A Co. Galway customer decided to delay their review of our solar PV installation and system for over a year in order to give a true and accurate account of how everything is working.
“My PV system is ground mounted. It comprises of 2 rows of 10 X 310w Bisol BMO panels in a portrait orientation. In total, there are 20 panels supplying 6.2 kWh of power.
The panels are paired with an Alpha 5 kW hybrid inverter and a 5.7 kWh lithium battery 5.5 usable.
Generation for year 1 was 6007 kWh.
The system will feed available power to the house first. If the house cannot take all the power, then it will charge the battery or the EV. If these 3 loads cannot take all the generated power, it will go out to the grid.
The battery can also be timed to charge from the grid on a lower tariff if available and used later to offset higher tariff rate.
The battery has 96% round trip efficiency, if charged with 1€ of electricity you get 96p usable.
During a blackout, the system can be switched to UPS mode and can supply power to the house provided the battery is sufficiently charged. Therefore, battery should be charged when stormy weather is forecast.
The inverter is internet connected and its performance can be monitored from anywhere on any device. The battery charging can be set remotely also.
Warranties.
The inverter is warrantied for 5 years, the battery for 10 years and the panels are covered to output 85% for 25 years.
I cannot comment on reliability yet as I have only had this system for just over a year.
The inverter is probably the most vulnerable part, but with such good warranties even if it lasts 5 years it will have paid for itself.
The battery has been proven in EVs; most manufacturers are giving 8 years 100,000 miles warranties.
Very little to go wrong with PV panels from Solar Home.”
As our customer is producing so much solar energy, he wanted to upgrade his previous 5.7kW Alpha ESS battery to 11.4kW. This way he can make the absolute most of his system. He achieves this by utilising as much power as his panels are producing and storing it in his newly upgraded battery storage.
