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Positronic Solar

Phone: +61 7 3103 6018

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24.01.2022 This post has nothing at all to do with Enphase...

20.01.2022 There are a few retailers like Diamond or Powershop that have nothing to do with fossil fuels. Don't give your shiny clean renewable electrons to the likes of Energy Australia, Origin or Alinta, deal with ethical retailers. As for frackers, well... The Pilliga is a national disgrace. Go for a drive to Roma and see what's happening out there. And Miles? Woo.

17.01.2022 Here's a blast from the past. The Inglis Electric crew with a fresh new off grid trailer we designed and built for Rainbow Power Company in 1994. The trailer h...ad 400W of panels on a wind up tilt, a Xantrex SW4048 inverter charger and Trojan wet lead acids with a 5kW Kohler gas generator. It travelled all over the country (including Kakadu) to festivals and protests. Happydaze. See more

15.01.2022 It's that time of year when the flying rats are looking for somewhere to roost. I've had the things on my roof cooing and scratching around, pooping all over th...e panels. I got the boys up there last week to spread a bit of bird gel around - pigeons hate it. It gets on their feet, they lick it off and it tastes foul. You can see it on the aerial and on the tin. I didn't put mesh around the array - I'm seriously thinking about upgrading the old but good ET190 / Xantrex with even better REC/Enphase. I've been keeping the skyrats away for the last few years by chucking rocks at them - it turns out that's not such a good idea. If you have these filthy things infesting your roof, don't chuck rocks at them or wait until they've completely fouled your array, call us to pigeon proof your system. See more

11.01.2022 'Angus Taylor says Australia has the world's largest carbon capture and storage project. Here's what he's not saying' (ABC NEWS) https://ab.co/35PCJdJ

09.01.2022 Positronic Solar doesn't supply cheap systems. We supply properly designed systems that are installed by our experienced, trained employees. Consequently we're ...often asked why our quotes are more expensive. Rick (who has been part of our team for eight years) was asked the question this week. Here's his response (apologies for the wall of text): .. thanks for sharing that quote .. there’s a number of red flags which I will explain firstly the "in house installer on the quote is listed as xxxxxx and likely sub contracts out the work again as he doesn’t list solar on his website The registered business address for xxxxx Solar is a residential house and as of 2 weeks ago without a solar panel on the roof ( not a good sign ) just google the address Their most recent ABN was registered two weeks ago https://abr.business.gov.au/ABN/View?abn=xxxxxxx with the original that listed on the quote set-up in 2018 so hardly 30+ years like the owner of Positronic this can be a sign that the original ABN has liabilities and they have started a new one to set-up new trading accounts not always but another red flag if there’s any issues good luck working out who to chase We see this business model a fair bit at the lower end the formula is to sell cheap and often and when something goes wrong they aren’t about or if you do get them they give you the run around and bounce you between the manufacturer and the contractor who did the job until you give up I might be wrong but it’s common I wouldn’t be giving them a $669 deposit we don’t require a deposit we do the job first then you pay the invoice .. we don’t need your money to pay for the last job .. Aside from all this the quote itself also doesn’t stack up . on the second last page you’ll see the assumptions they have made in getting the ROI numbers and system performance .. They have based their calculations on a system that’s 100% efficient which is total BS the most we go is 87% for string systems and on your roof with the shading from the council tree that’s not going anywhere I’ve derated it further to 82% and after a site visit likely more .. they say in January your system will do 66kWh .. . the simple math is to get 66kWh from an 8.2kW inverter it will need to be running at max output without any export limiting (which it will have on single phase ) for 8 full hours of the day .. this won’t happen.. never it’s a straight out fairy tail .. you’ll have days of cloud .. maybe weeks of rain and the shade will kill the string system so their numbers are all wrong .. They also have other rubbery figures in there as well like the 17c feed in tariff .. the most you can get at the moment is 10-15c and in the years ahead it will likely drop to below 10c .. most currently offer 10c .. we say 12c as we know Diamond will give this https://diamondenergy.com.au/electricity-rates-and-offers/ they also say 50% self consumption .. we say 40% this is another way to fudge the figures That gets me to the paste up it’s way too tight and leaves no edge zone as per the CEC install rules , when you look at the panel size they are 1052mm wide an on the flat roof they have them landscape so you have 2 rows 6 panels at the longest section and two rows of 4 on the other .. which is 6312mm and 4208mm of panels .. that longer section of roof edge to edge is about 6700mm that only leaves 400mm for the mounting hardware and the shorter part is 4430mm.. .. if you want the panels attached to the premium rail you will have 5 lots of clamps with 6 panels one between each panel that are 10-20mm each .. so you now have panels hanging over the edge and with landscape layout the rail will need to have end clamps on the rail that runs north to south and that’s just impossible and you have nothing but thin air to screw into it just doesn’t add up .. They have also put a blanket 15 degree pitch on all the panels and in no way factored in the shading and conveniently used the pic that shows a clear roof not the shaded one from the 25th of June this year which looks like it’s taken about midday like I did, why that’s important is for most of the morning this time of the year that whole array will be in partial shade .. those 9 panels north will be useless unless all are in the full sun and because they are using a cheap rail they can’t run them diagonally so again it won’t fit .. it even looks tight on their paste-up .. only the radiant solar racking we use has that flexibility we list radiant on our quote so no confusion .. The Fronius 8.2kW inverter has a MPPT range starting at 280 v and as soon as one of those 9 panels is shaded that string voltage will fall outside that MPPT window and it will run very poorly .. and that again will not help in getting anywhere near those promised performance numbers .. As far as the line items go they say 10 year warranty on the install but in the fine print it’s 5 years .. they even say contractors here as well to cover them if it ever fails .. The $1500 monitoring value for free ? the system logs faults like earth leakage of the array and you will get an email if this happens.. this is part of the design rules of an inverter so it might as well be $5000 worth of value as it means nothing we also get these same alerts but it’s not $1500 worth of value With the price they are basically using the sales model of covering the gear cost paying for a cheap contractor to install and making $1000 profit and leaving the customer with a poorly designed system that in no way will have a 1-2 year payback .. A string system will only disappoint and the reason they won’t be suggesting Enphase is not any old installer can install it it costs more for good reason and on your roof is the best solution .. a smaller Enphase system will do far better than the one quoted by xxxx solar I’m happy to drop by to show you what I’m talking about .. I’ve got a site visit at 9.30 so I’d be keen to put the drone up after that to show the shading .. I’d also come back Thursday earlier to prove the point I’m pretty disappointed that someone has offered this as a solution as it’s one of the most poorly designed systems I’ve seen with all the tricks being used to get your $$ ... Cheers Rick

07.01.2022 Here at Positronic we really like Enphase. It's efficient, it's safe and there is a wealth of data for both us and our customers, which appeals to my own solar ...nerdiness. The data isn't just available on the app, there are 'easter eggs' if you're handy with the code. Here's a graph put together by Julian, the son of one of our recent customers. "Your team recently installed solar at my folk's place. I'm impressed with the install and the system's capabilities. Nice work. No doubt you've seen all manner of integrations in your experience. I thought you'd like to see some of the historic data logging I'm doing out of interest. Note the N facing panels getting a little tree shadow from 9am - 9:45. That movie was really interesting. It's a very logical way of visualising production over time. For curiosity, my graph is running on 3 docker containers (Database, Graphing, and smarts for envoy API querying) on a home NAS. It's a work-in-progress though and very rough for now. " Here's a link to the movie: https://www.dropbox.com/s/kkj0oizi4youygo/Untitled.mov?dl=0 There's a whole suite of tools available at https://developer.enphase.com/

06.01.2022 Spring is coming...

04.01.2022 We're using IQ7A exclusively now with Longi, REC and Solaria 370W panels. IQ7+ are 290W inverters, IQ7A are 349W inverters. We're seeing a bit of improvement compared to IQ7+, typically an extra 0.1kWh per panel per day. That doesn't sound like much but over a year it's an extra 30kWh. The extra cost of the IQ7A is paid for in about two years. In this pvoutput comparison we've got two identical arrays using 18 x Longi 370 panels. Northcote is a flattish roof, Cannon Hill is 20 pitch so it has an advantage at this time of year. However you can see the 290W IQ7+ flatlining for quite a few hours while the IQ7A keep going, getting up to 320W each. https://pvoutput.org/comparelive.jsp

02.01.2022 Yep, this is another Enphase post... We installed nearly 12kW of Longi 370W panels with 32 x Enphase IQ7+ inverters at North Lakes this week. Yesterday it prod...uced 52kWh, not a bad result with north east and west panels on a fairly cloudy day. Carl's pretty impressed, "Thanks for all the info and install pics. Great to see! Very happy with the system so far. We have been keeping an eye on the enlighten app and impressed with the production already. Can’t wait to see what it can do in summer! Please also pass on our thanks to the install team for an excellent job - they smashed it on the day and it all looks incredibly well done."

01.01.2022 Another reason to like Enphase... This week we replaced a faulty 1.5kW system on the 55c Solar Bonus feed in tariff. The rules say you can replace the system a...nd keep the tariff as long as you don't increase the array by more than 5pc or the inverter size by any amount. This can be tricky if you try to do it with a string inverter. This weeks job had 8 x 200W panels and a 1.5kW inverter. Both the panels and the inverter were kaput. Replacing the system with 5 x 315W panels and a Fronius Galvo 1.5 would work, but not very well, the string voltage is too low and efficiency would be shot. It would cost $3800. We replaced the system with 5 x Aleo (made in Germany) 315W panels with 5 x Enphase IQ7+ 290W microinverters, complete with an Envoy to monitor consumption as well as production. It cost $3800. The panels each have their own inverter so output is optimised. We've found Enphase systems produce 10 - 14pc more than an identical string system. This is very important when there's another eight years of Solar Bonus FIT in front of us. The replacement system will pay for itself in 2 -3 years and by the time 2028 rolls around will have paid for itself three times over. In 2028, Janine can choose to expand her system which will be easy as all Enphase improvements are backward compatible with legacy systems. It will just be a case of adding more panels as required. Janine's happy, "Thank you. Was great to see the photos. Jack was very pleasant. Pleased to have the job done so quickly. Happy to recommend your services." See more

01.01.2022 Is solar worth it? Ian's bills were running at about $1200 per quarter. It's a pretty large house with ducted air conditioning, a pool and off peak hot water. W...inter power use is ~30kWh per day, summer use is ~50kWh per day with the air con being the biggest contributor in summer. We installed a 15kW system at the end of April with 44 x Longi 350W panels and 44 x Enphase IQ7+ microinverters. Most of the panels face north, with 15 panels facing west. The western end of the house has fairly heavy shading due to trees and aerials. The cost of the system was $20,950. Since installation it has produced an average of 57kWh per day, not bad for winter. Ian has just received his first full bill since the solar was installed for the months of May, June and July. The system produced 4940kWh in those three months, exporting 3355kWh, earning $408. 1585kWh of solar energy was self consumed, saving $423. The system has saved $831 in the first 3 (winter) months of operation. Hot water cost $136 in the quarter. We'll soon be installing a Catchpower to divert solar energy to the hot water system, which will reduce the bill further. Net savings will be $72 per quarter when you deduct foregone export revenue. The Catchpower will pay for itself in about three years. His total winter bill came to $83.27. Our quote predicted a bill of $73, which is within coo-ee of the result. We're predicting a negative bill of $700 over the full year. The projected payback time is 4 - 5 years. With an estimated 25pc return tax free, investment in solar is definitely worth it. To make the best investment possible ring Positronic Solar 3103 6018 and get a design and quote for a quality solar system.