Midnite Solar Announced their new 10kw AIO at Intersolar Today

[Dave911]

Well, I dunno. Electricity where I live is 10 cents a Kwh.

Solar cannot come close to meeting my needs without an enormous and costly system and even with that, I would have to have natural gas or wood for heat, hot water and clothes drying.

A $40,000.00 solar system would take 20 years to cancel out the power bill and that assumes the batteries and inverters and solar panels last that long and continue well beyond that.

I'm in Northern Indiana. Electricity is $0.17 per KWHR now and it will be close to $0.20 within 12 months. They will likely do a rate increase in another 2 years again.
My solar system - with more than 12KW of panels, will cost $12-15K. But all of the labor will be mine. I figure it will be a 5-6 year payback and I have gas heat and gas hot water. I'm not entirely disconnecting from the Grid. If I do an electric car (prices are dropping fast), the payback will be even shorter.

 

[Dave911]

The fact that the 18kpv has seen the high level of adoption (and therefore thread gore) indicates that it has a feature set and spec sheet that works for people.

How do you know that?

 

[Checkthisout]

I'm in Northern Indiana. Electricity is $0.17 per KWHR now and it will be close to $0.20 within 12 months. They will likely do a rate increase in another 2 years again.
My solar system - with more than 12KW of panels, will cost $12-15K. But all of the labor will be mine. I figure it will be a 5-6 year payback and I have gas heat and gas hot water. I'm not entirely disconnecting from the Grid. If I do an electric car (prices are dropping fast), the payback will be even shorter.

How many kwh per day will you consume/generate?

 

[zanydroid]

How do you know that?

Unless the forum is full of fabulists working on imaginary setups, there is at least one installation per positive or negative installation question.

Buying & installing a system (and in some cases waiting with bated breath for a long time for shipping, in the case of PowerPro / UL9540 customers) is tacit (tautological?) acceptance of something as fit for requirements.

 

[jarred125]

Man I was hoping this was a monty python reference... (my reply to the original photo isnt showing so .. its to the first page).

 

[jarred125]

I'm in Northern Indiana. Electricity is $0.17 per KWHR now and it will be close to $0.20 within 12 months. They will likely do a rate increase in another 2 years again.
My solar system - with more than 12KW of panels, will cost $12-15K. But all of the labor will be mine. I figure it will be a 5-6 year payback and I have gas heat and gas hot water. I'm not entirely disconnecting from the Grid. If I do an electric car (prices are dropping fast), the payback will be even shorter.

I feel your pain. Duke doubled rates last July, also increased the rider by 2.5% this year (as last year). Generation rates are trending higher again per my last bill as well. If you go the EV route you will love it, we have been EV for two years and with solar it is amazing driving "on the sun"... so much that I am adding 8kW more to my array next week.

 

[chilly2]

I don't have much time as I need to get to the Intersolar show booth for the last day of this show.
This AIO is made in China, but it is LARGELY a MidNite Solar product.
We visited dozens of factories before settling on this company. It is a spin off of Eaton!
You may want to compare it to a Solark15K. The surge power of this unit kicks butt. The actual output is 11.4KW continuous. It has three programmable AC input/outputs. 60 amp for Gen input/programable output, 50 amp AC coupling input/programmable output, 30 amp programmable output, three 15 amp 120VAC output breakers, one 20 amp 120VAC output breaker. The programmable outputs can be controlled by your smart phone to disconnect based on battery voltage, SOC , utility failure etc.
It uses our standard Battery temp comp sensor, numerous other MidNite features that other AIO units don't have, like real tech support etc.
The DIY series is doing very well. They actually work and have been very reliable.....Well after some stumbling on the 5KW, but we fixed that a long time ago. They are nice rugged little units.
We will be looking for the best places to give away the first 20 units. We need to get the most out of these marketing units as there is a ton of competition.

You mentioned it was of SolArk 15k spec, so perhaps contact engineer775 as he installs those and has a decent YouTube footprint.

DavePoz at one time tried to go SolArk and ended up going Schneider. Perhaps your AIO might give him a viable 3rd option to talk about.

SolarEngineering has good Solark experience and installs them often.

AveRage Joe has reviewed a number of whole house options.

And then of course there’s Will P.

 

[1201]

BTW, I am not focused on a on-grid application. I think for many, if not most people, on grid doesn't make any sense.
I think the government and utilities are basically trying to punish on-grid users. And they would like to punish off-grid users as well. The utilities are government sanctioned monopolies.

How do you figure? On grid applications probably outnumber off grid setups 10,000-1

How's the govt trying to punish on-grid users?

 

[Dave911]

Sure, but we don't have the denominator (prior probability) on how many users there are for each platform, that are here. And we would need to correct by how much commissioning is happening right now / has happened in the past.

The fact that the 18kpv has seen the high level of adoption (and therefore thread gore) indicates that it has a feature set and spec sheet that works for people.

I don't buy it unless you have access to sales number showing that the 18kpv is outselling Solark by a lot. Solark has been around for a while and the prices are comparable to the 18kpv, 12KW to 12 KW. but the complaints from the 18kpv crowd are a lot louder than the Solark crowd. Solark is considered a mature product apparently.
If you want some history, there is this:

SolArk15k vs Eg4 18k

Im about to stir up some s**t on this and I am not bashing Signature Solar. They supply great products I was about to pull the trigger on 2 SolArk 15k and I see Eg4 18k about to launch in 2 weeks. Signature Solar does put out a good product at a good price. I am a contractor and able to...

diysolarforum.com

 

[Dave911]

How many kwh per day will you consume/generate?

I'm using 16,000 KWHR per year right now. I punched everything into PVwatts and it says 12KW of Solar panels can offset my power bill almost entirely.
However I am going to oversize it. Panels are cheap and I can make the racking for a ground mount. And I have a plenty of space to face everything due south with no obstructions. Plus I want to up size it up for an EV.

 

[zanydroid]

I don't buy it unless you have access to sales number showing that the 18kpv is outselling Solark by a lot. Solark has been around for a while and the prices are comparable to the 18kpv, 12KW to 12 KW. but the complaints from the 18kpv crowd are a lot louder than the Solark crowd. Solark is considered a mature product apparently.

I made no such claim of the 18kpv is outselling Solark. All I'm saying it's been found by many people that post here, to be fit for their requirement.

 

[Dave911]

How do you figure? On grid applications probably outnumber off grid setups 10,000-1

How's the govt trying to punish on-grid users?

So this is my perspective obviously, but where I live the vast majority of the systems are off grid entirely - no grid tie of any kind.
That because I live in a largely Amish area. They will go to great extremes NOT to be tied to the grid.
However, nationwide I suspect the ratio is much lower than what you suggest. When I say grid-tied, I mean systems that interact with the grid. Using absorbing power and sending power back and forth to the grid.

The Feds are doing a decent job to encourage solar but many of the states are not. Indiana is one such state. It makes no sense but they make it really difficult to grid tie and even install a PV system. Right now I am supposed to get a variance in my county before installing a ground mount solar system. A variance used to cost $500 years ago and includes a signage on your property for 30 days notifying everyone of your request for a variance. Then there has to be a hearing. People can object and you can be denied approval. The same thing would be required if I wanted to start a slaughterhouse on my properly. Seriously, its the same process. And this is only part of the difficulty. I could go on.
Its really bad. Its so bad that the farmers are up in arms over it. They could have 1000 acres and in order to install a ground mount PV system, they need a variance. Basically the Indiana government is the best government that money can buy. And the utility is enjoying that.
The only way around all of this is to just install a system and stay off the grid. No permits, nothing. And then hope that you don't need to backtrack in the future and permit your system. Its archaic.

 

[1201]

I feel your pain. Duke doubled rates last July, also increased the rider by 2.5% this year (as last year). Generation rates are trending higher again per my last bill as well. If you go the EV route you will love it, we have been EV for two years and with solar it is amazing driving "on the sun"... so much that I am adding 8kW more to my array next week.

So this is my perspective obviously, but where I live the vast majority of the systems are off grid entirely - no grid tie of any kind.
That because I live in a largely Amish area. They will go to great extremes NOT to be tied to the grid.
However, nationwide I suspect the ratio is much lower than what you suggest. When I say grid-tied, I mean systems that interact with the grid. Using absorbing power and sending power back and forth to the grid.

The Feds are doing a decent job to encourage solar but many of the states are not. Indiana is one such state. It makes no sense but they make it really difficult to grid tie and even install a PV system. Right now I am supposed to get a variance in my county before installing a ground mount solar system. A variance used to cost $500 years ago and includes a signage on your property for 30 days notifying everyone of your request for a variance. Then there has to be a hearing. People can object and you can be denied approval. The same thing would be required if I wanted to start a slaughterhouse on my properly. Seriously, its the same process. And this is only part of the difficulty. I could go on.
Its really bad. Its so bad that the farmers are up in arms over it. They could have 1000 acres and in order to install a ground mount PV system, they need a variance. Basically the Indiana government is the best government that money can buy. And the utility is enjoying that.
The only way around all of this is to just install a system and stay off the grid. No permits, nothing. And then hope that you don't need to backtrack in the future and permit your system. Its archaic.

That sounds like a nightmarish state to do grid tied pv in.

I still bet that nationwide the ratio is more than 10000-1 though.

 

[zanydroid]

That sounds like a nightmarish state to do grid tied pv in.

I still bet that nationwide the ratio is more than 10000-1 though.

Just in California it's probably generous lower bound of 10:1 for residential. Under NEM2 the only rational reason to do off-grid is unsanctioned batteries or political statements.

If you factor in utility scale it's by definition almost all grid tie, so going to force the number bigger, but I'm not sure what we're including.

10000:1 sounds far fetched.

 

[JRH]

Build your systems now , while you can… like everything else we see today in our life , the solar window will not stay as free and cheap as now…
We are such a minority presently we don’t have their full attention…but that will change soon.

J..…

 

[1201]

Just in California it's probably generous lower bound of 10:1 for residential. Under NEM2 the only rational reason to do off-grid is unsanctioned batteries or political statements.

If you factor in utility scale it's by definition almost all grid tie, so going to force the number bigger, but I'm not sure what we're including.

10000:1 sounds far fetched.

That's funny because I feel 10k-1 might be understating things. The billion dollar companies, sunrun etc how many installs do you think they do annually and what percentage are not grid tied?

 

[Dave911]

That sounds like a nightmarish state to do grid tied pv in.

I still bet that nationwide the ratio is more than 10000-1 though.

Articles like this are very common in Indiana.

Against All Reason, Indiana Dismantles Rooftop Solar — Episode 193 of Local Energy Rules

Ben Inskeep discusses Indiana’s backward solar policy, why local solar is a threat to utilities, and how to go up against the powerful entrenched interests of monopolies.

ilsr.org

 

[zanydroid]

That's funny because I feel 10k-1 might be understating things. The billion dollar companies, sunrun etc how many installs do you think they do annually and what percentage are not grid tied?

Quick google says ~7 GW of residential solar installed in a year (i only put 2 min into this so it could be wrong)

7e9 W / 1e4 = 100,000 W

Do you really think only 100kW of off-grid residential solar is installed per year? That's like, 10 systems, on this forum.

 

[Dave911]

That's funny because I feel 10k-1 might be understating things. The billion dollar companies, sunrun etc how many installs do you think they do annually and what percentage are not grid tied?

I found stats that about 600,000 residential solar systems are being installed each year. (Which seems very high to me, but I'm in Indiana!)
10,000:1 would be 60 off grid systems per year. So I think your 10,000 to 1 is a bit high.

 

[1201]

Quick google says ~7 GW of residential solar installed in a year (i only put 2 min into this so it could be wrong)

7e9 W / 1e4 = 100,000 W

Do you really think only 100kW of off-grid residential solar is installed per year? That's like, 10 systems, on this forum.

What I read said about 32gw was the projection for 2023.

So with my ratio that would be about 3200kw in off grid pv in 2023. Ok maybe a bit low.

I found stats that about 600,000 residential solar systems are being installed each year. (Which seems very high to me, but I'm in Indiana!)
10,000:1 would be 60 off grid systems per year. So I think your 10,000 to 1 is a bit high.

You're probably right lol. Ok I'll say 500:1