Whenever we visit a site with significant shade, owners always think their roof gets plenty of sun. This is because most people don’t spend a lot of time in the yard during the winter months (when the sun is at its lowest) due to the cold and wet weather.
During our inspection, this site was no different. A SunEye shade analysis was conducted showing annual solar access of 72% with June having only 11%. For this reason, an Enphase Microinverter System was installed to allow every panel to work independently.
Brand new cars are required to give fuel efficiency numbers so you know what you're purchasing. It’s the same when purchasing a solar system. We are required to provide you with a return on investment (ROI). Without doing a site inspection and a proper shade analysis, giving a customer an ROI would be a guessing game.
The SunEye 210 is the world-leading shade measurement tool for site assessment. It measures the available solar energy by day, month and year within a single photo.
Once multiple photos are taken on the roof, they are mapped out into a program to give the total solar access for the site.
The total solar access figures for the whole site
The switchboard was inspected and most of the circuits were not protected with safety switches. For safety reasons, a switchboard upgrade occurred along with disconnecting the floor heating which was associated with high electricity consumption to maximise savings for the customer.
Due to updated regulations, homes are only allowed to have one electricity meter. Without a proper site inspection, this can be overlooked. This can result in solar system installations not being connected to the grid.
To ensure a smooth installation, we organised for the electricity meters to be consolidated, the electrical inspector, the switchboard upgrade and the solar Installation all on the same day.
Safety switches were installed on every circuit breaker and a new earth stake was installed> Additionally, we managed to contain all the solar monitoring all within the switchboard itself.
We installed 20 x IQ7+ Enphase Microinverters to go along with 7.2kw of LG 350w Solar Panels. Clenergy “Hollywood” Black Racking. This was used to match with the LG black framed panels.
Due to the shading, the customer has an estimated daily production of 19.5kwh.
Even during the worst solar access period of the year and being a relatively new system running for two and a half months, it had an estimated daily production of 8.1kwh in August. The system has produced 8.2kwh daily in September. A total production of 446.4kwh with only 74.2kwh exported to the grid with 84% self-consumption.
With summer approaching, the customer is very happy knowing that the system will only produce more as the sun gets higher later in the year.
Formosa was an excellent company to deal with. They replied within the same day and quickly followed up with an onsite inspection, even getting on the roof to do a full shadow mapping giving me an idea of how efficient solar powers would be.
I get partial shading on my roof so decided to go with a 7kW Solar Array of LG NeOn2 and Enphase micro-inverters. The installation also required getting my electrical switchboard upgraded at the same time and Formosa helped organise all this to be done on the same day as the solar panels got installed.
Would highly recommend this company to anyone else looking for an honest, reliable, affordable and friendly solar installer.
