Still amazing how Solar isnt on every roof in Aus, not even talking about the paying back into the grid costs.

Another thing that is not considered is the actual energy received by the panels: because they are not tracking the sun, even is you reach 1000W/m2 the panel receives less because of the cos(angle) losses. Even in ideal conditions, a panel oriented at 90° just received the scattered light instead of direct illumination and produces almost nothing.

The dummies guide 1a. Ignore temperature as you have no control of the weather, do something useful and get on with your lives....sure analyse it to the end of time and then realise anyway you have no ability to influence temp, if it’s a hot day then it’s hot and your Arduino will tell you...run a sprinkler, that will help or put the panels in shade... now seriously 1. Get three phase. 2. If you don't have shading get two three phase inverters with 2 strings per inverter 3. Get inverters that automatically share or spread maximum export to the phase with lowest voltages as this makes you the most money. 4. Oversize the panel array to max specs of inverters.....see point 3 as this is way more important than anything else as being on a single phase with a high penetration of solar will result in high voltage on that phase and limit your ability to export. 5. Only get enphases if you have serious shading and even then 4 strings across two three phase inverters which maximise export through lower voltage phases will easily create more benefit. Magic numbers are 12.6kW's of DC on Roof, 10kW's to mains across two three phase inverters, with a total of 4 Strings. Ohhh yeah and face two strings east or west and two north. The east will give you early morning charge and the west will give you late day energy offset and pre-peak charge. North is just a no brainer for at least half of your solar, assuming 3 phase and 10kW's to grid. As for analysis.....haven't paid a power bill in 5 years, do no analysis as I can't be bothered as this stuff is high school maths and just choose the retailer with the highest Feed in Tariff (FiT). Am on no special Govt FiT....this ain't rocket science so maybe just go with what 40% of Queenslanders have already figured out. See above...

kzfaq.info/get/bejne/aaqTksafz5e0dZc.html

@@AndrewDeme yet we have to plan for it in our canadian winter as deep cold can cause overvolting of the charge controller, so we need to buy higher voltage rated ones ;)

Currently we do extremely little with the waste heat from panels, they could easily heat a pool.

Yes they do, but I have seen perfect days close to 3kW, it's just a lot of data to sift through.

@@spikester or perhaps cover the belly side of the panel with heatsinks

@@EEVblog just checked Sydney summer temperatures 18.6 - 25.8°C. I did not realize you got such cold summer. I thought it's similar to what we got here in Phoenix 40C-50C.

There is also a cloud edge effect with scattered clouds which produces somewhat of a lens that concentrates more than 1000w/m2.

I live in Europe, so it will apply for me: the sun shines while you are asleep!

😃

Yup. I just spent twice more on a UPS than I really needed because I couldn't stomach it having a lower rated output than the theoretical maximum power consumption of my PC (which I fully well know it will never hit).

For a string inverter, yes partial shade on any panel in a string will bring down the output of the entire string.

@@neomage2021 A microinverter can do nothing about this, either. So, there is no advantage to using them, at least from this point of view. All solar panels have bypass diodes so the entire argument for microinverters is a fail. There can be other reasons to use them, such as avoiding dangerous DC voltages, which is why I am using custom-made MPPT microinverters on automated articulated lower-efficiency and much much cheaper panels.

@@neomage2021 only if it cannot do full voltage sweep or when solar panels dont have bypass diodes. When inverter can do full voltage sweep and panels do have bypass diodes, then partial shading WILL NOT bring output of entire string.

That's amazing!

Just shot a video on my 2nd channel about this, uploading now.

many hot days are absolutely better than many overcast cold days. no two ways about that

I can get full power on sunny day, I'm in france.

@@ursodermatt8809 Except you're more likely to run A/C. Unless you have an extremely well insulated house.

@@chaos.corner you are more likely to run A/C when it is cold too. i repeat for you again. solar generation depends on solar insolation. no sun no generation. no matter what the temperature is. no matter what you use the solar generated electricity for.

Thought same. However, this is great work by Dave, since I never realized the details, along with that solar panels use "marketing speak" to sell (imagine buyin 20 of the 370W panels and never getting that "advertised" wattage because of the inverter clipping.

@@xoxo2008oxox q

@@xoxo2008oxox ]10¹11

1. ¹

Solar designerer here. I did that experiment over a 3 year period with their older 215W and 250W emphases inverters. Over 3 years there was a 2kWh difference between the different modules. That's about 60c of savings per panel for a $10+ cost per inverter upgrade.

I've been playing about with 4x340w panels, I only have room for 8 in total. Originally I had IQ7 inverters which clipped them to 250w. Following convos in Dave's original video I swapped out one of the microinverters for an IQ7A, and have seen over 340w out of that panel here in the UK already, so when the last 4 panels go up I think I'll be using bigger microinverters for exactly the reasons you noted, very limited space!

@@juststeve5542 Yeah, regardless of what Enphase (and LG too, as they do a ton of LG/Enphase installs) claim, The IQ7A would be a better match (but still nto ideal of course). Although you'd have to do the amortisation costing over time.

I wonder if their Enphase IQ8 would have a higher output

@@PHamster at this point I'm starting to believe in fairies more than the IQ8! When/if it finally appears it will probably come in a range of flavours like the IQ7,7+,7X,7A IIRC, the higher capacity 7A is a later addition to the IQ7 range.

@@juststeve5542 have 20-300watt panels with IQ7 mico inverters should i Use the iQ7A. i need to get it up to a 9k system

The thought of it is rather offensive!

Glad I wasn't the only one. In the audio world clipping = bad news.

Sounds like a intentionally ripping off customers to be honest.

@@HiragamaIkunai Not necessarily. Everything's a compromise. People who live in areas that don't see much strong sunlight might benefit from this configuration, for instance, because they can generate power at lower light levels.

cost difference is almost double now. Also if any of those inverters fail the warranty is there for them but not the labor to go up and pull solar panels off the roof to get to the inverter underneath and hope nothing else gets broken like tiles etc for those with tiles. Its not all green grass on that side. Also being up on the roof in summer, can't imagine even being under a panel they wouldnt be smoking hot.

I assume that you'll get a performance boost from well tuned elevation angles?

​@@CED99 Of course, but that's a given factor by the orientation and angle of the roof. Modern houses should be built with this in mind (the usually are). You can mount the panels at a different angle on taller framework, but that would look horrible, and it can be dangerous as well, because it would put higher wind load on the panels.

Good advise. Thank you!

You have to also account for the lower efficency in non-shadowed state. Microinverters are overall less efficient in vastly most cases. String inverters are easyly 2% more efficient.

@@flipschwipp6572 Claims and stories from old times. Completely irrelevant. Every manufacturer and every study tells something different - and all like to embellish their own efficiency values. Just like with the consumption values of cars, I wouldn't put a damn on it. I would *_never_* buy a string inverter again, even if it were 5% more efficient - and that of course only on paper. And which PV system has a "non-shadowed" state over the whole year? Even then, there may always be times with snow, ice, frost, leaves, dust, dirt, sand, bird poop, a weakaning or faulty panel and much more. And even brandnew panels themselves always vary in efficiency within a few percent(!) - and _no_ string inverter can handle that, but the weakest panel determines the performance! (Except for such with SolarEdge DC optimizers.) Micro-Inverters always produce electricity immediately, even with the smallest amount of light in the twilight, while string inverters just kick in at a neccessary minimum input power (e.g. greater than 10, 20 or even more watts). *Summary: your apparent "2% more efficiency" literally melts away like butter in the sun.* And last but not least; the most efficient system is *_never_* that which simply has the most efficient inverter(s), but rather the system *_overall_* that is *the fastest to write a black zero (= reaching the profit zone).* This can only be determined after years or decades, after including all income and expenses - and here, too, Enphase Micro-Inverters are ahead with their 25-year guarantee. It is not unlikely that *_you_* will have to buy a new, second string inverter in the meantime ...

@@RomanKuechler What is the relevance of Guarantees in respect to energy efficiency? String inverters cant also have Guarantee? Marketing BS! Upfront cost of optimizers overwhelm any benefits. Once The Manufacturer goes down, like it was often happening in the PV market, you can wipe your ass with your warranty card and pay someone to rip the whole pv array apart, remove the inverters and re-wire everything. With a normal inverter, it is just replacing the Inverter, which ther will be 1:1 replacements in 25 Years, for Microinverters I highly doubt that.

@@flipschwipp6572 You have not read or understood any of my arguments. This makes the discussion pointless. And your answer lacks logic. Your 2% will be nullified by the tolerances of the panels alone, it's not that hard to understand right now, is it? If someone buys a string inverter because of 2% more efficiency - but not taking everything around it into account, what should I say? If someone really wants a string inverter then they should buy a string inverter. It's not my problem. I have nothing more to say about it, thank you.

@OohBuntu That's kind of the point - that 0.5% efficiency gain at the common low load times can easily mean more than losing ~10% from clipping during the rare peak generation times.

Boa! já ia pesquisar sobre e tu me respondeu!

😁

@@ts757arse My nearly 20 year old "pure sine" Trace/Xantrex inverter causes audible buzzing and harmonics in audio circuits and some power supplies. If they had made one with "audiophile-grade" sine output, I would have been interested. This could be a huge untapped pool of suckers, er, market of enthusiasts!

April is time of the year you get peak instant power from PV in the UK -- clear skies and cool panels

Yeah, that was never the case when I was looking.

well i get the best results in spring here in NSW australia in the spring. weather still cold sun high up

I would assume it’s taking a reading every 5 minutes, not calculating the average for the 5 minute period.

Florida Man builds his own solar roof

You're not wrong! I saw snow this morning, and then by lunch time I had over 330watts coming out of a 340watt panel which I'd upgraded to an IQ7A as a test last week!

There is a reason why people in the British Isles are notorious for talking about the weather - and in April doubly so.

Are they made in Canada?

Ah, no, made in China it seems.

@@EEVblog Yeah, I think they're manufactured in China. You can't tell these days. Thankfully it's not all bad. Went thru several crappy all in one inverters but settled on one of the more expensive UL listed units. It is also made in China (overseen by a US company) but it works flawlessly.

that is absolutely bananas.

They rely on the reflection from the ground underneath? Wouldn't it make more sense to have an internal reflector behind the panel, this way you could get much higher reflection.

Fair enough.

63% of our electricity comes from Hydro and it makes the overall production at 83% renewable energy. Only 1% is from solar.

@@thomasesr All the better hydro is probably better for the environment sine hydro plants last a long time and are mosly recyclable unlike solar panels.

@@adamdnewman yes indeed, too bad for the huge areas needed for the reservoir which displaces a lot of Fauna.

@@thomasesr Isn't that replacing one environment for fauna with another?

I've been doing solar related videos for over 7 years.

then convert it back to DC to charge your cell phone!

That's the theory anyway. In practice it's going to be highly variable.

As legitimate as half the law suits out there.

Its actually really easy. The area under/over the line? Just cut it out and weigh the mass. Thats how they did it back in the day. Not to mention all the other (digital) options.

Why do they limit? To help out the utility companies?

​@@everyhandletaken they don't want too much going back to the grid... I think it's to prevent people with a bit of land turning themselves into a solar power station! IIRC the limit is 4KW.

@@juststeve5542 if the uk grind has any of the undersizing issues like the US grids the system probably can't handle it, but more likely its about control and protecting approved monopolies.

@@adamdnewman TBH the rather crap feed-in tariff does that for them here in the UK! IIRC you're lucky to get 30% here. A friend of mine in Colorado gets paid his unit rate for what he sends back - the git! I looked at the UK feed-in rates, looked at the price I was being quoted for a professional solar install (which would provide me with the certificate to do feed-in), and then decided to use the price they quoted for the scaffolding and planning alone to buy 4 panels with micro inverters and Envoy controller and just do it myself with zero feed-in. Having your own scaffold tower is rather useful at times :-D

@@juststeve5542 I wish I were you! It's just not worth the shitty rates.