On 05-Jan-24 7:20 pm, Daniel65 wrote:

Back in mid-Sept, I asked if anyone had any recommendations for Solar Battery Installers .... Well, Buyer Beware!!

Back in 2020, having a bit of money to spare, I had a 18 panel, 4.5kW
Solar Panel system installed and now, having more money to spare, I paid Solar Battery Group just over $8,000 to install a 5kW Battery, thinking
that would give me Power security .... but NO!

Yesterday, at about 7:15p.m., the local Mains power went out and I was
left in darkness. Surprise, surprise, when the Mains back on about a min later, so did my Power. At about 10:00p.m., when I checked my Power
System, the battery was still indicating over 60% full.

So this morning I rang the Solar Battery Group, the supply/install firm,
and they said the Solar Battery arrangement had worked as expected. The system wasn't meant to maintain power in place of Mains power, it was
only meant to supply power WHEN THE MAINS WAS AVAILABLE so "in place of"
NOT "in the absence of" mains power.

The SOLAR BATTERY GROUP will, however, sell you, for $1,300 or so, an optional extra, a Power Outlet connected directly to the Battery System which will supply up to 3kW maximum .... but, still, during an outage,
you'd have to go out to the Battery (or the special power outlet
adjacent to it) with a extension cord to plug in your most desireable
(less than 3kW) devices!!

I suppose, eventually (if I live long enough), I'll get back my $8,000
for the battery and $2,500 (I think) for the original Solar Panels ....
but who knows!! ;-(

Just FYI .... if you are considering getting a Battery installed.

You also need to check that the system will be able to charge the
battery from the solar panels during a power outage. This appears to be
not a given either.

The ability to do that saved us from the effects of an outage that
lasted more than a day (and a week for some people in my area).

Sylvia.

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Daniel65 <daniel47@nomail.afraid.org> wrote:

Yesterday, at about 7:15p.m., the local Mains power went out and I was
left in darkness. Surprise, surprise, when the Mains back on about a min later, so did my Power. At about 10:00p.m., when I checked my Power
System, the battery was still indicating over 60% full.

So this morning I rang the Solar Battery Group, the supply/install firm,
and they said the Solar Battery arrangement had worked as expected. The system wasn't meant to maintain power in place of Mains power, it was
only meant to supply power WHEN THE MAINS WAS AVAILABLE so "in place of"
NOT "in the absence of" mains power.

Yes to power the house when the grid's down you're required to have
extra circuitry to make sure that it definately can't feed power
back into the grid and zap someone working on the line.

The SOLAR BATTERY GROUP will, however, sell you, for $1,300 or so, an optional extra, a Power Outlet connected directly to the Battery System which will supply up to 3kW maximum .... but, still, during an outage,
you'd have to go out to the Battery (or the special power outlet
adjacent to it) with a extension cord to plug in your most desireable
(less than 3kW) devices!!

I guess that's a lazy way of them meeting the requirements, some
people (in Australia) do have systems that switch over the house
wiring to battery/solar when the mains goes out, but I guess that's
not offered by all installers. It is a surprisingly expensive option
from what I saw online.

An alternative to their system would be to just buy a UPS. It'll
need a separate battery, but you could keep it inside, and it would
switch over automatically for devices connected to it.

I suppose, eventually (if I live long enough), I'll get back my $8,000
for the battery and $2,500 (I think) for the original Solar Panels ....
but who knows!! ;-(

Just FYI .... if you are considering getting a Battery installed.

It looked too doubtful that I could make back my money before the
batteries died when I considered it. But I haven't even got around
to setting my solar panels up yet to be honest, too many other
jobs.

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