Sharing our experiences with Solar

I hear your warning but I'm not sure what the connections is to the linked article. It is about solar but It's regarding a school engineering project built by students and cost 600-700 PHP per light.

 

I believe that although formally a building permit and electrical permit is needed for all solar installations, practically the majority of systems are installed without such permits unless people wish to apply for net-metering.
Obviously, the rules for net-metering in this country are obsolete in the sense that for almost everyone who installs a system that includes batteries it does not make sense to do net-metering because you won't get paid for the electricity that is delivered back to the grid. All you get is credits. Before batteries became economical that worked because people would use up their credits after dark, but once your electricity bill is already (close to) zero because you have batteries those credits just sit there.
It is time for the government to urgently consider changing these rules with regard to credits and make sure people actually get paid when providing electricity.
And while they're at it, the application for net-metering should also be streamlined. Rather than forcing applicants to run from a to b to c to d to e in order to get all their "requirements" they should study how countries do it that actually would like their citizens to produce electricity for the grid (e.g. all you need to do in the Netherlands is register your installation online, and then apply for net-metering online. The rest of the process is done by the utility provider at their expense). But yeah, I know, dream on.

 

To clarify my previous post:
With respect to not getting paid for credits, this is governed by a letter from the Energy Regulatory Commission, dated November 25 2013.
The relevant part of the letter is


Underlining is mine, and basically it is evident that while the rules don't forbid the DU (distribution utility) to pay the QE (qualifying enduser) for their credits, those rules also don't mandate such payments, and make payment dependent on an agreement reached between DU en QE. In other words, the DU (Noreco) can simply refuse to agree.
Even if agreement can be reached about payment it will very likely only happen after considerable time has passed.

 

The first 75 days with solar, how did we fare?
Well, first of all, once you enjoy "free" electricity while having spare capacity on most days, the decision to turn on the aircon is obviously made a lot easier. In other words, expect your electricity use to go up after installing solar, especially when it's sunny and hot. In our case, electricity use went up by about 150 kwh a month.
As a result our savings (avoided charges from Noreco) so far were about 10,000 peso per month, so 25k in total.
Batteries: We have two batteries of 15 kwh each, so 30 kwh in total (51V, 300Ah x 2). On sunny days our 16 panels of 600W each have no problem at all to charge those batteries, on the majority of days the batteries were full before 11 a.m., and only on 9 days the batteries didn't get charged all the way. Unsurprisingly those 9 days were not sunny. On 4 days the batteries were drawn down to the minimum SOC (state of charge) that was set (21%); unsurprisingly those days were part of the 9 days when the batteries didn't get fully charged.
On a regular day the system pulls around 1 kwh from Noreco for technical purposes, during our 75 days there were only 5 days when we actually used some power from Noreco. A big part of that was caused by charging our new (plug-in hybrid) car. In hindsight, I probably should have gone with a 12kw inverter rather than an 8kw one; the car charger takes 7 kw so together with the house the inverter cannot quite keep up when charging the car. However, the power drawn from Noreco was still limited to 112 kwh in total, so including the 75 kwh technical use. Accordingly our Noreco bill for the 75 days is about 1,300 peso.
The maximum electricity production from our solar system in a single day that I have observed was 49.9 kwh, on June 28. The lowest day production was 25.3 kwh, measured on a day when the batteries didn't get full, so a cloudy/rainy day (June 21).

All in all, we couldn't be any happier about our solar installation, it works flawlessly and saves us a heap of money.

The illustration shows that so far we produced around 2.5 Mwh and that about half of that was used after dark as expected.

 

So does this mean that in a month your noreco bill will be for at least 30kwh ?
Did the installer explain to you what the technical purposes are that the 1kwh is actually needed for ? i ask this as i know that our solar system works ok even during a power cut when no noreco power coming in all day.

 

Correct, but in financial terms I won't lose any sleep over a Noreco bill of 350 peso or so.

 

Did the installer explain to you what the technical purposes are that the 1kwh is actually needed for ? i ask this as i know that our solar system works ok even during a power cut when no noreco power coming in all day.

 

The inverter is set up to draw 20 watts of power continuously. The technical reason is drawing a small amount of power keeps the inverter synchronized with Noreco. If for example the battery bank or PV panels tripped off line the power from Noreco would already be connected and the operation of you home would be bumples.

The 20 watts of continuous draw works out to about 15 Kwh per month or 180 pesos. My Inverter is a Deye 8 Kw unit at it draw about 25 Kwh (according to the Noreco meter) roughly 300 pesos.

I have been playing with that 20 watt variable and set it at 10 watts, no problem so far. I'll drop it a little lower when I get bored.

 

Thanks for the information, my inverter is also a Deye, can you please tell me which part of the control panel settings to look at to see the 20 watts ?
My last noreco bill was for 33kwh.

 

If you are using a Smart Phone (android for me) this is what I do..
on the main menu select your system
select INVERTER
select PROFESSIONAL SETTINGS scroll down to SYSTEM WORK MODE 1
ZERO EXPORT POWER is where you can change the variable from 20 watts to whatever.

entering data is a little different but works if you do it their way.
first select READ, this will refresh the variables you are going to adjust.
enter the value you want.
press SETUP that should write your value to the controller

READ and SETUP are a little slow so patience is a good thing.
I always go back and READ the data just to make sure my variable was accepted.

If you are using a Desktop it's easier on the eyes if nothing else.
From the OVERVIEW page select DEVICE
on the right side of the screen it has a column of 3 OPERATION. select DEVICE CONTROL from there go to SYSTEM WORK MODE 1 and follow the instruction above.