diy solar

diy solar

alte out of business?

Alkaline said:
I think the future will basically be manufacturers selling directly to customers like Tesla does with cars, no more margins for middlemen or very little. I remember working for a perfume store that closed up shop 8 years ago, basically the supplier that we were buying form started his own website and selling for same or less than we could buy it. Eventually even the supplier went belly up as the manufacturer started selling direct and still does to this day.

We can draw parallels between EVE's official alibaba page which lists cells for less than any of the resellers :unsure:
Click to expand...
PC market went that same way years ago.

If you wanted IBM or Apple had to buy them through channel partner like Tech Data or Ingram Micro.

Then they suddenly started selling direct.
Killed a lot of resellers.
 
Just got a call from gogreensolar saying "we recently took over altE...will send you over a quote [on something I asked altE for months ago]" and a buddy said altE was having some sort of sidewalk sale.
 
I was reading up on the go green solar which may or may not be that particular go green solar since there are a few and they look legit on the ones I found.

I also ran across a really stupid reddit post where someone was asking if they were legit.

He was wondering if he should pay all of the cost up front for a system from them. Everyone went off with "I wouldn't give them a dime till the system was live" etc.

Then someone asked if it was a "kit" and the op responded that yes it was a kit. No one bothered pointing out that the kit is all the parts sent to you for you to install so yes you have to pay for the product before they will ship it to you..... :fp2
 
Hi, I'm Deep Patel, Founder and CEO of GigaWatt, Inc. Based in Anaheim, CA, GigaWatt has been offering DIY solar kits and services to customers throughout the USA since 2006. We proudly operate three leading brands in the DIY solar industry: GoGreenSolar, Unbound Solar (whose assets we acquired in November 2023), and AltE Store (whose assets we acquired in May 2024). AltE is still in business but the shopping cart is offline until we figure out our strategy for the e-commerce section. For the time being, we've been helping customers who are interested in full DIY solar packages.
 
deeppatel726 said:
Hi, I'm Deep Patel, Founder and CEO of GigaWatt, Inc. Based in Anaheim, CA, GigaWatt has been offering DIY solar kits and services to customers throughout the USA since 2006. We proudly operate three leading brands in the DIY solar industry: GoGreenSolar, Unbound Solar (whose assets we acquired in November 2023), and AltE Store (whose assets we acquired in May 2024). AltE is still in business but the shopping cart is offline until we figure out our strategy for the e-commerce section. For the time being, we've been helping customers who are interested in full DIY solar packages.
Click to expand...
Did you buy Outback from Enersys?
 
deeppatel726 said:
Hi, I'm Deep Patel, Founder and CEO of GigaWatt, Inc. Based in Anaheim, CA, GigaWatt has been offering DIY solar kits and services to customers throughout the USA since 2006. We proudly operate three leading brands in the DIY solar industry: GoGreenSolar, Unbound Solar (whose assets we acquired in November 2023), and AltE Store (whose assets we acquired in May 2024). AltE is still in business but the shopping cart is offline until we figure out our strategy for the e-commerce section. For the time being, we've been helping customers who are interested in full DIY solar packages.
Click to expand...

Thank you for the update.

I am a customer of the original company before it became unbound solar, as well as Alte Store.

Each of them carry / carried products that were not easily available in other places and I have had great luck with both.

For me personally, I have zero interest in DIY packages, but I can understand your business model might not be able to support the on line components business vs kits.

The rise of cheap Chinese all in ones has wiped out a lot of small business builders of power systems and the related support network.

Trying to do business in places like CA, MA and NY just adds to the misery. Good luck.
 
HarryN said:
Thank you for the update.

I am a customer of the original company before it became unbound solar, as well as Alte Store.

Each of them carry / carried products that were not easily available in other places and I have had great luck with both.

For me personally, I have zero interest in DIY packages, but I can understand your business model might not be able to support the on line components business vs kits.

The rise of cheap Chinese all in ones has wiped out a lot of small business builders of power systems and the related support network.

Trying to do business in places like CA, MA and NY just adds to the misery. Good luck.
Click to expand...

Thanks Harry. You are correct, all-in-one inverters sytems have changed the landscape a lot. The market to build power systems with a large amount of parts is very limted now due to the complexity.
 
deeppatel726 said:
Thanks Harry. You are correct, all-in-one inverters sytems have changed the landscape a lot. The market to build power systems with a large amount of parts is very limted now due to the complexity.
Click to expand...
Do you find off gridders are moving to these AIOs from their presumably older and rock solid trace, outback, xantrax etc equipment? Or are they moving to Schneider or Midnite Rosie etc? I guess they can continue to use their existing SCCs with seperates, or toss it all in the bin and use the aios trackers.
 
Brucey said:
Do you find off gridders are moving to these AIOs from their presumably older and rock solid trace, outback, xantrax etc equipment? Or are they moving to Schneider or Midnite Rosie etc? I guess they can continue to use their existing SCCs with seperates, or toss it all in the bin and use the aios trackers.
Click to expand...

It depends, there are two types of customer profiles. The first one is "new to off-grid", these people are buying their first off-grid system and AIOs are very popular in this segement of the market.

On the otherhand, there are the seasoned off-gridders who have exisiting systems they need to expand, replace or modify in some way. This segement of the market is finding it harder to find suppliers who stock all the odds and ends to meet their needs and getting support from outback, Schnedier and xantrax is very difficult. They are in more of a pickle to try to keep investing time into trying to continue to use their existing system or toss it all and upgrade their system to AIO.
 
deeppatel726 said:
It depends, there are two types of customer profiles. The first one is "new to off-grid", these people are buying their first off-grid system and AIOs are very popular in this segement of the market.

On the otherhand, there are the seasoned off-gridders who have exisiting systems they need to expand, replace or modify in some way. This segement of the market is finding it harder to find suppliers who stock all the odds and ends to meet their needs and getting support from outback, Schnedier and xantrax is very difficult. They are in more of a pickle to try to keep investing time into trying to continue to use their existing system or toss it all and upgrade their system to AIO.
Click to expand...
Thanks for joining the forum and sharing your insights.

Do you have thoughts on the long term field serviceability of AIOs and batteries? VS swap out/exchange?

For instance, current connected touts SOK’s serviceability, and MidNite One is supposed to be warranty supported via component replacements. This is IMO better for DIYers because they don’t stock local spares of whole units (esp $5000 inverters and batteries). But most solar installers and distributors can easily just stock 10% spares or whatever and eat the service model of cross shipping a 200lb unit of equipment at a time

So that is an awkward impedance mismatch between DIYers and the rest of the industry.
 
zanydroid said:
Thanks for joining the forum and sharing your insights.

Do you have thoughts on the long term field serviceability of AIOs and batteries? VS swap out/exchange?

For instance, current connected touts SOK’s serviceability, and MidNite One is supposed to be warranty supported via component replacements. This is IMO better for DIYers because they don’t stock local spares of whole units (esp $5000 inverters and batteries). But most solar installers and distributors can easily just stock 10% spares or whatever and eat the service model of cross shipping a 200lb unit of equipment at a time

So that is an awkward impedance mismatch between DIYers and the rest of the industry.
Click to expand...

Many of the AIO's from reputable suppliers are field serviceable. Once the problem has been identified they will send you a replacement board to swap out the failed compotent in the AIO. The compotents typically show up in a FedEx or UPS package. Our customers aren't shipping 200lb of equipment around for their warranty issues.
 
deeppatel726 said:
Many of the AIO's from reputable suppliers are field serviceable. Once the problem has been identified they will send you a replacement board to swap out the failed compotent in the AIO. The compotents typically show up in a FedEx or UPS package. Our customers aren't shipping 200lb of equipment around for their warranty issues.
Click to expand...
Cool, thanks. So it's just EG4 and signature solar that's dumb about it? Because they've cross-shipped 18kpv and PowerPro/Server Racks.

70% I learned about the industry was from here, and the other 30% is from r/solar and r/enphase :laugh:

My operational experience is closer to datacenters and as part of the evaluation process for a bunch of new racks, you plan out being able to stock the spares in the data center. (Though, since you have 100s of machines per order installed at a time in each DC, worse case you can start cannibalizing if there's a supply chain failure).
 
deeppatel726 said:
Industry rumors are that BigBattery and Signature Solar bought it through some type of joint venture. That's what people are saying but I don't see any offical news from either companies.
Click to expand...
You and I are hearing the same rumors. For what I've read, can't believe this until I see something official from the companies.

For BigBattery, seems a little outside what they usually do. I don't know how the Signature Solar rumor started, but seems a better fit.

My interest in this is in August I commissioned an Outback Radian build which was installed in November and operational in December. I'm quite happy with it, but would like to expand, but was hoping to do that at the end of next year. There's still inventory floating around now if I build early so I'm stuck with getting it done early or rolling the dice hoping it will be here next year still.

Someone is paying the bills to keep the Outback Website Open, Maintain Optics RE the monitoring website, and someone is quietly moderating their official Outback forum.
 
chrisski said:
You and I are hearing the same rumors. For what I've read, can't believe this until I see something official from the companies.

For BigBattery, seems a little outside what they usually do. I don't know how the Signature Solar rumor started, but seems a better fit.

My interest in this is in August I commissioned an Outback Radian build which was installed in November and operational in December. I'm quite happy with it, but would like to expand, but was hoping to do that at the end of next year. There's still inventory floating around now if I build early so I'm stuck with getting it done early or rolling the dice hoping it will be here next year still.

Someone is paying the bills to keep the Outback Website Open, Maintain Optics RE the monitoring website, and someone is quietly moderating their official Outback forum.
Click to expand...

Is the Optics RE website running again? I heard from a few customers that it was done. This was like a month or so ago. I wonder if they got it back online
 
zanydroid said:
Cool, thanks. So it's just EG4 and signature solar that's dumb about it? Because they've cross-shipped 18kpv and PowerPro/Server Racks.

70% I learned about the industry was from here, and the other 30% is from r/solar and r/enphase :laugh:

My operational experience is closer to datacenters and as part of the evaluation process for a bunch of new racks, you plan out being able to stock the spares in the data center. (Though, since you have 100s of machines per order installed at a time in each DC, worse case you can start cannibalizing if there's a supply chain failure).
Click to expand...
Can't comment about EG4/Signature Solar as I've never bought any of their hardware. I like your datacenter analogy, having spares espeically if you are living off-grid is so important. I'm suprised by the amount of people that build off-grid systems without any redundancy planning and expect the compotents to work flawlessly without any system downtime.
 
deeppatel726 said:
ptics RE website running again? I heard from a few customers that it was done. This was like a month or so ago. I wonder if they got it ba
Click to expand...
Optics RE on the PC Browser or phone browser works flawlessly. The app is down, but going to a browser works with no losses. The browsers and aps were down in May for 4 days, and the browser came back, but not the app.

If it does not work for anyone, Watt Plot is available for download and works with the Outback Family. I have not yet moved to that.
 
deeppatel726 said:
BigBattery and Signature Solar
Click to expand...

There is definitely something to this:

signaturesolar.com

EG4 PowerPro WallMount AllWeather Lithium Battery | 48V 280Ah | 14.3kWh LiFePO4 | All-Weather Energy Storage | UL1973, UL9540A | 10-Year Warranty

EG4 PowerPro WallMount AllWeather Lithium Battery | 48V 280Ah | 14.3kWh LiFePO4 | All-Weather Energy Storage | UL1973, UL9540A
signaturesolar.com signaturesolar.com

&

bigbattery.com

48V RHINO 2 – LiFePO4 – 280Ah – 14.34kWh

A NEW GENERATION OF RESIDENTIAL POWER! BigBattery's 48V RHINO 2 is here, and this 14.34kWh, wall-mounted, UL-certified system is a reliable solution when it comes to grid-tied power for any size home in America. The IP65-rated, all-weather design withstands harsh conditions for installing...
bigbattery.com bigbattery.com

exact same!
 
Alkaline said:
There is definitely something to this:

signaturesolar.com

EG4 PowerPro WallMount AllWeather Lithium Battery | 48V 280Ah | 14.3kWh LiFePO4 | All-Weather Energy Storage | UL1973, UL9540A | 10-Year Warranty

EG4 PowerPro WallMount AllWeather Lithium Battery | 48V 280Ah | 14.3kWh LiFePO4 | All-Weather Energy Storage | UL1973, UL9540A
signaturesolar.com signaturesolar.com

&

bigbattery.com

48V RHINO 2 – LiFePO4 – 280Ah – 14.34kWh

A NEW GENERATION OF RESIDENTIAL POWER! BigBattery's 48V RHINO 2 is here, and this 14.34kWh, wall-mounted, UL-certified system is a reliable solution when it comes to grid-tied power for any size home in America. The IP65-rated, all-weather design withstands harsh conditions for installing...
bigbattery.com bigbattery.com

exact same!
Click to expand...
Verrrrry interesting !
 
Alkaline said:
There is definitely something to this:

signaturesolar.com

EG4 PowerPro WallMount AllWeather Lithium Battery | 48V 280Ah | 14.3kWh LiFePO4 | All-Weather Energy Storage | UL1973, UL9540A | 10-Year Warranty

EG4 PowerPro WallMount AllWeather Lithium Battery | 48V 280Ah | 14.3kWh LiFePO4 | All-Weather Energy Storage | UL1973, UL9540A
signaturesolar.com signaturesolar.com

&

bigbattery.com

48V RHINO 2 – LiFePO4 – 280Ah – 14.34kWh

A NEW GENERATION OF RESIDENTIAL POWER! BigBattery's 48V RHINO 2 is here, and this 14.34kWh, wall-mounted, UL-certified system is a reliable solution when it comes to grid-tied power for any size home in America. The IP65-rated, all-weather design withstands harsh conditions for installing...
bigbattery.com bigbattery.com

exact same!
Click to expand...
I don't see the 9540A cert listed for the big battery version, just UL1973. Maybe in conjunction with the luxpower 12k?

bigbattery.com

48V RHINO 2 – LiFePO4 – 280Ah – 14.34kWh

A NEW GENERATION OF RESIDENTIAL POWER! BigBattery's 48V RHINO 2 is here, and this 14.34kWh, wall-mounted, UL-certified system is a reliable solution when it comes to grid-tied power for any size home in America. The IP65-rated, all-weather design withstands harsh conditions for installing...
bigbattery.com bigbattery.com

EG4® WallMount All Weather - EG4 Electronics

Discover the WallMount All Weather 280Ah Battery a reliable, high-performing 48V LifePower4 solution for uninterrupted solar power. Ideal for residential outdoor ESS.
eg4electronics.com eg4electronics.com
 
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