I was honored to hear from ENPHASE that one of my recent solar consulting installations was chosen as ARRAY OF THE WEEK! Check out the link and photos at:Enphase Array of the Week Truly an honor – and good demonstration that with my SOLAR DIY assistance you can end up with an array that is professionally designed, installed, commissioned and functional! If you’re suffering from commercial installer sticker shock when getting your special project quoted, just give me a call at Cinci Home Solar! I cover the Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky and Western Pennsylvania area, and will go farther if the job warrants!!
Category Archives: Solar
Electric Vehicle Seminar at IBEW training center in Cincinnati
I went to the GEO (Green Energy Ohio) EV Seminar at the IBEW Training Center on Cincinnati’s West side yesterday and it was a relaxed, fun time. I got to drive the worlds 1st and only 100% electric Jeep Cherokee as well as several different Chevy Volts! Several speakers gave great presentations and there was a great deal to absorb in a short time. I did meet the admin for the EV program at the center, and I made the decision right on the spot to sign up for the fall class in EV Technology and to get my EV Certification by the end of this year! I’m already NABCEP certified for PV Solar installation and Technical Sales, and the electric car market is a good BLEND with solar, so I feel this is a great direction to grow in!
Fully decorated Chevy Volt is a rolling billboard!!tion to grow in!!!
Joe prepares to test drive the new 100% electric Jeep Cherokee for the 1st time!100% Electric tag on this Jeep Cherokee
Working on a 10/12 pitch asphalt shingle roof
Time and Patience needed when working a steep roof like this!
Rich Kappel helping with his solar installation
Oh my goodness!!! The pictures looked like a nice easy 6/12. When I got up on the roof I IMMEDIATELY realized it was more like 10/12. That’s JUST SHY OF 45 DEGREE SLOPE! Almost perfect for our 39 degree latitude in the Cincinnati area, but NOT MUCH FUN to get started.
We set 90 feet each with two 3 1/2 inch lag bolts and a 3 inch spacer (Unirac-I product) and that took from 8AM till 1:30 PM. The feet made navigating the roof much easier, since there were at least some footholds to stop from sliding. Of course, I had my OHSA approved harness and rope line on. It was like cliff climbing!! We managed to get two panels in two rows on a small shade room addition mounted as an instruction area before having all the helpers tackle the 10/12 pitch roof!!
I wasn’t about to go up/down any more than I needed to, so I didn’t get any pictures today, but I’ll be back to finish the job tomorrow, and I’ll come home with some spectacular pics to add to this section!!
17 panels on the 10/12 pitch; one row of five, one row of seven, and the bottom row is five in landscape style to fit the trapezoidal roof section. One row of five panels on each side of a 3/12 pitch shade room roof facing north south, but still exposed to LOTS of sun.
NOT A TREE BLOCKING THE SUN FROM ANY DIRECTION!! This guy will make MULTI-MEGAWATTS of solar power! See ya’ll tomorrow when I get back!
27 Renogy 235 watt panels provide 6345 watts of solar power
North/South roof??
Here’s a real time performance link to this site. Pictures to come tomorrow! https://enlighten.enphaseenergy.com/public/systems/f4vW80049
2012 Ohio SREC Pricing Average
Average Weighted Price for Ohio SRECs
If you’ve got your solar system up and running and are getting close to your first 1,000 KwHour mark – otherwise known as an SREC, here’s the latest average pricing from the GATS website. This is where you TRACK and RECORD your energy production on a month by month basis, and when you hit 1MW HOURs, you generate an SREC which you can then transfer to the BULLETIN BOARD where the folks who BUY SRECs look. You can set the price low or high – it’s up to you. Lower sells faster. Higher may never sell… kind of like playing poker…
Bottom line is that there is more SOLAR in Ohio now than ever before and the availability of SRECs is greater than the need, so you’ll have to think hard about how your price them – but thanks to tools on the EIS-GATS website, you can pull up the average for any period and make an INTELLIGENT decision about where to set your selling price!!
Finally, a ZERO Electric Bill!!
My first ZERO ELECTRIC BILL thanks to a DIY Solar installation!
I knew last month was pretty good for solar, but when I got my bill, it CONFIRMED it!! This is a real milestone for me. If you take a look at the attached copy of my bill, you’ll notice that it goes back and includes the amount from last April, before I had installed the 20 panel 4,320 watt system. Duke does not “pay” for the excess electricity I produce – but it DOES make my “NET METER” go backwards, for all practical purposes “banking” the extra energy I produce. Eventually, I’ll spin the digits the other way, either when I run my AC in July and August, or later in the fall when the sun-hours are much lower and the lights are on a much greater part of the day. My home is 1600 square feet, average insulation and construction with double pane windows. I’ve replaced all but a few of the light bulbs with CFL or LED types. We keep the thermostat around 68 in the winter and even lower at night when we’re sleeping, and we open the windows when the weather is nice. Just all PRACTICAL things to do to help conserve energy. I can show you how to do this on YOUR home for about $2.75/watt, including my consulting fee!! Drop me an email and lets get started on YOUR system tonight! There’s lots of summer sun coming our way and the temps are perfect for working on the roof right now!
DIY Solar Install getting great results
March 2012 Electric Comparison from Duke Energy
I’ve been getting great results with the system I installed on our home in Newtown, Ohio. Lately it’s been pretty cool and the days are getting longer. My 20 panel system generates a maximum of 4.3 kilowatts of power and the days are now long enough to pass 30KW Hours in a single day! Sometimes when LENTICULAR clouds go over and CONCENTRATE the sun’s energy, the panels have gone as high as 4,500 watts! No matter how you slice it though, the solar is doing it’s job nicely, as you can see from the info sheet that the power comnpany sent out… it’s funny, the paragraph below the one shown says “you can STILL lower your bill farther!” I don’t think that’s possible!!
Expansion options for smaller systems
I recently got a blog post regarding expanding small systems and how it was prohibitively expensive. There was a lot of misinformation, so I thought I’d let you all know the options. If you’re putting in a “grid tied” system to supplement your power and reduce your electric bill, the minimum size system to make a difference is about 12 panels. You can put in fewer, and expand later at minimal cost if you use the Enphase M190 micro-inverters. These units DAISY CHAIN – i.e. they connect in series, one to the other until you reach a maximum of 15 per BRANCH CIRCUIT. So, you can start with say, 5 panels, and then add as many as you like, as often as you like, till you hit 15. Then, you have to run another branch circuit (Romex 3 conductor with ground) to your breaker box. I’ve actually taken this approach with my little house in the woods. Started with 5, then added 3, then 2 more, then 1 and I plan on just 1 more very soon for a total of 12 panels. The racking system can be extended by using “splice kits” and it takes about 20 minutes to add a panel, start to finish. With excellent 235 and 240 watt panels now selling for $1.09/watt plus shipping, it doesn’t really take a lot of money to add a panel and micro-inverter to an existing array. And the best part of all, you DON’T need to be a licensed electrician to plug in the 2 DC connectors from the panel, or the 240VAC connector to the last micro-inverter in your chain!
If you want your system to be BACKED UP BY BATTERIES when the grid goes down, your micro-inverter style GRID-TIED system can still be used!! Using a technique called “AC COUPLING” you can connect a Magnum MPS4024 inverter/charger and 24 volts worth of 700 AmpHour Rolls batteries and have 4KW of backup power at your disposal when the next storm takes out the power. It’s not cheap, but it CAN be done, and you have the best of both worlds, without getting stuck with a STRING/CENTRAL INVERTER that MUST have a FIXED NUMBER of solar panels for best performance, and involves handling HIGH DC VOLTAGES.
Since this original blog post, Enphase has introduced the M215 series. It is a more powerful microinverter, and it is NOT compatible with the older M190. The M190 is still available though, to those system owners who have them and want to easily expand! My original setup with 5 panels, has expanded 3 times. 1st to 8, then 10, and finally 12 total! The old system can daisy chain up to 15 inverters on one circuit, so still have room for 3 more! Gotta love that Enphase system. Perfect for folks on a budget!!
A new high-output for my 4.3Kw array today!
93% overall efficiency of panel/micro-inverter combination!
If this keeps up, I’m sure to generate 6 maybe 7 SRECs by the end of the year. Not bad for a DIY Solar Panel installation accomplished in less than 2 days by just ONE man! You can do it to, with my help! Just give me a call!! The best part of all is that the system will pay for itself in 5 years OR LESS, and if electric costs rise, the payback gets even better. After 5 years, the positive cash flows add up significantly and after 25 years, the system will have generated in excess of $30,000 in positive cash flow! I’m not sure if there are any investments in the market today that can promise that kind of return with the security of a DIY Solar Installation firmly fastened to your property!!
Washington Courthouse Solar Install
Sun sets on another successful DIY Solar project in Ohio.weeks without problems…
26 panels with almost no leftover space! DIY Solar project on a garage/workshop in Ohio.
Here are two photos from a recent install. Corrugated metal roofing required special feet to bridge the corrugations. Also needed a little extra backing under the roof to ensure the lag bolts had enough MEAT to assure they would not pull out in 90MPH winds. Customer had 27 panels, but we could only fit 26 on the roof with two rows of portrait and one of landscape with just 12 inches space between the two sections. Much like painting yourself into a corner, we laid down panels, till the last one forced us off the roof onto a ladder… Excellent “helper” crew allowed the ENTIRE INSTALLATION to be executed in 1 day – 8AM til 6PM with 20 minutes for lunch! System used Canadian Solar CS6P-225 panels and Enphase M215 inverters. Powered up without a hitch and has been running for a couple weeks without any problems. Here’s a solar performance link for this installation if you’re interested! https://enlighten.enphaseenergy.com/public/systems/kEHV51259
DIY Solar Heaven
Perfect Day for DIY Solar in Cincinnati!!