First Year Solar Regrets

[Recovering EE]

I spoke with PGE and they said that the difference between NEM 1,2,3 is the payback for power overage or beyond what the owner actually uses. They said NEM 3 would still credit 1 to 1 ... usage to generation. Not sure if this is correct.. probably not because I know so many people that are furious about it.

If this is what they said, they're lying...sort of.

NEM 3 changes the yearly True-Up to a simple monthly bill. You can no longer "store" excess kWh and carry it over in the grid during Summer, and pull from that in the Winter, on a one-to-one basis. Any one-to-one is monthly, not yearly.

With NEM 3, you effectively have a True-Up every month. In Summer, you'll be paid the *wholesale rate* ($.02/kWh, in CA) every month for excess production, and during Winter, you'll pay the *retail rate* ($.32/kWh in CA) for excess consumption. It radically changes the calculus for solar PV, and changes the system payback period dramatically.

The change to NEM 3 was effectively a big "eff you" to anyone considering residential solar. Protect previous existing NEM agreements like they are gold. You don't want to do *anything* that will trigger an update to NEM 3, or you'll get royally screwed.

 

[solar8484]

If this is what they said, they're lying...sort of.

NEM 3 changes the yearly True-Up to a simple monthly bill. You can no longer "store" excess kWh and carry it over in the grid during Summer, and pull from that in the Winter, on a one-to-one basis. Any one-to-one is monthly, not yearly.

With NEM 3, you effectively have a True-Up every month. In Summer, you'll be paid the *wholesale rate* ($.02/kWh, in CA) every month for excess production, and during Winter, you'll pay the *retail rate* ($.32/kWh in CA) for excess consumption. It radically changes the calculus for solar PV, and changes the system payback period dramatically.

The change to NEM 3 was effectively a big "eff you" to anyone considering residential solar. Protect previous existing NEM agreements like they are gold. You don't want to do *anything* that will trigger an update to NEM 3, or you'll get royally screwed.

In addition, NEM 3 credits can only offset generation charges which is a relatively small portion of the overall bill.

 

[GXMnow]

View attachment 246912
So yesterday, I turned off the pool pump all day... and I have all the electric water heaters turned off as well. So just a few things plugged into the wall, ghost power stuff etc.. the house draws about 500 watts (static). Sunny day, and I have 10 550 watt panels but they are capped at 400 watt output by the enphase inverters. So I am thinking I should be sending at least 3 Kw back to the grid, but in this graph it looks like if I add the static 500 Watt to the green bars, I am not even sending back a full 2 Kw. Looks like my panels are sending back about 1.5 Kw to the grid and not 3 or 3.5 Kw... which to me it should be producing.

If you truly had your house loads to minimum, it does look like you are not getting power from all of the Enphase panels.

It looks like you were exporting about 1,400 watts. And it is very flat, so it looks like the inverters are into clipping. You said you have the 400 watt version. The iQ8 comes in the A version at 349 VA the X, H, or HC version at 380 VA. The rest are all lower. The iQ8P-3P is 480 watts, but it is intended for 3 phase 120/208 "Y" systems. I have the older iQ7s at 240 VA and the most powerful iQ7 is the A version at 349 watts again.

Assuming 380 VA (Watts) and 1,500 being exported. I would guess only 1,500 / 380 = 3.94 So maybe 4 or 5 units are working out of our 10.

Can you peak under the panels and see the LED on each microinverter? It is on the same side near the connectors of the microinverter.
If the LED is solid red, the inverter is in an error shut off state (DC Resistance Low - Power Off Condition)
If the LED is flashing red, the inverter sees the solar panel, but the grid side is bad. Could be a bad connection on the Q cable.
Without an Envoy, you should have flashing orange. This means it is working correctly, making power etc, but it has no communication with an Envoy/Gateway. It may be hard to tell between the red and orange flashing, so look carefully and see if you have a few flashing red or just not lit at all.

If you get an Envoy (I highly recommend it) then the LEDs should all flash green when they are working and passing data back to the Envoy.

Do you have a AC and or DC clamp current meter? With an AC meter, check he current by clamping it around just one conductor of the Q cable where it connects back into your main panel. With full sunlight at noon, you should be getting close to 3,800 watts. That would be over 15 amps AC at one lead of the 240 volt 2 pole breaker. If you are seeing much less than that, you are likely off one or more inverters. My 300 watt panels exceed 69% of their STC rating for about an hour from noon to 1 pm on a perfectly clear sunny cool day.

With a DC clamp meter, I would try to clamp it around one of the cables between each solar panel and it's iQ inverter. A 550 watt panel in full sun should be making over 8 amps of DC current. Try this at every panel and see if the current from each non shaded panel is close.

I do have a few shade events that move across my panels, but at the end of the day, they all do quite well. Here is the "array view" from my Enphase Envoy. This was the full day yesterday, but it was crazy hot and the air was dense so my output is down a bit.

I should be making over 21 KWHs a day, but in this weather I made just 18.77 KWHs out of 4,800 watts of panels (16 x 300 watts) on 3,840 watts of Enphase iQ7 inverters, 16 x 240 VA each.

The main differences from panel to panel are from shadows. Most of the panels produce between 1.15 and 1.25 KWHs with only a few falling lower or higher. The lowest and highest were 1.0 and 1.3 KWHs respectively.

 

[astralography]

Thanks.... enphase blink orange. I'll order some of the voltage clips to check out.

 

[astralography]

If this is what they said, they're lying...sort of.

NEM 3 changes the yearly True-Up to a simple monthly bill. You can no longer "store" excess kWh and carry it over in the grid during Summer, and pull from that in the Winter, on a one-to-one basis. Any one-to-one is monthly, not yearly.

With NEM 3, you effectively have a True-Up every month. In Summer, you'll be paid the *wholesale rate* ($.02/kWh, in CA) every month for excess production, and during Winter, you'll pay the *retail rate* ($.32/kWh in CA) for excess consumption. It radically changes the calculus for solar PV, and changes the system payback period dramatically.

The change to NEM 3 was effectively a big "eff you" to anyone considering residential solar. Protect previous existing NEM agreements like they are gold. You don't want to do *anything* that will trigger an update to NEM 3, or you'll get royally screwed.

I thought liberal California was pro solar? What happened?

 

[AntronX]

What happened?

Too much solar. Net metering is inherently unsustainable.

 

[Recovering EE]

I thought liberal California was pro solar? What happened?

The CA PUC bowed to the utilities, and effed us in the keister.

The only way to make it work now, is with TOU and battery storage.

Adding storage completely changes the ROI calculus, and not in a good way.

 

[rogerheflin]

Too much solar. Net metering is inherently unsustainable.

Especially when everyone's solar is facing straight south (to maximize production) and produces with a peak time of 12-1pm that is way earlier than when all the power is really needed (4pm-8pm). The POCO would go out of business buying excess at 12-1pm (probably offsetting cheap baseline load generators) and then paying to generate power at 4-8pm using the expensive peak power plants.