Solar Electrical Installation [more pics]
The third and final solar installation crew has come and gone. There were three crews in total:
And once again, we’ve got pics for you.
This is the Tigo Maximizer. Most solar installers won’t tell you about it (ours did), but this is a very valuable add-on that helps you get much more out of your solar system, both by ensuring that the weakest link in the chain doesn’t weaken the chain, and by helping quickly identify problems that need to be fixed.
This is the inverter. Solar energy is captured as DC power, but to be used on the grid it needs to be converted to AC power. Interestingly enough, there is a loss of power through this process. The “nameplate” capacity of our solar generation is 10 kw (the maximum allowed under Ontario’s MicroFIT program), even though the panels we have add up to almost 12 kw in capacity. That is because of the power loss. Other solar installers wanted to sell us solar panels that had a capacity of under 10 kw, not realizing that we would be missing out on a significant portion of income.
On the post closest to the house (closest to the connection to the grid), they install a breaker box. This controls the power to operate both poles of solar panels.
Here is how the underside of the panels look now, connected to one another. Yet another photo of the side you don’t usually see photos of.
This is the connection at the house. A second box needs to be installed in “parallel”, since the first box reads the amount of electricity we pay for to use in our house. And we don’t want to pay for the electricity we generate, the way one Australian couple found themselves doing – we want to be paid for it.
And these are the cats who are absolutely fascinated about what’s going on. As a matter of fact, I do have to share this photo. Why do you ask?
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