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LadyN

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Joined: 26/01/2019
Location: United States
Posts: 408

Posted: 07:33pm 30 Apr 2019

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Boppa said
I thought our prices were high for solar installs, until I started hanging at a solar forum that has a lot of US posters
My gridtie system cost $4000 fully installed, and that included the removal of the old asbestos backplane in the fusebox and a complete new 'guts' for the existing tin box (its been built into the brick wall, so not an easy straight swap)- it's go a wireless gridtie 5kw dual channel mppt inverter and 6kw (6050W) solar install- 2x 3kw wings facing east and west

In comparison there are 3 other US posters who had comparable systems installed in the states, the cheapest one was $18000!!! both of the others were over $20000
Remember that's US dollars, that's $25574.4Au for the cheap one and over $28416Au for the other two...

Even including the solar rebate in the total cost, our solar installs are remarkably cheap in comparison to what seems to be the normal price in the US

To add insult to injury, in many parts of the US, grid ties are simply not allowed at all....

Boppa, could you either PM or post the link to the forum thread here please?

I am almost certain they were quoting a complete end to end contracted job without any elbow grease involved.

My elder brother does construction for a living and when we need more money than usual, specially when dad or I have to go to the hospital, he helps with offgrid solar installation on weekends.

A 10Kw offgrid solar installation costs $3k - $5k currently in parts. No rebates etc included as most of them require grid feed for the credit. The high variance is due to choice of parts in the market and volatility in price of the same part.

At a wholesale level, the PV Panels cost a bit less than $0.5/W => max $5000 for the panels. THEN YOU HAVE cost of other parts.

So the $18000 quote you shared definitely includes fees, bond charges, permits, labor, inspection, etc etc/

I am ofcourse assuming your $4000 fully installed system was gross cost not including any rebates etc and you did most of the work yourself.

If all you did was sign some papers and pay $4000, then that's an excellent price for a 10Kw solar installation that people here can only dream about.

Boppa
Guru

Joined: 08/11/2016
Location: Australia
Posts: 814

Posted: 10:03pm 30 Apr 2019

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Mine is a 6kw gridtie system, not 10kw (that was in the UK), and it was fully installed at that $3999 price for me, I didn't touch a spanner, they do everything... permits, installation, wiring- the lot

This is my gridtie

Dammit they are even cheaper now $3791 fully installed (thats in AU $$$- that's $2,672.83US) for a 6kw solar, 5kw gridtie inverter, fully installed with a new smart meter if you didn't have one and all permits etc done- They get a $1200 rebate from the government (or did at the time, I think it's dropped since then) that's another $846.17US they get above what I paid myself, bringing the total system price including the solar rebate to $5199 total in AU$ ($3,665.40US) fully installed, so a 12kw solar/10kw grid tie on two phases would be $10398Au or $7330.80US fully installed permitted etc (would be less now)

Inverter and fusebox (two circuit breakers because its a dual mppt inverter and two separate arrays- one facing east and one facing west)

East wing of the panels (half) and solar hws

This (you can see the outline of the old Offpeak meter for the electric HWS, prior to getting the solar one)- and that backplane was Asbestos!!!

to this

That was all included in the $4g I paid at the time
(Laughs, you can tell its summer, the HWS boost breaker is switched off bottom right, it gets turned on mainly two or three weeks total per year)
Edited by Boppa 2019-05-02

yahoo2

Guru

Joined: 05/04/2011
Location: Australia
Posts: 1166

Posted: 04:57am 03 May 2019

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kanchana said
What kind of system you use to monitor the energy?

Sorry for the delay, I dont get to the forum much at the moment.

this particular unit is from https://openenergymonitor.org/ their Emonpi unit. I struggle with the database and graphing and the cost of fees and shipping makes it quite expensive in Australia.

Now that I am more comfortable with home automation stuff

I would use Home Assistant on an old laptop and ESPhome with a esp32 or 8266. and use a different database and maybe grafana.

I know that Quinn at intermittent tech https://blog.quindorian.org/ is going to do a series on power measurement later this year and he may sell a PCB to wire 8 or 10 cheap CT clips into a fusebox.
Keep an eye on his blog and YouTube.

if you havent seen what home assistant is about it is worth looking at a couple of clickable demos they have and having a play.
the red arrow I put there to show how you get to the next demo

I'm confused, no wait... maybe I'm not...

kanchana
Regular Member

Joined: 08/05/2018
Location: Sri Lanka
Posts: 56

Posted: 05:06pm 03 May 2019

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thanks will in to those

Regards kanchana

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