Harmon Solar Podcast
The solar energy sector in Arizona is currently oversaturated, which has led to a scarcity of transparency. In response, we've created a podcast to provide an honest perspective on going solar in the state. Join us as we explore the intricacies of utilities, equipment, processes, and more. Our primary objective is to educate and empower you to make informed decisions on your solar journey.
Harmon Solar Podcast
Let's Talk Solar 101.....Part #1
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Ready to unlock the mysteries of solar energy? Come join us as your hosts Ralph and Ben embark on a sunny journey through the fundamentals of solar. Confused between a power warranty and a production warranty? We've got you covered. Are you curious about the role of inverters in converting DC power into AC? Let's decrypt it together. From exploring the impressive Tesla Powerwall Battery System to debunking common misconceptions, we're here to guide you through the fascinating landscape of solar energy. We delve deep into all of the components of a solar system as we unravel pros and cons of the components, warranties, etc.
So, buckle up for an enlightening ride as we navigate the solar energy terrain, empowering you with knowledge and insights on every twist and turn. Let’s shine a light on solar energy together!
7:56 Understanding Solar Panel Warranties and Inverters
14:52 Comparison of Microinverters and String Inverters
22:17 The Tesla Inverter
23:25 What is Clipping?
25:34 Shading, Is it a real issue?
30:49 Batteries
39:13 Solar Panel Upgrades and Grid Integration
44:22 Understanding Grid Constraints and Solar Production
49:03 Factors to Solar Production
52:28 When is the Best Time to get Solar?
Welcome to another episode of the Harman solar podcast. I'm your host, Rob from mono. Vp is sales marketing at Harman solar. With me is my co-host, Ben Walsh Lager. He's also known as Mr Everything Ben great to be back.
Speaker 1Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 2Good to have you back Now. Okay, we got to do this again. Let's get it out of the way, let's get it out of the way. Okay, we started with a business card Yep. Then we went to a pamphlet, then we went to a scroll no, newspaper newspaper, then scroll, scroll, then adventure book, then readers digest Yep. Where are we today?
Speaker 1Actually some breaking news for you. Breaking news yeah, we're going backwards now.
Speaker 2I had to.
Speaker 1You know somewhat, give up a small role.
Speaker 2Okay.
Speaker 1We hired somebody else at Harman, so I'm no longer adding things. I took away one, so I guess, I'm I don't know down to like a PowerPoint presentation.
Speaker 2You're a PowerPoint presentation, so that's your business card, okay.
Speaker 1This card is just. Here's my PowerPoint going backwards?
Speaker 2Yeah, that's fine. Yeah, backwards is okay.
Speaker 1I think I should join the rest of the world and just be a normal one. One Mr, one thing.
Speaker 2Mr One business card. Here it is no, you actually approved me this week that you are Mr Everything because I asked youa question. I'm like how did you even know this? And you go because.
Speaker 1I'm Mr. Everything I started and didn't answer the question. I just said no, I just know things.
Speaker 2That was hilarious, I know you. So today, this this is this is a great one. This is the podcast. Yeah, this is it. I mean, this is what it's all about. This is why we started this. We are going to talk. It's called Solar 101.
Speaker 1This is the one we probably should have started with.
Speaker 2Probably. That's okay, though, but this is Solar 101. And I mean this is going to deep dive into what solar is and the proponents of solar, how you finance it, the same. I mean this is going to be a lot of fantastic information. You don't want to miss this one.
Speaker 1Yeah, we, we started off by doing all these little, tiny little subsections of solar. And then we realized wait a minute, we haven't talked about the big picture, let's talk big picture now. So that's what we're doing today Big picture.
Speaker 2And this is going to be part one of the two part episode that we're going to do on Solar 101, because it's such a big topic, there's so much in this. We want to take our time and go through the components and the first part and kind of understand what goes into a solar system and then also maybe just touch on you know the time to shine of, you know the sun's path and the different things and as myth and all that good stuff and what we need to put a panel in the perfect spot to produce energy. So that's what we're going to talk about in part one, and then the part two we'll get into like savings and purchase options and all those different kinds of things as well.
Speaker 1Yeah, this is all important information, so we want to go in depth with it. We don't want to just skim it.
Speaker 2Right, exactly, so let's get started with part one.
Speaker 1So usually we got a guy you got a guy, say I got a guy, you wore your, I got a guy sweater, I got a guy.
Speaker 2However, we don't have a guy today?
Speaker 1There's no guy here.
Speaker 2You know who we have today, Me and you, because we are experts in solar 101. I've done seminars, You've done seminars, so we're going to do a podcast seminar in a sense. Yeah, and we got a lot of great information to share. Buckle in, this is a good one, this is a good one. So we are. We are going to start on the basics of solar right. First thing I want to do is talk about so Harmon's solar. In case you you've never been to our facility or never seen it, I mean, this is actually the front of our building. It's really we live. We have a beautiful building at.
Speaker 1Harmon. I like to always tell people we're not just a you know guy working out of his mom's basement Like. We are an actual company, you know, with a building and you can Google us. We actually have solar in our back lot.
Speaker 2Yeah, I'm going to show you that, in a second too, we're a product of a product.
Speaker 1So we're a legit company.
Speaker 2We're locally owned, operated since 1975, where we started as a commercial electrical company. I got into solar in 2008. And, as you can, ben just mentioned, we practice what we preach. That's our. We're showing a picture of our array, our array in the back of our building, which basically powers our building.
Speaker 1I like walking in every morning and you have that display right on the front desk and see how much power you've generated. Here at the we have a little display of how much power have we generated and you know today and the year, so we can see how our system is doing every single day.
Speaker 2And we park our trucks under there. We put this up in 2012. It's an 80 K system and, like I said, it takes care of the building. So it's it's we practice, what we preach, I mean, which is important, right? If you're going to be living this world, you got to be part of it.
Speaker 2I have solar in my house Right when Ben gets his new house, I'm sure he'll have solar on it as well. So we know it's a big, it's a big benefit for us, and so as a business, we know that too. And here you go. Just wanted to show everybody a picture of that, and if you're listening on Spotify, I'm sorry you could just imagine it.
Speaker 2Yeah, Imagine. So we're going to go like I said we're going to start off real basic with the components of the solar system, Right? So there's a few different areas we're going to go into. I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to move past this one and we're going to start at the most basic thing that you need in a solar system Solar panel.
Speaker 1That's right, you've got to have a solar panel.
Speaker 2What's a solar panel? Right, so you look up the definitions. Basically it's a bunch of solar cells that are combined into one panel. That's what it is these cells are. Majority of these cells are typically made in China.
Speaker 2That's just a fact, most of them are made in China and then they're shipped out to different countries where they take them and they put them together as panels, I mean. So I know people are very big on I want US made this, I want US made that, and that's fantastic and I'm glad you do. But typically this stuff is shipped out of somewhere else, in a lot of its China, malaysia, some parts in Europe. We do have more manufacturers now that are in like North America, like Canada. There was solar sun power was in Mexico.
Speaker 1Yeah, I always tell people look around your house. Not everything in your house is American made, it's your point, your phone that you have in your hand right now. Whatever you're listening to right now probably not made in America. It's made somewhere overseas.
Speaker 2And remember I mean the statute for we. It was made in America. It doesn't have to typically all be made in America. You could be assembled in America, yeah. So, and that's typically what you have with solar panels they're assembled.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2They could be assembled in America. It doesn't mean the parts are actually made here.
Speaker 1You do have kind of those shady companies out there who are like yeah, all of our stuff is made in America, all the panels the inverters are racking. Everything that we put on your house is made in America.
Speaker 2And it's like not so much. Let's be honest with your customers here.
Speaker 1You know it might be assembled in a few spots in America, but not necessarily made in America.
Speaker 2So what I'm going to show here next is this is a. Every panel has a data sheet. It's a cut sheet. We call it a cut sheet as a data sheet, and what I'm showing you guys here on YouTube is the Hyundai solar module data sheet, and it has a lot of basic information.
Speaker 1Yeah, this isn't just the only panel we offer, we have other panels. So this is just kind of an example. So don't, you know, just assume this is the only one we have.
Speaker 2Right. But we all you know Hyundai is one of those brand names. Everybody knows what Hyundai is or who Hyundai is. You've just seen the Hyundai cars. I mean that came from Korea, south Korea. They got into the solar business and they make a very good panel. So it's just brand recognition. A lot of times You'll see companies like LG, who used to be around. Panasonic used to be around. I don't think they're being made here anymore. Hyundai Hanwha has become a big name in the U? S for solar panels REC. Y'all know REC. I mean they got in the solar business. Ge was in the solar business. I'm not sure if they're still in it or not, but there's a lot of companies that have gotten into the solar panel business and some have gotten out.
Speaker 2But yeah, so this is just a prime example. Whenever we look at a solar panel, we give this also to a customer on an appointment, but it just, it just shows a lot of good, detailed information.
Speaker 1Yeah, it's all the technical aspect. You know the heat degradation. How much is producing warranty information, things like that?
Understanding Solar Panel Warranties and Inverters
Speaker 2I wanted to hit on the warranty. I think I gave you a sheet right, Probably, so focus on the warranty. It's actually, I think it's a 25 year. It talks about a power warranty. It talks about a basically a panel warranty and what those mean.
Speaker 1Like bumper to bumper warranties in your car like that Kind of I know, I guess.
Speaker 1I know the answer to that yeah, yes and no. So maybe you want to explain. So the warranty you get to look at your warranty. There's two aspects of the warranty how is the panel going to hold up? Is it going to break? Is it going to bend? Is it going to shift? You know things like that. And then how is it going to actually perform? Because that's probably the biggest thing there is. If it's up on your roof, you don't want it to fall apart. Obviously you don't want it to crack, and you know. So that's that's not the production warranty. The production warranties what's most important, because that affects your bills. So when you're looking at warranties, you should probably look at what type of warranty Am I getting? Am I getting a production warranty or am I getting a manufacturer warranty Right On the actual equipment?
Speaker 2They call it a linear warranty now, don't they the the? It's a degrade so much per year over 25 years. And I think, for instance, this Hyundai panel. I want to say it. It degrades down to 85% of output, which is pretty standard over 25 years. So what that means is, by year 25, it's producing 85% of what it was today.
Speaker 1Yeah, and don't get hung up on that. That doesn't necessarily mean by year 26,. It all of a sudden goes to zero. We laugh. But we actually have those conversations like well, what happens after? It's like, does it stop producing? Do I need new panels? Like no, that's just saying on average, the testing that they've done. It's saying it's going to be about 85%. Who knows, you might have 90% or it. You know it could be kind of around 85%. It doesn't mean it's going to drop off to zero after that.
Speaker 2But what I, what I would say is it's pretty standard today for modules to have 25 year power, power and performance warranties. That we're talking about. If you get someone showing you a module that has like 12 years, I mean that's five years ago.
Speaker 1Yeah, I remember when I first started the industry, the warranties were huge difference. You know you would have, you know, 20 year warranties and five year warranties. So it's like right.
Speaker 2So it's changed.
Speaker 1Yeah Now, now everyone's pretty much aligned.
Speaker 2They're all if somebody shows you a 12 year warranty on a panel, you need to really block out that, because everything out there I would say 25 years is a standard today. Yeah. And then when you talk warranty so for instance, this is my favorite living in Arizona is you have a lot of people live on golf courses and there's a lot of bad golfers out there yeah, I'm one of them. And if you're on a golf course and the panel gets broken by a golf ball, it's kind of outside of the warranty.
Speaker 1Yeah, it happens. I actually talked with a customer a couple of months ago that, looking at their aerial views, I noticed a lot of, because they called in and said hey, I think my panels are under producing, so naturally we take a look at it and go so you live by a golf course and you have a whole bunch of little dots all over your panels. I see he goes yeah, I usually find golf balls in my backyard and go well, that's probably why your panels are under producing, because they're getting bombarded by all those bad golfers.
Speaker 2Yeah, so the manufacturer's going to be too keen on replacing that panel for half a free Right.
Speaker 2Right. So just to understand that, the one thing about Harman is when we install it we give a five year. Basically there's like a five year warranty where if anything does happen to it, we'll pay for the part, and the part is paid by the manufacturer but we'll pay for all the labor to come out and do all the stuff that has to do After five years. It's between you and the manufacturer and it depends on the manufacturer. They're all different. Some cover all the labor, some cover part of the labor. So just to understand that, everybody's out there saying, yeah, it's bumper to bumper, it's not yeah.
Speaker 2Manufacturers don't work that way.
Speaker 1Make sure you really look at the manufacturer and read into the warranties and what they are, yeah, but the nice thing about Harman is that, even if you don't know because I know you're dealing with Harman and then you have your manufacturer of your Hyundai panels. You're like, who do I call? Just call us. Yeah, we'll take care of it. We're not necessarily the one who is going to be doing the replacement or the cost for it, because we'll probably reach out to our suppliers and manufacturers to do all that. But I keep preaching to people. It's one number to call. Call us, we'll take care of it, because I know there's a lot of solar companies out there. If something breaks they go, oh, contact the manufacturer, we sold it or we installed it, but after that it's out of our hands, it's all on you. But we're not like that.
Speaker 2So back to the 101 theme. You need sun for solar. The light hits that panel and it produces DC power, direct current power. Now homes run on AC. So there's, a problem there, the guy to convert that DC to AC. And how do we do that? Well, I'm glad you asked, I did, I asked, you did you asked. We have what's called an inverter in the system, so this is the next component. We're going to talk about our inverters and they do exactly what I just said. They convert DC power to AC usable home power.
Speaker 1Yeah, from direct current to alternating current.
Speaker 2And there's different types of inverters and we sell them all.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2And there's positives about all of them and there's probably some negatives about all of them, and we're going to kind of go into the differences and what that is.
Speaker 1I hate hearing from other sales rep from other companies who say like, oh, you don't want that type of inverter, you want this Like. Well, how do you know what I want?
Speaker 2I can give you an argument for or against every one of these Exactly.
Speaker 1There's pros and cons to each.
Speaker 2And what you have are people selling one inverter and they only give you the pros for that and the cons for everything else, and I can come in your door after you're done talking to him and tell him why you shouldn't get that inverter. Yeah, it's a personal decision what you want. It's a cost to each one, so it just depends what you're really looking to do.
Speaker 1Which is nice about Harmon, because we're not going to say you don't ever get this type of inverter Right. We're going to present you with options. We'll say, hey, depending on your lifestyle or what you want and costs and everything, here's your options, let's figure out what works best for you.
Speaker 2That's right. So, and this next slide for those of you on YouTube. So I'm going to show you a couple of different ones that we offer to you and kind of how they're set up. So I'm going to start with the most, probably the most popular inverter over the last, I would say, 18 months. In Arizona, inverters go through cycles. Oh yeah, it's really funny because it's all about you know who's offering the best price to the installers, what people think is cool, and all of a sudden you see these cycles where we'll go from. This one goes for 18 months and the next 18 months it's the next one, yep, so, like I said, I can sell you any of them, but people seem to gravitate to one and then they ride that horse and then, once that horse gets tired, they go to that next one and they ride that horse. So I'm going to show you all the horses.
Speaker 1Yeah, I've been in the industry for about eight years and I've seen it shift maybe about three times during that time.
Speaker 2Yeah, I could think of even a couple more.
Speaker 1Yeah, it's kind of crazy Like okay, well, if that's what you want, then that's what you want, but at least you know the pros and cons to everyone.
Comparison of Microinverters and String Inverters
Speaker 2So I'm going to start with the current horse. This is the horse that's been going on for about 18 months and there's a shift coming. Yeah, but this is the horse that's been going on for 18 months and this is a good product, right? So it's an end phase microinverter. End phase, good company microinverter. It's a great product. Let me explain what a microinverter is. So if you look at the top right of the slide, you see that black microinverter that attaches to the panels underneath the back end of the panel the individual individual panels.
Speaker 2Every panel has its own little microinverter Really cool, right? So that really means that you can actually register and see how every panel in your system individually is doing through your monitoring app. Right, if you're a techie, if you're an engineer, you just got a big smile on your face. If you're a normal person, you're not that you're not normal.
Speaker 1if you're an engineer, you got to say that. Wait a minute. Disclaimer to all engineers out there.
Speaker 2But if you're the common person, the average person, that's great, it's awesome. We have no idea what that means, but you might look at it once. I looked at my app once. Yeah, and I never looked at it again. Yeah, because I just got better things to do than see how my solar panel is doing today.
Speaker 1I talk with people all the time. We were like monitoring every individual panel and weather cycles and the clouds going over here and this is doing that Like okay.
Speaker 2And your sales guy that only sells this is going to give you all that. This is very important because it's level, it's a panel level monitoring. Yep, wow, who cares? It's still a great product. But they're also going to sell you on this next piece and that is shading. Yeah, and this panel, this inverter, is going to help because when you get shade on a panel, it can tend to produce less. And with this inverter so let's say, this panel here has inverter and it's getting shaded, but this one here is going to invert and it's not getting shaded this one might produce less. This one keeps doing what it's doing. Right, because panels work off the sun and that's important. In a second I'm not going to I'm going to tell you why it's important, but not just yet. But it's a big selling point on end phase is that every panel has its own inverter. I'm going to give you the negative. Now it's 160 degrees on your roof in the summer and you have a mechanical inverter.
Speaker 1Yeah, equipment a little piece of equipment like 40 of them. Yeah, if you have 40 panels, you have 40 of them on your roof, on your roof Now.
Speaker 2When Enphase first started, they had a lot of issues with inverters and but they I'll give them this They've improved these inverters, sure, and they perform a lot better. They've got a 25 year warranty on them. It's a great product. It's also the most expensive product, just so you know. There's a price for everything. So that's product, a great product. Most expensive, has the benefit that it protects you from some shading and also panel of a monitoring. Those would be the keys to that inverter. You then have the step sister of this, and for us it's the TGO, it's Solar Edge does it as well and it's called the string inverter with optimizers. That's a mouthful yeah, so a string inverter. What does that mean? So panels are put up on the roof in strings, and let me explain that. Well, you know what? Let you explain that.
Speaker 1Go ahead. It's pretty easy to explain.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 1You know you have your array that may have you know 10 panels so they have to be strung together because all that electrical while has to be fed to your, your home, so they tie them all together. Think Christmas lights. They're, they're all strung together In one strand of Christmas lights on your, on your roof.
Speaker 2So, and they have like I think this the some tie goes, I think they have four output strings.
Speaker 2So basically you can you know, per inverter you can string, let's say, four strings. So I can have four strings of 10 or four strings of 11, or you can have a string of four here and a string of 10 here and a string of five here. So I mean that's what we mean by when we say a string inverter, versus a micro inverter, which is per panel. This is per string. Now, what they also do on this string inverter is they put on something called an optimizer. Optimizer looks exactly like the end phase that I just showed you. It goes on back of every single panel and what it does is it optimizes, optimizes. Right, it's Mr Optimizer. He's going to, he doesn't, he doesn't make your panels optimistic.
Speaker 1What he does. It's cloudy up and my panel say they're not.
Speaker 2My panel say it's a blue sky? No, so what it does is is if there is shade. So here's the difference with a string inverter If there is shade on, let's say, two of the eight panels in a string, it affects all eight panels, right.
Speaker 1I always tell people think of.
Speaker 2Christmas lights, you know again.
Speaker 1Great, yeah, do you take one bulb out? The whole thing goes out. Yep, that's a string inverter, micro inverter.
Speaker 2You take one bulb out, just that one bulb is out, and that that is the biggest difference. Now, what optimizers do is, if they start seeing shading, they will optimize the output of the panel and it actually fights against that shade and doesn't give you that big negative impact that you would see without it. So that that's what an optimizer is. So that's kind of like the string inverters little sister's best friend that helps you get into the same playing field as a micro inverter.
Speaker 1I have string inverters on my house Like a hybrid.
Speaker 2Yeah, it's a hybrid and this is exact setup I have in my house and it works great. A fights against shade and all that it's. I don't have any issues.
Speaker 1Yeah, cause you do have a big tree, I think out front, right, I now have.
Speaker 2I now have four big palm trees on my West that weren't that big when I put solar on seven years ago, then I now have to decide whether I'm going to cut down or not, and they're starting to look if they're going to come down.
Speaker 1Yeah, you're looking at your those APS bills and going well, late day, late in the day, right Cause of the.
Speaker 2West and it's I lose some production in the later part of the day. So those are the decisions you have to make Right, and for me, I'm going to have to make that decision. If I had a micro inverter, it still would impact the micro inverter because I'd still going to all of them get shade.
Speaker 1Right.
Speaker 2Yeah, it's just my situation, Just that's me.
Speaker 1So if you do have a house that has, you know, partial shading because of trees around, you know, consider that. Don't just be stuck into one type of inverter with the the quote that you're getting.
Speaker 2Right, and this, this inverter, I would say price wise, is a step down from the micro inverter. It's a little cheaper depending who you're dealing with, but I know for us it's a little cheaper, yeah, but again, another really good product that we use has really good monitoring as well. You can you panel level monitor because you have optimizers so you have to have that. So it's same kind of monitoring as end phase to only really the only difference is that it's run off a string inverter, the big unit that you see in the in the picture here. That will be on your wall in a garage or outside by where you see us. Wherever you put the equipment, you'll actually have that piece of equipment there, versus not having that a piece of equipment on the wall because it's up on the module.
Speaker 1Yeah, I always tell people when they're deciding between string inverters and micro inverters. You know cause. There are pros and cons to each inverter is going to go down, it's going to happen, right, you know. Hopefully it's during the warranty period, but it's just a matter of how many times do you want that to happen?
Speaker 2You know, string inverter.
Speaker 1you're having one inverter, one or two inverters on your, on your home. It's going to break down. It might just be one phone call because, hey, my inverters went down and he had replaced. Come out and fix it. Micro inverters Now you have 40 tiny inverters so you might have to make multiple calls because, hey, I just noticed two of them went down. You know two of them are not reporting. I need those fixed. So a couple of months later, up a different two went down. So I need to get those fixed. So you know it's going to happen just as a matter of when you're right.
The Tesla Inverter
Speaker 2I mean, and the warranty on a string inverter, so those optimizers that go into the panels, 25 years, that string inverter that's on your wall, typically 12 years, 12 and a half years on average is what they warranty. But you can buy an extended warranty to 25 years so you can get the 20 same kind of warranty covered you have with the micro inverter. Your call yeah. Then there's the third product. Now, this product is newer and it's older, makes sense, and it's newer.
Speaker 1Yeah, it is newer yeah.
Speaker 2So we talk about Tesla. So Tesla has a really interesting string inverter that is really starting to hit the market today. I'll let you talk about it more because you know, yeah, I do know more, I knew more about it, and there's a lot of cool things about this Number one it looks, looks cool. Everything Tesla makes just looks cool. Cybertruck came out today. Yeah, I saw that.
Speaker 1Except for the Cybertruck.
Speaker 2And the Tesla makes looks cool. Yeah, that is the ugliest truck ever, but it's got a lot of cool features. Yeah, it looks cool, it really does. But this is the Tesla inverter, and so this will play into batteries as well, and we'll talk about that next. But this inverter, it's a. It's a string inverter. It really is, but it's a high efficiency string inverter. It actually is more efficient than the end phase or the T go.
Speaker 1Okay.
Speaker 2Interesting, right yeah, it is liquid cooled.
Speaker 1Interesting as well.
Speaker 2That's really interesting?
Speaker 1Yeah, because most of them are fan cooled. They're all fan cooled.
What is Clipping?
Speaker 2And they tend to get hot. And when they get hot they start to clip. And what that means. What's clipping and not the clippers from Los Angeles? What clipping is is that all of a sudden, your production will basically it'll flat line. It won't get better, get worse. It kind of flat lines for a little bit because it's got too hot. We call it derating, we call it clipping, whatever you want to call it. But that can happen with the other inverters because it gets so hot.
Speaker 1Yeah, we always had that conversation with customers. You know you might have a 10 kilowatt system but then you gotta look at well, what are my inverters gonna be doing?
Speaker 2Right, so a really really good point, right?
Speaker 1Just because it's 10 kilowatts on my panels doesn't mean I'm gonna be getting 10 kilowatts from the actual inverters.
Speaker 2So not only will it clip because of heat. Now that you're your point, which is a really another good point we should hit right here is you get the customer or you get the salesperson, and they say I'm gonna sell you a 450 watt panel and I'm gonna put a N phase microinverter on it.
Speaker 2That's great. It's only gonna produce like a 400 watt panel because those inverters can't handle a panel at 450 watts. So whether you pay for the 450 watt or buy a 400 watt, you're basically getting to get the same production. It's all smoke and mirrors because there's a thing called clipping Very important. Put that in your little notebook. It's called clipping with solar. It's very important. You can put the biggest panel in the world you want. It's only gonna be as good as the inverter and the inverter's gonna only handle about 400 or so. Let's get into the commercial stuff. Commercial stuff is made to handle 550 and those things we're not talking commercial, we're talking your house.
Speaker 2If you go much more than a 400, you're basically paying just to say you have a 400 plus but you're really not getting the benefit of it. So back to the Tesla. So it's liquid cooled. So in the northeastern part of the country and the north part of the country it'll help warm it up. In our part of the country it helps keep it cool. Nice. So that's a big deal. I mean that means it's gonna be more efficient, because it's gonna run efficient temperature-wise.
Shading, Is it a real issue?
Speaker 2It has about a 97% efficiency at its peak. That's pretty good. And starting off the day it starts off at about 93, it gets to 97 and then goes down from there. Versus all these other things that we've talked about, it's higher, it's better efficiency. So it's a string inverter, though that's what it is. It doesn't have optimizers. You can't have optimizers with this, so shading is no go. So let's talk about shading, and this is an important conversation and it's funny. We just had Tesla in the office yesterday and we were talking through all this stuff. 93% of their customer base does not have shading issues.
Speaker 2Think about that 93% 93% and think about their customer base. Let's just talk Arizona, because that's all we're focused on. How many of you have a ton of shading on your roof? I know I don't. I have trubs and bushes. I'm gonna stick with 93, I could go 95, but I'm gonna say 93% of you probably don't really have impacts of shading. So a microinverter, an optimizer, does nothing for you. You don't need it. It's not, there's no shading that's gonna hurt your setup. And if you do have a little shading, what you can do with a string inverter is let's say there's an area of your roof there's a little shading and we have to put panels there. So let's say we just put two panels there on a string and then we put the majority of them away from the shade. There's really no impact. So it takes down to string of two. You can adjust the design to offset if there is some shading. But the reality is in Arizona, especially 90 plus percent, 93 plus percent of you you don't have a shading issue.
Speaker 1So what we're trying to do is educate you as the home buyer. If a sales rep from another company comes in and is pitching you these inverters with optimizers and all this stuff and you look at your home and you go hey, I was watching the Harmon Solar podcast and they told me that since I don't have shading, I don't really need all this stuff. Can you get me cheaper and better inverters?
Speaker 2Yeah, absolutely See what they say, and so I'm here to tell you that, most of the time, based on the stats, a microinverter is overkill. An optimizer is overkill Most of the time, majority of the time. Again, your situation is your situation. I don't know your situation, but I'm gonna tell you. Take a look at your situation, understand, like Ben just said, and know that you don't wanna pay for overkill. Because here's the cool thing this is the cheapest inverter by far. The pricing that Tesla has come out with this inverter is rocking the industry. Right now. They don't know what to do because, number one, it's a really good inverter. It's highly efficient, it's liquid cooled and it's really cheap. So people are starting to go. What do we do? Because Tesla has this way of just kind of doing that right and they're doing it with this.
Speaker 2Now, the only negative that I can tell you and they'll spin it into a positive, but I can give you the negative is it only has a 12 and a half year warranty. You don't get a 25 year warranty and there's no option to upgrade to a 25 year warranty because it's so cheap. They're not offering an extended warranty. They're like it's so cheap, Just buy a new one, just buy another one, and you're still gonna pay less than you would have.
Speaker 2So that's their pitch highly efficient, it's a Tesla product. It's a real well made product. It's liquid, cool, which is the coolest thing in the world.
Speaker 1Yeah, great for SRP customers. Yeah, because in SRP, as we talked about before, it's very, very hard to show a savings just because of how SRP bills after solar. So you really really need to cut a lot of costs not quality, but costs in SRP. So this is a good option for those customers.
Speaker 2Yeah, so these are your three. I mean, I'm showing you three products, but these are your three basic setups that you have out there, right? A string inverter, string inverter with optimizers and a micro inverter. Those are your three. Those are the three things.
Speaker 1Those are only three. Yeah, that's it, unless there's something else out there?
Speaker 2No, I don't think so. So I mean, these are the things that you should know of. So understand when someone comes and pitches you solar, these are the options, that's how they work. Know what's best for you, not what's best for them, because that's all they sell, right, right. So that's why, at Harman, we have a full tool belt of inverters. We're gonna put whatever's best for you and know that if you want a micro inverter, they're great products. We love Enphase, love Tego, love Tesla. We'll sell you any one of them, but I'm not gonna over. I don't wanna oversell you when I don't need to.
Speaker 2It just depends on what your needs and wants are.
Speaker 1Right, everyone's gonna be different, just let us know.
Speaker 2So that's inverters. The next piece kind of ties into the other's loan, but it's an important one, right? Because these are these sales?
Speaker 1guys, it's the brains of your system.
Speaker 2Basically this is how they train them and they try to sell you a certain type of equipment and they try to tell you it's the best.
Speaker 1I won't name the company that was with before Harman. I was there for about three months. Then I read through all the nonsense. They didn't do a good job of training me on the equipment. They said this is what we sell, these are the panels, these are the inverters Yep, go out. And I was like, okay, I feel like I need more information on this. But that's not what they were about. They're all about their bottom line and making money and really don't care what their customers are like. Then I found Harman and was like it's actually a little bit different in the industry. Let's actually start caring about people and doing it the right way.
Speaker 2Yeah, I agree. Every time we've brought on a new person, they always say why are you training me on the equipment? No one ever has done that before. Because you need to understand this If you. How do you sell something? You don't know what it?
Speaker 1is which is scary. Right, like you were selling this before Right that just goes to show you.
Batteries
Speaker 2So you got to be careful. Harman's World Podcast educating you, empowering you, that's what we do, all right, so let's talk batteries. So we also sell multiple batteries. Yeah, and phase that micro-inverter. They make a battery. They make little.
Speaker 1Three, whatever three K batteries that you can stack Yep Yep Small, medium, large, basically.
Speaker 2TGO makes a battery system, but we're pretty big on the Tesla battery, the Powerwalls. So this is the Powerwall. The Powerwall, as far as I'm concerned, and all the batteries we've looked at, gives you the most benefit. It's got the best technology. Tesla is trying to create this universe right. Where, hey, you buy a Tesla car, Tesla car charger, Tesla solar system, Tesla inverter, Tesla battery all on one app. Yeah, you know that's where this world is going and Tesla's kind of ahead of it right now. They don't have solar panels right now, but they are talking about potentially starting to make those again some day out in Buffalo in their giga plant. But right now, that's what their thought process is.
Speaker 2And I like that thought process, because that's where we're all going. Everyone's going to everyone's following. But the battery is a very interesting thing and we will you know what, one of these days here we'll do a podcast just on the batteries, because I think we can really dive in deep on batteries. That's going to be another long one, for sure.
Speaker 2Yeah, that's a long one, but it's a good one and we have to bring in an engineer for that, so that'll be interesting because you really need to have that expertise to talk these details of these batteries. But the Tesla battery very cool product. They have the Powerwall. They came out with the Powerwall one, then they came out with the Powerwall two, then they came out with the Powerwall plus and now they've got the Powerwall three coming out. So Powerwall three is actually coming out in January of 24.
Speaker 1Yeah, they kind of very discreetly pushed it out there.
Speaker 2They have.
Speaker 1Not a whole lot of advertisement. They're just kind of like hey, guess what, we got this.
Speaker 2And you know what? Herman Solar actually has got availability to him right now through a pilot program for Tesla.
Speaker 1Are we allowed to say that no, we'll edit it.
Speaker 2But yeah, so that's, and I'll explain the differences. But the Powerwall one was just their first gen check at it.
Speaker 1Yeah, the Powerwall two, I'll be honest, when the Powerwall one came out, it was fine yeah it was, but it wasn't great.
Speaker 2No, it wasn't great, it was industry.
Speaker 1Looking at the price point and what it does and or what it did and everything I was like eh, I get it. It's the first, it's you know generation one. You never buy Gen one Right, that's just me. I would never buy Gen one yeah but then the Powerwall two came out. I was like, okay, it made improvements. It made improvements. It was a little bit better. You know, pricing was great, pricing was good on it, so it got better. So I'm curious to see Powerwall three, how that's gonna go. So when?
Speaker 2you went to Powerwall two, which we still sell. The Powerwall two requires other equipment to be on the wall Powerwall battery. You've got a gateway. You've got all this stuff and all this equipment that you have to put up there. Great product. You got to have the space to put it up. Works really well with you, especially if you have an existing solar system.
Speaker 2We'll sell you a Powerwall two, because that's what really goes with an existing system, because it works off the inverters, off your system. But then they came out with what's called the Powerwall plus, and that's what you see here on the left side. The Powerwall plus has an inverter as part of it. So no longer are you looking at end phase or you're looking at TGO everything's going through the inverter, off the battery. It's a 7.6 inverter don't worry about what that is, but it's an inverter as part of the battery. Well, it can see how it's stacked. It looks really nice, but everything runs through there, which is really kind of cool.
Speaker 2And then, instead of putting all this extra equipment on the wall, you don't need it you just have this one band that goes around your meter and it basically backs up that entire panel and on your entire panel, your electric panel, it'll do backup. For Now. That can be deceiving because, again, we're Arizona. If you put one battery back up your entire panel and you turn the AC on an hour later you don't have battery. So, we all know that. So if your main purpose is ever to back up your AC because of a power outage, yeah, you need more than one battery.
Speaker 1That's probably the biggest misconception out there in the whole industry. They're great in cooler climates or coastal climates where the temperatures don't vary extreme, but here in Arizona our temperatures are pretty extreme. Wintertime we'll get down to 30s and summer in the 130s, right and we have a great power grid here.
Speaker 2We don't have a lot of outages, probably not. Maybe we do about in the east side of town, it seems, because of the storms and stuff, but typically even there the outskirts do have outages.
Speaker 2But in the Metro Phoenix area we don't have a lot of outages, so we have a really good grid. Where this really benefits is in two places. Number one, if you just want to have a backup system in case something happens. Maybe you have an elderly parent that needs an oxygen tank that runs all the time, or you need a fridge to run medicine. Keep medicine cool, Whatever that is you're diabetic and you have to keep your penicillin and penipsoin. I know what you're talking about.
Speaker 1Yeah, that stuff. I had those conversations with customers who were like, oh no, if the grid goes down for like a week, I want to be able to back up my entire house.
Speaker 2I'm like maybe in the early spring that could be possible for a few days here and there, but in the summertime grid goes down.
Speaker 1It's, yep, it'd be tough. Your batteries can be drained. And now what?
Speaker 2So where this battery does really play well is what we call peak shaving.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2So what do we mean by that? Well, we've talked about, we've talked to SRP and stuff. So they're in the middle part of the day when the utilities are charging the highest amount for kilowatt hours, so where they're all of a sudden it's 32 cents from APS or SRP to buy your power. What you can do is have your battery set, a Tesla set, to start feeding power off the battery and offsetting that high cost usage. So you charge it in the morning.
Speaker 1Yeah, it's best time to do it In the morning, when you're not using a whole lot of power. Maybe you're gone at work. That power has to go somewhere. It's going to go not to the grid, but to the battery to charge.
Speaker 2It charges it and then at four o'clock, when you need it, it kicks on and it starts giving you that cheap power instead of buying that expensive power from the utility, and then you see the impact in your bill Makes a lot of sense. I think these are. You could do the math. I think these are 13.5 kilowatt. They're 13.5 K batteries and you can do the math and it comes up with where I think this will give you 480 kilowatts a month or something like that. I can't remember the exact number. We did it yesterday, but it's a good amount of power that you can use to offset peak times and that's where you can save money with the battery. That's the real play for a battery. If one of these will start an air conditioner again, it won't last very long.
Speaker 1It'll start. It'll start the AC, which is a big deal when you think about it because other battery companies out there won't start. Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 2But my recommendation when doing a battery is you do at least two. You put two batteries into the system. It's a little bit more that you can handle with two batteries. We've done three. I just quoted four today. It just depends on your situation and what you want to do.
Speaker 1That's the biggest thing yet, and in some cases, not everyone needs a battery, which I know everyone in the solar industry is like. What did he just say?
Speaker 2But the reality is they're getting cheaper.
Speaker 1They've actually come down.
Speaker 2They've come down about 25% in the last year and a half.
Speaker 1Yeah, they're getting better, they're getting cheaper. So, eventually you'll get to that point where we're like, okay, well, now it makes sense that if you are getting solar, then batteries would be kind of a good thing to have, no matter what.
Speaker 2So, like I said, the Powerwall 2 has the inverter, that 7.6 inverter. The Powerwall 3 has an 11K inverter, which means you can now put even a bigger system on that battery. And that's when I start talking to the inverter size. That just tells me how many panels I can actually put on a roof. I'm not gonna get into that right now, but an 11K inverter on a battery is pretty cool. Put a nice size system and with that collar and stuff, it actually avoids you having to upgrade panels and things like that upgrade service panels. It helps you get around all that. So the Powerwall 2 and the Powerwall 3, or Powerwall Plus and the Powerwall 3, very cool.
Speaker 2So we're not gonna get into more detail. We're gonna do a Powerwall podcast where we will get into the details. So stay tuned for that. But just understand how you use a battery. So basically it's as a backup power or if you're gonna peak shave and you wanna save money during peak times. That's the purpose of a battery. Okay, so now let's just go on a couple other parts. We just talked about the electrical panel. So obviously this is part of the system as well. So you have a solar panel producing DC power in one inverter that switches it to AC power.
Speaker 1And that power has to go somewhere.
Solar Panel Upgrades and Grid Integration
Speaker 2It's gotta go somewhere. Where's it gonna go? It's gonna go to your panel. Your panel, ta-da, so it's gonna go into your panel. We usually typically have a 40 or 60 amp breaker in your box that we put in and it feeds in there and it starts to be used by you as you use power.
Speaker 1And this is an important aspect of the audit. If you watched our audit podcast, this is one of the main things that we look at. Can your panel handle the solar system? Is it too old? Does it need to be upgraded? Is there space available? Things like that. We need to know what we're dealing with here, so very important to take a look at that panel when we go out there.
Speaker 2Right, absolutely so. If you have like a little 100 amp panel or 150 amp panel or you got no space in your 200 amp, I mean we probably have to look at replacing it or upgrading it or we'll figure that out.
Speaker 1Or if you put a power wall plus in there or something like that, maybe we can get around it Again there's a lot of caveats to all this, and it's not uncommon for your sales rep to go out there and say, hey, no, I'm gonna take a look at your panel Right At the point of when he's at the appointment. So it's okay, just let him go out there and take a look.
Speaker 2Yeah, you want him to do that. You want him to take a picture of it because you want him to look at you and say, hey, you're gonna probably need an upgrade. I'm not 100% sure, but let's account for it now just in case versus me coming back to you saying, hey, I gotta put an electrical panel upgrade. And now you're talking. You know what $2,800 or whatever it is.
Speaker 1I'd rather have everyone all the information out there than the customer. Before they sign, you know, say hey, it's included in the price, the electrical panel upgrade, things like that, because I don't want you to sign and then have us come out there and go oh yeah, by the way, now I need to get more money from you. Because I didn't look at the panel, so and I'm gonna throw one thing in there.
Speaker 2I'm just gonna do it at this point. I just might as well do it If somebody's done some electrical work on your panel and they didn't permit it or they didn't do what they were supposed to do. And for that case, maybe they threw an EV charger in your garage and they didn't permit it, or maybe they added another room for you and they didn't permit it. Be careful, because when we go solar, we have to pull permits for everything and they have to come out and inspect it, and when they see something that was done that's not permitted, guess what happens?
Speaker 1Because we go out there, we take a look at everything and we just assume that there's permits. We assume that whoever did your electrical work is knowing what they're doing. So then when we go and apply for permits, the permit officers come back and go hey, what's this? Who installed this? Because we don't have any record of this being in our permit and that's gonna cost you money and that's gonna cost us.
Speaker 2Because they'll never turn the solar system on until that unpermitted structure or unpermitted thing is either fixed or taken down or whatever they require.
Speaker 1So just know that going into it If you're going solar and you live in unpermitted heaven don't go solar or get it permitted before going solar, which we can help out with, but just let us know first For a fee.
Speaker 2Okay, and then we typically will install that what's called an electrical smart meter. The smart meter basically any excess electricity that you don't use, the solar electricity that you don't use, it'll flow back onto the utility grid. This meter measures that, so it's basically taking all the unused power. Hey, you've produced too much power. You need to go to the grid because we can't keep you here and you don't have a battery, and so there's nowhere to put it. Go back to the grid. It has to go through this meter, and so this meter will then basically monitor all that for you, and that's how you get into the credits and different things that you use with the utility. You have to have this meter in place, but it's part of the system.
Speaker 1Yeah, here's a little secret for you. You know we talked about your NFA's and TGO and Tesla. You have those monitoring apps where you can see how much you're producing. Your utility company also has that ability to see how much you're producing. So if you have solar, it's not on your bills, but you can actually log on to your account and you can see your actual production.
Speaker 1And it should match your monitoring app. So you know some people don't want to use that monitoring app because you know it's down or it's glitchy or whatever. You can just log on to your APS or SRP account and you can see how much your solar system is producing as well. You can't see it panel by panel like you can on the apps, but you can see like oh it's. You know, aps said I produced X amount this month, so I know it's working.
Speaker 2Right, yeah, you know that more than anybody else of people's bills you're looking at.
Speaker 1That's right, that's right, that's what I do. You're looking at my bill, by the way. All right, okay, I'm kidding.
Speaker 2So okay, yeah, so that's why that meter's in place, and then, like we just mentioned, then there, of course, there's the grid. I don't think you need to really talk much about the grid.
Speaker 1Well, I think it is kind of important to talk about the grid. You know a lot of people when they're a lot of people are anti-solar. What I know who's anti-solar? It's weird, but whatever.
Speaker 2Stop talking about my wife, go ahead.
Speaker 1We have to understand. Even the grid is solar Right. You know APS and SRP. Where do they get their power from? They get it from coal plants, natural gas, nuclear, solar, wind, hydroelectric. They have a lot of other ways of providing power to your home. You know the excess power that you're sending back to the grid, those commercial big parking structures those are all sending power back to the grid.
Understanding Grid Constraints and Solar Production
Speaker 1Those are all feeding APS and SRP's grid. That's how they get their power. They get their power from a lot of different sources. Right, you know? That's why we talk about. Our grid is pretty sustainable. It's pretty reliable because we have all those different available outlets for grids or for power, and our grid has space on it, you know I think.
Speaker 2When I think of grids, I always think of Hawaii. When I first started in solar, Hawaii was solar heaven. It was the best place to go to sell solar because energy was like outrageous 50, 60 cent a kilowatt hour. I know people if you don't understand what a kilowatt hour is. I mean in Arizona we probably pay on average in APS. I want to say 15, 14.
Speaker 1Yeah, APS 15 is 15,. 16 cents SRP 9 to 11 cents yeah so they were in the 50s.
Speaker 2That's outrageous. I mean absolutely outrageous.
Speaker 1Imagine you're building three times as much.
Speaker 2Yeah, and that's exactly what it was. Power in Hawaii was horrendous. So everybody was going solar and then problem happened. There was no more room on the grids, especially in Maui. I remember Maui, there was no room, the grid was full. So they stopped. They said no more solar. All right, we're done. Especially, what they said they shut it down. And now if you want to go solar, you have to have a battery and you can only do a 50% offset.
Speaker 1That's it, because you can't feed the grid.
Speaker 2Right, because you can't feed the grid, you have to keep it just between the battery and your house using it. That's it.
Speaker 1Because a lot of conservation of energy. That power has to go somewhere. It's going to the grid. Well, the grid has to go somewhere with that power as well.
Speaker 2So I would say be thankful. In Arizona we have a great grid and it's just a good situation here. One question I always get from people is hey, if the power goes out on the grid, will my solar keep working? Well, I always say no and they say well, that's stupid, why not Think about this for a second? So, if power goes out, guide down the streets working on the pole to try to fix it, Because maybe something hit the pole and the power went down. He's going to go up there and fix it. You're back feeding energy under the grid.
Speaker 1Because you're not home. Your power again has to go somewhere.
Speaker 2That guy turns into a toast. A piece of toast Because you just electrocuted him. So it's a safety thing. There has to be a breaker such that turns it off and doesn't allow it to feed back to the grid, and then your system turns off.
Speaker 2Unless you have a battery, it goes into backup mode and then you have power in your house. So it's a common question. I get it a lot. Just so you understand why that happens. All right, so we've had panel DC power. Sun comes in, dc power goes into the inverter, becomes AC power right, goes into your panel, feeds all your breakers and stuff. If you have a battery and you have overload, it'll go into the battery. Then if you have overload, it comes back and goes through the smart meter, measures it at the smart meter, goes under the grid.
Speaker 1That's a lot of movement.
Speaker 2That is a solar system.
Speaker 1That's how it works.
Speaker 2That is all the components of the solar system and that is the basic of how solar works.
Speaker 1All right, that's it for today. It's not the science.
Speaker 2It's some of the technology, but that's the makeup of what we would put in your house. I mean, obviously you're going to have conduit and wiring and rails and stanchions that go into your roof, all the stuff we talked about in episode three with David Coleman the roofing episode. So you're going to have all that stuff, but that is the basic components that we have to put on every time.
Speaker 1Right, and that's why it's very complex and, as we mentioned many, many times before, it's very catered to you and your situation, because of all those different moving parts?
Speaker 2Yeah, absolutely OK. Any questions? Ok, no Good, now we're going to talk about I call it, time to shine, time to shine, time to shine. So obviously, solar powers. They don't generate power in the evening. I know it's kind of crazy. We laugh.
Speaker 1I won't name names, even though I know who you are. I do get people who you know what email me. No, they don't Eh, or they'll call in taxing. No, they don't, yes, they again, I won't name names, daniel's calling you again.
Speaker 2Is that what you're saying?
Speaker 1I won't name names, but maybe we'll flash their name on the screen in the bottom. Yeah, Dennis, daniel, hey, my solar system's not working, it's not producing power. And then it's either one of two things that I will say during these specific cases. Well, it's raining out, so you know the clouds are blocking the sun, so that's why it's not producing power. Or well, it's 10 o'clock at night, so there's no sun, so that's why you're not. But the moon rays, I know.
Speaker 1And then when I start, you know, explain that they get that aha and they're like oh, I feel, I feel silly moment. I'm like, yeah, it's OK, you know, but we laugh but it does happen. So you really have these guys. I really had these conversations with people who say hey, my solar system's not working and they're like well, it's dark out, so I don't want to tell you they're not moon powered. Ok, I thought you were kidding.
Speaker 2No, no no, I've had it.
Speaker 1I again. I won't name names, but I'm not sure if I can go on. I save every email and text. Well, they need a guy.
Factors to Solar Production
Speaker 2They need a guy. So that's part of time to shine. The other thing is and I was noticing this, you know, when I was driving into the office today, I like looking at the sky when I drive, which is probably not really good, yeah, that's not safe. But if you're driving on the 101, and you're, you know, let's say, you're going eastbound on the 101 right this time of year and you look to your right, there's the sun. Yeah, right, it's over to the right part of the sky, the southern part of the sky, that's right. But when I'm going to work in August and September, I'm driving. The sun's in my face or it's right above my head coming through my sunroof, it's right on top of us.
Speaker 1To add to that, and this is going to be sounding kind of weird.
Speaker 2OK.
Speaker 1In the summertime, when I'm driving to work off and I'm also headed east, sun's right in my face I put a little visor down to block it. Right, this time of year I can't put the visor down. No, so you know what I actually do. I raise my seat. I raise my seat so that the top of my car.
Speaker 2That's actually an ability.
Speaker 1Yeah, the top of my car covers that side, because the passenger side visor doesn't block it. It's right in the gap of the you know, the two visor. So I raise my seat up a little bit and then it's blocked. So I'm driving to work. You probably see like who's this weirdo sitting up perfectly straight in his car, Like that's because I'm blocking the sun.
Speaker 2We say all this because it's important, right? The sun's path during the summer versus during the winter are very different, very different, and that changes production. Yes, it just does so. If it's in the summer and the path of the sun is over our heads, which typically is in Arizona, and you have panels on the northern part of your home, like, let's say, they're facing north, you're going to get decent production because the sun goes overhand. It's going to still hit the northern part, but in the winter or the other nine months the other nine months when it's actually in the southern sky and it's on the opposite side of your house not so much production going to happen. So little things like that you would never think about are very important on when you put where you put solar on your home, sure, sure.
Speaker 1I've talked with a few customers and sales reps too, when they're analyzing, you know, solar production and what their bills are going to be like after solar. And I do remember one case it was very recent, you know. He was saying, oh, my production is going to be, you know, 12,000 kilowatt hours a year, so in December it's going to be 1,000 kilowatt hours. He just had it. It was like 1,000 for each month, like no, because of seasons, it's a bell curve. So you're not going to be producing 1,000 in December, you're going to be producing less than that, but then more in the summer because of, you know, the Earth's access is tilted and we have different seasons. So I had to go into that conversation with that.
Speaker 1But there are things you just don't think about Right, right Like. I got his thinking. I understand his thinking and understanding, but I was like no, you know, you have to put all the pieces of the puzzle together because in the wintertime we're going to get lower production and think about okay, so in the summer it stays light till eight o'clock, yeah, maybe a little bit after eight.
Speaker 2So if we have panels on the western part of your house, the sun does set in the west right and it's eight o'clock at night. You're getting production until that sun sets In the winter. What time does it get dark? Like six, six, five, 30. So you now have lost two, two and a half hours of production that you had in the summer. It's gone on. That western side Impacts, it creates that bell curve you're talking about.
Speaker 2You're always going to have your peak production in certain times of the year and you're going to see it drop as you get to the later time of the year and into their early part of the year. That's just how it works.
Speaker 1There's science behind this. Do you want to talk about the best time to get solar? Yes, absolutely.
Speaker 2During this time. Is that where the segue to end? That's where it's going.
When is the Best Time to get Solar?
Speaker 1Okay. So yeah, the best time to get solar. I always tell people it's kind of like the stock market. When people want to invest in the stock market or trade in the stock market, there's two aspects, you know timing the market or time in the market. Same with solar. You can try to time it, but then time with solar is more important. So, yes, there's a best time to get solar, which is kind of crazy.
Speaker 1A lot of people think like, oh, it's summertime, my bills are $600. I should probably look into getting solar. Well, by then it's too late because you're already at the peak of summer. Your bills are the highest. If it gets installed, it's now ramping down.
Speaker 1Now is actually the time to start looking at solar. I know your bills aren't very high and you're probably not interested in it right now, but now is actually a good time to look at it because if you want to time it just right, just like in the stock market, you want to time an entry. Now is a good time because by the time you get installed, we're going to be start ramping that solar production up to the summer. So, getting installed in January, february, before the solar production, before the stock market starts to go up. You want to buy a little so high before then is a great time. But at the end of the day it really doesn't matter the timing of getting in, because it's a longevity thing too. If you happen to get your system turned on in the summer, it's okay, it's not no big deal. It'll take you a full year to see that good savings, and you go solar for the long-term savings as well.
Speaker 1So you'll see that savings year after year after year.
Speaker 2So by then. It doesn't matter If your motivation was we just had the hottest summer on history and I'm not going to pay those bills again. I want to protect myself next summer. You need to do it right now, do it now. As we sit in the December 1st day, you need to get it done. You're almost going too far. You need to get it done soon because you want it installed before the summer hits so that you can start seeing a benefit right away in the summer.
Speaker 1Build those credits up, because we do get a lot of those customers who will get. You know they'll get solar turned on in July and they'll go. Hey, I know my bill did go down, but didn't go down as much as I thought. So when I take a look at it and go, well, that's because you didn't build up credits. You build up in January, february, march and April and those credits roll over the summer. But you got your system turned on in July, you don't have any credits to roll over. So guess what? You have to wait till next year to see the better savings.
Speaker 2Right and you're still going to see the savings. You'll still see it.
Speaker 1Yeah, it's an annual savings. Yeah, annual savings.
Speaker 2So that's real important. It's an annual savings. We're going to get into savings later, yeah, but so time to shine, right? We talked about the solar, the sun's pass. There's azimuth, so let's say azimuth it's just basically means north, south, east, west, what position your panels are facing. Those all produce at a different level, yeah, right, so, like we always talk about just in general, it could be different for utilities, but in general, you're always going to get more from a southern panel. You're just going to get more production.
Speaker 1This is how it is.
Speaker 2It's produced more than the south Because it's facing south and even in the winter, when the sun is in the south, you're getting good production out of that. You have your east and your west. Where you're going to get your good production? From the east in the morning. You're going to get your good production, especially in the summer, late in the afternoons from the west. In SRP we've talked about where you really want to be west because it makes the most sense because of how their rates put together.
Speaker 1I can talk about that again.
Speaker 2And then north is going to be okay in the summer and not so great the rest of the time. So that's where azimuth played. When we talk azimuth, that's what we're talking about?
Speaker 1Yeah, and if you do have solar, you can look on your monitoring app or your utility. Look at it throughout the day, 15 minute intervals or hour by hour. Get up early one day and look at your solar production in the morning and see how it ramps up and then drops down and then compare it to how it was in the summer. It's not going to get as high, because we do get those customers who say it's supposed it's working, but it's supposed to produce this amount. Right, like well, it's wintertime. Going back in June and July it produced a lot higher because the sun was in a different spot.
Speaker 2Right.
Speaker 1Now it's lower on the horizon, so your production is still there. It's just not as high as when the summer it just goes back to your bell curve, yep it's about 9,000 kilowatt hours a year out of the system, but it's a year A year.
Speaker 2And you're going to get a majority of them in here and then there. It's just going to change per month. Based on all these things we're talking about. Tilt is another thing. So when we talk tilt, what degree of tilt is the panel at? That's important, that's a huge factor.
Speaker 1Did you talk?
Speaker 2about tilt.
Speaker 1We do have flat roofs here in Arizona. We do have customers who say can we just lay the panels flat on the roof? We could, yeah, we did talk about that, but that's not really beneficial because we want to angle it towards the sun. Right, I understand that your flat roof gets a lot of light. We do talk a lot of customers who go, oh, this side of my roof gets a lot of light and this wall gets a lot of light, things like that. But we know the south is probably going to get the most light and depending on shading and all those other factors. But the tilt of the panels we want to tilt it towards the sunlight. Yeah, that's the most important thing, makes a total sense. I know, well, we say this in joke about it, but you know.
Speaker 2And the average tilt in Arizona is 18 degrees. That's on average. I mean we'll typically see 18 degrees in the Midwest and our Oklahoma operation it's man. There's some steep roofs there.
Speaker 1We see some crazy tilts.
Speaker 2But in Arizona it's about 18 degrees and if we're in a flat roof we're typically tilted between 10 to 15 degrees. So we do that again, to tilt towards this light, so we can get the production.
Speaker 1Think about it.
Speaker 2If you have them on the north and they're tilted away from the sun, doesn't work.
Speaker 1Exactly.
Speaker 2We get people that say we'll just do a reverse tilt, we'll put it on the north and we'll tilt it back toward the south, and we talked about that in the last pocket. It's why we won't do that. But that's why you see people that actually have those kites up on the top of the roof because they're trying to tilt toward the sun.
Speaker 1We won't do crazy things.
Speaker 2No, not anymore. And then you already talked about shading, and shading is obviously something we're going to always be cognizant of. If you have trees, if you have shading, we're going to try to place panels and placement. We're going to place panels away from that shading to make sure we get the most production, because again, we need light to produce DC power, yep. So that's time to shine. That kind of gives you an idea of where you know we talked about in our I think it was episode six we really or maybe episode five.
Speaker 1One of the episodes.
Speaker 2Yeah, so it was the solar proposed episode with Daniel Reese. I mean, we talked about panel placement and going around different things and stuff.
Speaker 2So if you want to deeper dive into that, I would go into that episode All right, and that mean that's that's. I think that's everything with time to shine that we've gone through a lot of good information here between all the components of the solar how we go from the DC power from the sun panel. The panel turns that into DC power, goes into an inverter to convert to AC power and kind of where it goes from there. We've gone through all that, talked a little bit about positioning panel wise and you know the path of the sun and all the different things that produce. So that was a lot of information.
Speaker 2We're going to stop here. This is this is going to be part one of solar 101. Next time well, next time we're going to do part two, which is going to go more into the purchase types, the savings, how you, how you look at savings. We're going to give you some real examples of savings. We have some customers that we're going to show you their actual case scenarios, actual bills, actual bills before and after really cool stuff that we're going to get into. That'll be part two. So if you enjoyed part one, part two is just going to get better. Looking forward to have you tune in and join us for that Again. Like subscribe the Harmon solar podcast. You can go to harman solarcom slash podcast and we have our podcast page there that shows you all the different episodes. It links you to YouTube so you can see these pretty faces, or just go to your favorite podcast place, whether it be Spotify, itunes, iheart, and look us up harman solar podcastcom. Thanks again for your time and we'll see you soon. See you.
