Solar for Beginners [ask your questions here]

Hi all, the newest newbie here.

I've been chatting to one particular installer about doing a home upgrade where I would get solar panels and a heat pump. I noticed on Reddit that this particular installer apparently over quotes and was advised to come to this thread.

I'm wondering has anyone recently got solar panels, a battery and a heat pump installed by a installer they would recommend that won't rip them off or take advantage of my newbie knowledge when it comes to all this. Could they PM me.

Although this thread has helped massively to improve my knowledge, so thanks all for adding to it.

Batteries are usually warrantied to about 10 years but still should have about 80% capacity so will stay working a lot longer with a reduced capacity. Inverters are warrantied anything from 5 years upwards but if you want you can extend the warranty with some but is it worth it. An inverter could last 10 15 years without issues or develop issues in year 1 or 2 like any electronics. Panels should outlive you.

Good job.. dont forget the freezer ..

Yeah it isn't an essential like the TV 😂

Wondering why my solar isn't charging the battery?

They can be taken out safely? By an electrician obviously

When I got my change over switch put in I got the fireman switches removed so the panels can power the house and charge the batteries. They are only a requirement in the Republic.

No idea how they done it but the panels work in outages now. It's only a requirement for the grant really, once a chance of inspection passed I got them removed. The north and UK don't use them just us here.

So disabling the fireman's switch is an interesting thing. As previous posters noted a firemans switch isn't needed in the north or the UK. That said, even though it's not needed, in my own personal opinion it does perform a useful function.....in certain scenarios. I'm not proposing that you don't disable it, but rather just want to let you know the potential pitfalls of doing so.

If your inverter is close to where the ingress of the solar array's + and - cables into your house (which are often carrying 500+v DC).....say the inverters is in the attic etc.... then I think the fireman's switch is of little benefit. The regs I think state that the firemans switch has to be within 1.5m of where the cables enter the house. The issue is more if there's a long run of those cables from the ingress to where the inverter is. Let's say your inverter is in the utility room on the ground floor and the cables enter the house at the roof. Then you could potentially have 15-20 meters run of those high voltage cables.

The issue is then one of if there was a fire, those cables could still be "live" if the fire brigade cut the power to the house. Is this a big issue? I'd probably argue no, but at least your aware of it.

Ok so power the switch off the inverter EPS?

I have a tricky situation with my solar system setup (apologies if this is not the right place).

I have a very catholic cross roof:

The red part is the south-west front and the green part is the north-west back

During the summer: Red gets sun most of the time, but is shaded by the big tree on the left in the evening, and Green gets no sun until about 11 AM, some shade in the evening, and then some sun again once it passes the tree.

During the winter: green wouldn't get any sun and red would get something from midday onwards

To illustrate:

This is green at the end of April at 12 pm

Red at the end of April at 8pm

The setup suggested is to put 15 panels in the red roof.

But knowing the above:

is it worth the sun/power the green gets to put panels there with optimisers for the winter?

is it worth trimming the big tree? (€2/3k)

is it worth to put strings in red and microinverters in green?

I'm thinking of investment-return because the green part would get good sun during the summer but nothing during the winter, which would make it up during the summer but could drag down the performance during the winter.

What do ye think?

Hi,

I have just built a self install ground mounted solar project. 10 x405w Longi panels wired in series into a SOLIS S5 3.5KW Inverter.

All wired and ready to energised.

Are they any settings on the inverter I need to adjust or alter during the power up? No batteries (for the moment)

Regards and Thanks