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Yes, solar can greatly reduce your electric bill especially if you are mostly using your appliances at daytime, where the sun is shining.
Solar can be used at night too because of battery storage. Battery stores sun's energy when it charges at daytime alongside the consumption of your appliances.
And your bill will further decrease if you applied for Net Metering.
If you want to know more about how solar works, you may read our blog article about it at How do Solar works??. Solar plants are mini power plants that… | by Christopher Balbuena | Jul, 2023 | Medium
The regular components of solar are (1) Solar panels, (2) Inverter, (3) Battery, (4) Protection devices, (5) Mounting materials.
Solar panels are the ones you install in your roof to harvest sun's energy at daytime.
Inverter converts the sun's energy to usable energy for your appliances at home. It also controls the energy coming from your electric utility. It sort of kind like a mixer of energy where it prioritizes solar before the electric utility.
Battery stores energy either from the solar panels or the utility company. And when it is full, it discharges at certain times of the day as backup energy. It can reduce your electric bill too when it is programmed to discharge every night.
Protection devices are the components to protect the solar panels to the inverter or the appliances at home to the solar panels and the electric utility. These devices are usually the circuit breakers, fuses, surge protection devices, panelboards, and others for the solar plant owner to switch off anytime there is a problem somewhere in the electrical.
Mounting materials are the components to hold the solar panels to the roof, to the slab roof, to the canopy, or to the ground depending on where you, the solar plant owner, wishes to place the solar panels.
Solar energy system is a little bit expensive due to the fact that a system needs to have the regular components above to utilize the sun's energy and have a protected electrical system. If there is one missing from the components, there will always cause for problems.
Solar panels alongside the mounting materials are installed in your roof or the upper most area of your house. They may be installed on the ground too if you have an open area that is not obstructed by any trees or higher structures to avoid shadows.
Inverters alongside protection devices are installed near the electrical panelboard or near the main electric meter. They are installed in those areas so that tapping of the inverter's output is near and losses are minimized.
Yes, you can cover the inverter and protection devices with a cabinet but we don't always recommend it because of less ventilation to the inverter station. As much as possible, there should be ventilation to avoid building up heat in the inverter.
If you really need to cover it up, put up a louvered cabinet or put an exhaust in the covering.
You can reduce the cost when you remove the battery from the system. It is one of the only regular component that you can safely remove from the list of install.
A battery-less system can save you almost a third of the package cost because batteries cost a lot. You can use a "String" inverter instead of a "Hybrid" inverter because a string inverter costs less than the hybrid counterpart.
Then you can apply for net metering so you sell excess energy you harvest at daytime to the electric utility. The sold energy is deducted to your monthly electric bill as savings.
Note that there is no electric utility in the Philippines now that gives cash for the energy you sell to them.
Yes, the solar plant will still operate even without batteries.
With the right wiring, settings, and configuration, it will work perfectly fine like what the majority of our installations.
Battery-less solar plants are mainly used for commercial and industrial setups because they use electricity mostly at daytime. Instead of buying energy from the electric utility, you utilize the sun's energy at daytime for your appliances. And some utility company rarely have brownouts like Meralco.
So you can buy a solar plant with a Hybrid Inverter without any batteries to minimize your cost.
First, you should know how much is your average electric bill per month. Electric bill shows you your monthly energy consumption. Some even have graphs to show you your monthly consumption for the past year.
You can also check your electric meter on how much energy you use in a certain hour.
We recommend you to check your electric meter when you use most of your appliances. It doesn't necessarily mean that you open all your appliances. Just check the meter when all of you are at home and the usual appliances are open.
Then contact us to estimate a possible solar plant capacity and price.
Nowadays, lithium batteries are the norm. Lithium is the battery used in laptops, mobile phones, drones, electric vehicles and many others.
In solar, there are lithium batteries too that are already selling in the market. These lithium batteries are even better aesthetically because they are hanged (called a Powerwall).
These powerwalls are already taking the solar energy systems by storm because they last longer, visually appealing, and safer than the traditional lead-acid batteries used in vehicles, telcos, and old solar plants.
Lithium batteries last for more than 10 years because their life cycle are 4500 to 6000 cycles while lead-acid batteries are 750 - 1000 cycles only.
1 cycle mean one charge and one discharge a day.
There are what you call Lithium Iron Phosphate (LiFePo4) batteries which are sturdier and last longer than their relative lithium batteries
For a LiFePo4 battery, we divide 4500 cycles to 365 days (1 year), we will get:
= 4,500 cycles / 365 cycle-days per year
= 12.3 years
For a lead-acid battery, we divide 1000 cycles to 365 days (1 year), we will get:
= 1,000 cycles / 365 cycle-days per year
= 2.73 years
This proves that a lithium battery last longer than their counterpart lead-acid batteries.
Choose a solar plant with battery if your area is always experiencing brownouts like in Isabela, Palawan, or Mindoro. You will thank the system because you can continue your work or your chores without much worry that a power interruption is happening.
Also, choose a solar plant with battery if your household uses more appliances / aircon at nighttime. Your solar plant will discharge energy from the battery at night. Better apply for net metering to sell excess energy at daytime.
Choose a solar plant without a battery if your area is not experiencing brownouts. You can just apply for net metering so you can sell excess energy at daytime.
After giving your basic info like name, address, contact number, and average electric bill, we can schedule an appointment to visit your place.
At your place, we will check your service entrance, electric meter, electrical panelboard, possible inverter station location, access to the roof, and the roof itself.
We will check if your roof have obstructions that may become a shadow to your solar panels. We will check too for the possible conduit way from the inverter station to the tapping point or to the service entrance if there is a net metering.
You may ask us about solar in general and other stuff that you don't understand so that you may feel comfortable when the solar energy system is being installed.
It is okay to not apply yet for net metering if you don't feel like applying yet.
Don't worry about the excess energy that the solar panels will harvest because we will install a "LIMITER" to the main breaker or main disconnect switch so that all excess energy harvested will not be read as a consumption.
Yes, the excess energy will be read as consumption by the electric meter when it is not a bi-directional type yet. So putting a limiter will "limit" the energy going back to the grid.
Limiter is a device that monitors and controls the energy going in or going out of the electrical system. The inverter will control the limiter to avoid any excess energy reading.
Our team make sure that leaks will be avoided as much as possible.
When the team installs, they remove the initial screw installed in the roof, then replace it with a stainless screw with rubber to an l-foot clamp. They will put a sealant in the screw under the rubber then put another sealant around the l-foot above the rubber.
But when there is a leak and it was found out that it is our fault, we fix it as soon as possible to avoid further leaks.
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