lkft
New Member
Greetings to all!
I am about to start my first solar power system for my home located in San Juan PR. If you think your elect bill is high you haven't seen anything like PR!! Couple that with the fact that its a balmy 90 deg for 3/4 of the year with the cooler months hovering around 80 deg so A/C, ventilation is a year round must and I'm looking to get a little elect bill relief.
The plan is to purchase a decent inverter (5-6KW @ 120/240V SP3W) and the minimum amount of required solar panels to start out to run the unit. No batteries for now. The inverter will need to have a utility connection so that when there is no sun the utility will pick up the load and when the sun power is avail the unit will automatically switch between the two. The load will consist of whatever I can comfortably put on the inverter with my minimum panel array which I believe will be four 545W 48VDC panels. During the day there is always hot/bright sun and the roof of my house has zero shading so they should be able to provide a nice dependable output.
There are no permits required here so this isn't a concern. What is a concern is the amount of money the local mom and pop shops want for their wares such as $340 for a single panel and $6,700 for a 8KW Sol Ark. So Im looking or rather asking you guys the experts for any other decent inverter that I can pick up for less money, say $1500 or less preferably as well as panels that are good but less expensive. Now if you guys come out and say this is what the going price is for these types of equip I'll just go ahead and bite the bullet and buy locally since they offer a 10yr warranty on the inverter and 25yrs for the panels. I could go as low as a 5-6KW inverter but Id rather have more capacity and not need it than not enough.
I'm not interested in going off grid or exporting power back into the grid, just looking to lower my elect bill.
I am about to start my first solar power system for my home located in San Juan PR. If you think your elect bill is high you haven't seen anything like PR!! Couple that with the fact that its a balmy 90 deg for 3/4 of the year with the cooler months hovering around 80 deg so A/C, ventilation is a year round must and I'm looking to get a little elect bill relief.
The plan is to purchase a decent inverter (5-6KW @ 120/240V SP3W) and the minimum amount of required solar panels to start out to run the unit. No batteries for now. The inverter will need to have a utility connection so that when there is no sun the utility will pick up the load and when the sun power is avail the unit will automatically switch between the two. The load will consist of whatever I can comfortably put on the inverter with my minimum panel array which I believe will be four 545W 48VDC panels. During the day there is always hot/bright sun and the roof of my house has zero shading so they should be able to provide a nice dependable output.
There are no permits required here so this isn't a concern. What is a concern is the amount of money the local mom and pop shops want for their wares such as $340 for a single panel and $6,700 for a 8KW Sol Ark. So Im looking or rather asking you guys the experts for any other decent inverter that I can pick up for less money, say $1500 or less preferably as well as panels that are good but less expensive. Now if you guys come out and say this is what the going price is for these types of equip I'll just go ahead and bite the bullet and buy locally since they offer a 10yr warranty on the inverter and 25yrs for the panels. I could go as low as a 5-6KW inverter but Id rather have more capacity and not need it than not enough.
I'm not interested in going off grid or exporting power back into the grid, just looking to lower my elect bill.
