you haven't got one of the you beaut systems where they can remotely switch off your system have you?

Maybe Rango's neighbours hooked into the panels to power their bush turkey-proof electric fence.

Every time the voltage drops, another turkey gets the chop.

Forgive me for getting back on topic momentarily, Got a piddly 1.2Kw system when I moved in 10 years ago. Needed a new inverter pretty early on cos that was the weak point in that model, but has been trouble free otherwise and has well paid for itself. This is a low power usage household.

I also decided to get solar panels some years ago. I was new to all this and didn't know which ones to pick because there were so many choices. The electricity bills were rising, and I wanted to do something good for the environment.

I found a website called solargenerators.to that was helpful. It has lots of reviews and advice about solar panels and generators. After reading there, I picked the EcoFlow Delta Pro; it seemed a good fit for my needs. It's been over two years, and everything's been going great. My electricity bills have gone down, and it feels good to know I'm helping the planet.

Got stock on the shelf but the price of panels is dropping fast, was no margin in them to start with but will be dumping money now just to move them on so we can make way for the new cheaper stock.

Its a race to the bottom, cheapest panels and inverters win the day, sell as many as you can as fast as you can.

Thank goodness we do it to save the planet...

our association club house has a 10 year old 30Kw system. 3 of the panels have shattered glass panels, another 11 have water damage, and about 90% of them have "snail trails". The local sparky has tagged them off as he feels they are a safety hazard due to water damage.
At the moment the suppliers are looking into warranty replacement of the damaged ones. The problem is availability of 10 year old panels. They need to be compatible with what is there.
So although there is a 25 year warranty, it doesn't mean much if the bits are no longer made.
Saying that, new panels are supposed to be more robust, and not so prone to "snail trails"


These snail trails are only supposed to reduce efficiency by 10%, so they reckon that falls within the guarantee.


We have our fingers crossed that this gets fixed under warranty!

Decrepit, there is a place that advertises on Gumtree that sells second hand panels that they recover from decommissioned installs. Maybe 2nd hand panels would be a solution?

Select to expand quote

FormulaNova said..
Decrepit, there is a place that advertises on Gumtree that sells second hand panels that they recover from decommissioned installs. Maybe 2nd hand panels would be a solution?

That's a possibility, if it was mine, but I very much doubt this committee would go for it. They'd prefer to fork out for a brand new system.
It's possible they'd go half way with us, but that's down the track, we should know more next week.

I can undestand the difficulties with replacing panels. The few that I have bought from this place that sells second hand panels vary a lot in their specs depending on what was on the market at the time and how much people wanted to spend. There are panels that generate over 90 volts (to their specs but sometimes higher in our conditions) and others that generate around 30 to 40 volts, although of a similar wattage. This matters a lot when trying to match a string of panels to an inverter. Some seem to generate useful power in relatively low light and others need much more direct sun.

It's pretty amazing that you can put together a cheap camping setup these days from old domestic panels and have quite a powerful setup.

If you want second hand panels just talk to an installer. They get heaps of them, the guy that did mine had a trailer full and said that was at least half of his work, replacing old panels. He got $10 each for them and they went to Africa to get re-purposed?

better having solar panels

We've just bought an MG4 electric. Charge it during peak solar, and run around the burb on sunshine.
2 year servicing or 40000kMs.
7year unlimited kM warranty.
Going to be cheap running from now on.