My Solar System

I have a roof top Solar PV System. I have 24 Schuco PS 09 panels. Each panel is approximately 3 x 5 and 220 Watts. All the panels put together make up 5.28kW DC. My system was installed in October of 2010 and was hooked up to the grid on Decemeber 3rd. I live in Kitchener, Ontario and would highly recommend using an installer who is able to follow all of the requirements because there are a lot of them. Permits, ESA, and documentation are all things that are required and not always easy to figure out! My inverter is a SMA Sunny Boy 5000 and it is connected to a Sunny Webbox. The Webbox is little hardware device that allows you to monitor multiple inverters. I only have one inverter hooked up to it but it can handle lots. It gives me real time analysis of how my system is working at any given moment and is small and takes up the same space as a cable box or network router. One of the best parts about the Webbox is that it has a built in web browser so you can view the data from anywhere within your home network and it also sends the information up to Sunny Portal that allows you to monitor your system anywhere in the world that has an internet connection. The other thing that is totally awesome about Sunny Portal is that it is completely FREE. Other monitoring systems give you 1 year free and then they have annual fees to be able to monitor regularly. Canadian Solar's monitoring package is like that. Schuco is a German company that has been in the business for a long time and seemed to have a good price point versus quality. The panels have a 25 year, 80% efficiency performance warranty. I am not exactly sure how easy it would be to claim that warranty, but they offer the warranty so that means that you should expect somewhere around 80% efficiency after 20 years, which is the length of my MicroFIT contract. I plan on posting more about the panels, the inverter, and the Webbox in the upcoming weeks! What panel manufacturer did you go with?

How Much Does It Cost?

Typically people are very interested in the cost of a solar system until they here the cost and then they decide that it is far too expensive to purchase.

When I was doing my research, before I purchased, I was trying to find the 'sweet spot'. I was trying to take advantage of economies of scale while still purchasing something that would NOT destroy my life if things didn't turn out, like the sun stopped shinning! I suppose if the sun stopped shinning we would all have much bigger problems than wasting money on solar panels!

So, how much does the standard setup cost? And what is the standard setup?

To me, the standard setup would be panel installation on the roof with no tracking (follow the sun throughout the day) capabilities.

From my research, I found a very good breakdown that helped me find the 'sweet spot.'

1 to 2 kW --> 10$/W = 10,000$ to 20,000$
3 kW --> 9.25$/W = 27,750$
4 kW --> 8.50$/W = 34,000$
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So the next question is naturally, how much did you end up spending on the system? And to that I tell people the same thing. It was around 32,000$ for a 5.28kW system. My panels are Schuco and my inverter is a SMA Sunny Boy. Of course, my price above is plush HST which is a significant amount of money but in Ontario, the HST can be recovered via the HST rules IF you charge HST and remit it to the government. I will eloborate more on this in a future post.

Next post, I will get into the details of my system.

If you have purchased a system, how much did it cost?