Solar quotes for our house

[Newcastle George]

Terry,

I am using Chrome. I asked the Growatt technician to increase the voltage limit, originally it was set at 253

George

[T1 Terry]

You do realise that could destroy appliances in the house, it will certainly blow filament type light bulbs including halogen down lights. With the inverters we fit for off grid systems that use grid back up if needed, we set the grid feed in voltage to a max of 245vac, if the grid is higher than that it cuts the grid input and drops back to being an inverter.

T1 Terry

[Newcastle George]

Terry, our actual grid voltage measured at the meter box is, at the moment, wavering between 246 and 250. When it was set at 253 we were getting drop to zero from the solar.

George

[T1 Terry]

Terry, our actual grid voltage measured at the meter box is, at the moment, wavering between 246 and 250. When it was set at 253 we were getting drop to zero from the solar.

George

So it becomes a case of the value of the feed in you will get back from the electricity mob against the cost of replacement appliances that the high voltage destroys ...... You are now in a battle with all the other rooftop solar houses on that line to see who can push the other one out. The voltage is only climbing because there is no where for the extra generated power to go, if you put your output voltage up you are trying to push the voltage high enough for someone else's high voltage cut off to trip. If they put their voltage up then ....... One of those things the installer or even better, the seller, should have checked before they sold you the system, was the grid voltage low enough for you to feed into as well as all those that got in ahead of you.
At least you will be generating power for your own use while he sun is shining, if you had a battery you could have been storing what the grid could not take for use after the sun went down.
What rate do they give you per kWh you feed in to the grid and what do they charge you per kWh you have to buy back from the grid, keep in mind you have to deduct 10% for what you sell to the grid to cover the GST and add another 10% on to what you buy to cover that lots GST .... the govt never losses out on any transaction where a sale is concerned

T1 Terry

[Newcastle George]

Terry, we currently pay, after pay on time discount, 23.5c/kWh for general tariff and 9.5c/kWh for off peak, +gst, and the feed-in tariff is 12.5c/kWh.
In the last 15 weeks we have exported 15% more power than imported . Of that imported, the off peak was almost twice that of general. With that in mind we need to maximise our feed-in.

George

[T1 Terry]

Certainly a better deal than the thieving electricity resellers over here are offering. If you have feed in solar you pay 44c kWh buy in no matter the time of day, and they pay 12c kWh feed in, and even cut the inverter output if they want to in the name of stabilising the grid, but more likely they can buy it cheaper else where.

Is the feed in tariff a fixed price no matter the time of day? If the time of day is open, you could really cash in on that by adding a battery linked to the solar feed in side. When you can't export to the grid because the grid voltage is too high, the solar output would be stored in the battery, then it could continue to feed into the grid after sun down till all that was stored had been used up.
With a bit of careful trickery, you could buy in the 9.5c kWh off peak power and resell it at 12.5c kWh by turning the grid feed back on just before sun rise when the grid demand is high resulting in the grid voltage being low. It could even be switch by the off peak supply turn off, if they still have that, when the off peak shuts off the grid supply turns on so the house can use the cheaper stored power and you can sell the remaining output to the grid.

T1 Terry

[BernieQ2]

29 cents in and 12 cents out over here Terry .
Bernie .

[T1 Terry]

I'll have to get Margaret to dig out one of our power bills for the workshop and the house. The 44c and 12c was from the paper bills from a hopefully future customer. This is the place with 3 phase power connected but all the house wiring is off each phase, the only 3 phase is the grid tie inverter.

T1 Terry

[T1 Terry]

Not sure if I have put this link up before, but it does show that George's solar problem is a lot more common than many realise https://www.solarquotes.com.au/blog/vol ... etresponse

T1 Terry

[Newcastle George]

Below is a graph of today's output from clear blue sunny skies. When studying the data I have found that the troughs occur whenever the inverter AC voltage reaches 250 or greater. The time shown is standard NSW time, not daylight saving time.

Click to enlarge

Capture (Custom).PNG

George