, that the green light should be solid- showing it's in production, not blinking. also, the blue light is for comms, so if it's blinking, it's searching for comms. definitely odd that a power outage made a permanent lost connection. Does your dad happen to have a separate wireless gateway? It would be plugged into the wall, typically close to the router. It might have to be re-paired to the inverter.

Either way, you should be able to get access to your own account in SE. If you do ask, make sure you request full access. If they are not responsive, you can gain full access to the account by talking to SE directly. go to https://www.solaredge.com/site-transfer. If he hasn't already, have your dad make an account. submit for homeowner transfer. You'll just need the inverter serial#, and proof of homeownership so they can link the site to your account

tell sunrun that you want to manage your own account directly through solaredge, and for them to set you up an a user in the solaredge site that was created when you were installed. That being said, you won't be able to get wifi connection back on your own, and without an installer. You could find a 3rd party installer that can come out for less, but you might not find one.

You MAY be able to call solaredge and ask them for help trying to re-connect your wifi. Do you know what happened to make the wifi disconnect? Did you change carriers or change a password? is the inverter still operating?

dunno where you are, but look up sinclair skyrack 2.0, and practical preppers. They sell a skyrack solar canopy. definitely used as a carport. The panels aren't a huge deal. If you're installing yourself, don't go larger than 440w each mod. once mods get into the 500's, they weigh a ton, are huge and cumbersome, and not nice to climb up a ladder to install on either a roof or a gm. You can go simply with a grid-tied inverter, and have your car's charger landed on a breaker in your panel. That's the cheapest solution. If you just want to charge your car, and not have the solar tied to the house or the grid, you'd have to get an off-grid inverter. eg4 12000xp is a typical middle of the road off-grid inverter that can easily handle charging your car. The amount of battery storage you'd need would depend on when you car is home, and when it isnt. if you are usually home during the day, you can get away with a simple 5kwh battery to just be used as a buffer. If you don't come home til the evenings, you'll need a large enough battery to absorb all the energy produced during the day from your system, and you'd want to match that battery bank to the avg production of your pv system. The most expensive way is to have a hybrid inverter, also with a battery bank so it can keep operating when grid goes down, but stays grid-tied so you can get credits for any over-generation

cheapest solution is getting an off-grid inverter. If you have 2 strings of panels, take one string from your grid-tied inverter, and run it to the off-grid inverter. Bring a few loads to a critical load panel for your off-grid inverter to power when you lose grid. buy a 48v 5kwh server rack or golf cart battery, and hook em up to the off-grid inverter. Remember, the off-grid string of panels can then ONLY feed your loads and battery, though, leaving 1 string to be able to feed the rest of the house and backfeed the grid. This takes a bit of time, and knowledge.

Next rather cheap solution is to get a Solis 7.6kw or 11.4 hybrid inverter and an LG resu prime 16h battery from signature solar. Ditch the other inverter completely, and wire your panels into the solis. Still needs a critical loads panel to feed from the solis with a few dedicated circuits, but you'll gain a lot more function out of it, plus those batteries are stupid cheap vs the competition. Roughly $2k for the inverter, $2.5k for the 16kwh battery, and maybe $500 of electrical equipment to move the dc string, get some pipe and wire, load center, etc. get the same manufacturer for the load center as your current breaker panel so you can just move them over instead of having to buy new ones

Right. have to take all readings. OP doesn't say if his loads are being taken care of. Needs to take amp readings on inv dc input from batt and from solar, ac output. does the inv have a shore power connection? If so, do ac input amp reading as well. get all readings for where power is coming from and where it's going to best determine if anything is even wrong. battery could be full, mppt's could be malfunctioning, inverter might be programmed wrong and is set to inverter only, keeping battery fully charged and has full grid passthrough to loads

for a food truck that will be on the road a lot, victron is the way to go. you will most likely want 12v or 24v dc systems on the truck as well, so this is the best way to do that. victron multiplus inverters are made perfectly for this application, and you can pair with a shitty portable generator to help charge the battery if/when solar isn't cutting it. you can also set up a shore power plug. This is the best system. just look up victron RV, overlanders, boondockers, food trucks. EcoEthic Solar in Lexington SC have a whole shop dedicated to outfitting vehicles with victron eqp. check em out

just beware what the utility forces you to sign up for when you go to take that $10k. Most utilities I've seen give that promotion require access to your tesla account so they have a certain amount of control over your battery usage. I would never give utilities any access of my own personal equipment, as most people's point to even having solar is for independence FROM said utility. Either way, if you're dead set on getting Tesla, go for it. as far as the other inverter is concerned, one other person here had it right. go for the fronius primo gen24 3.8. It's the smallest inverter they sell, and fronius has been around for decades, can't go wrong. Not really too many choices left to us for strictly grid-interactive string inverters in the US. there are shit cheap ones to get on amazon or whatever, but most of those lie anyway and you in fact DO need a battery in order to hook em up. Your choice is between the fronius gen24 line and the SMA sunnyboys, and i've heard some unfortunate things about sma recently

you might be better served by finding a different installer that can do a different battery system for you. Tesla are typically a nightmare to deal with, and about 3x $/kwh than any other battery out there. You could go with eg4 gridboss/flexboss system. put the 10 string panels, plus the 20 new panels on the DC side of the flexboss inverter, then AC couple the 10 micros into a smart port in the gridboss. Gridboss is whole-home auto transfer switch plus 4 2p smart ports. Go with 1 or 2 eg4 15kwh or 16kwh batteries and then you don't need a bunch of different monitors, plus you'll be able to backup your whole home, and super easy to expand any individual part of the system later in life, if desired

Everyone will be different depending on needs vs capacity. if you have the capacity to hold enough for 2 days without the sun, maybe you're ok with having 1 day worth of storage at any given moment so set it to 50%. If you want to squeeze it out, allow it to drop to like 20% in the morning hours just before the sun will come up to recharge. You can always override settings if you think weather might affect your grid power. You can see your own production, SOC, and usage, and see what works best for you to keep just enough charge to keep you comfortable, but still utilize the battery to store what you produce, and use what you store instead of giving anything back to the utility

That being said, running a 6000 or 12000xp without a battery is not advised. without a battery to take a charge and be able to discharge when power is called for, you are highly likely to have the inverter switch over to grid power, even when there is some sun hitting the panels, making it stop even being an inverter and just a grid passthrough device. (aka, useless). If you really want to go with one of those off-grid inverters, your best bet is to at least get 1 server rack or golf cart battery in order to act as a buffer

12kpv is what you want, if you want to ever backfeed the grid. The 12kpv also allows for grid assistance, meaning grid power can come though at the same time as inverter pv/battery generation to help feed your critical panel. If you go with either a 6000 or 12000xp, it has to switch from battery to grid any time it doesn't see enough production to handle loads. It's really only truly meant for off-grid scenarios unless you do load calcs to make certain that you are under the inverter power threshold, and have plenty of battery storage to take care of the loads at least most of the time. You don't want it switching all day because it isn't sized right