SunPower vs SolarWorld/others, price and quality?

**cebury** · 03-17-2016, 04:25 PM

>>>>so I am doing my best to stick to the mid-range panels unless I can get a killer ($4.00/watt or less) deal on some SunPower panels.
sounds like you are on the right track and your understanding of SolarWorld panels,too. I might suggest you post where in southern CA you are. And the prices seem reasonable, but a 3.50/w might be a tad high depending on where you live and: what kind of roof do you have, will these panels all fit neatly in one plane? Is there an electrical pan upgrade required?

Did you get your quotes from several vendors?

**Noblesoft** · 03-17-2016, 05:22 PM

Thanks Cebury!

I'm presently in Orange County, California.

The roof is a asphalt/tar shingle roof, so install should be pretty simple.

The panels can all fit in one plane, though some vendors have opted to split it into two panes... I have two major planes, one faces due east, one due west. This spreads out my energy generation over the day, helps get more generation during peak time by putting some panels on the west facing side for the 1pm-6pm hours, etc. This also helps avoid a little shading at the south end of my roof during certain hours in the winter. I attached a picture of the Solarworld layout... the top of the picture is directly North.

An electric panel upgrade is likely required... the panel has a 200A main, but it's older than dirt (home was made in the early 70's with a cheap panel for that time.) Most have thrown in the cost of the panel upgrade, but ballpark it to be between $1500 and $2500 if I were to do it separately.

I have indeed gotten quotes from several vendors... probably 10-15 at this point. Happy to share their names and prices, but I know there are some restrictions on how to go about doing that. The offers above are the lowest price offers I have gotten to date.

I do plan on talking to one or two more vendors, along with any others that come recommended by the community... and knowing that $3.50 is borderline a good deal, I might try to beat them up a bit more and push for low $3.00...

Thanks!

**cebury** · 03-17-2016, 06:18 PM

10-15 vendors is a lot! It makes our opinion of cost appropriateness near irrelevant as you have the facts in hand.

If the 3.50w includes the split array and main panel upgrade from a vendor you trust, that is a fair price IMO even if not the absolute lowest seen here. I might make on call to the vendor listed in that 3.00w LG/SolarEdge post (it's near the bottom) for both perceived quality of LG and the lower rate /w if the vendor isn't questionable. You can post solarreviews links and vendor names here if you like, but it sounds like you've made good judgements thus far.

Have you used pvwatts yet? You might find those East panels become very expensive per kWh to include thus extending your cost payback significantly, since you obviously do care about cost. Not saying it's a deal breaker but I'd want to know. Near 100% offset isn't a *required* goal despite what some sales folks suggest and is usually only the most cost effective choice when a very long analysis period is chosen (like 20+ years).

**Noblesoft** · 03-18-2016, 07:41 PM

Originally posted by cebury

10-15 vendors is a lot! It makes our opinion of cost appropriateness near irrelevant as you have the facts in hand.

Yeah, I tend to overdo it on research when it comes to large purchases. :P

That said, seeing the various price/watt figures that others are posting, I can't help but shake the fact that I haven't found the "bottom" price yet. Could just be that they are in areas where the panels or labor are less expensive though. I appreciate that you think it's a fair price though. At least it's not a rip off.

Thanks for the suggestion to check out pvwatts, I had heard about it but never endeavored to use it myself... instead, I seem to have more or less done all the work that website does, but manually in my own spreadsheets with less fidelity. :P I checked out the site, put in all my numbers, and surprisingly I was pretty close on my calculations of average cost of energy generated by my proposed system. I had $.08/kW, pvwatts estimates $.10/kW... and they factor in panel degradation and some other stuff it seems, so theirs is probably a better estimate.

Interesting thought on the east panels being less effective... is that just due to time of use energy/generation costs and the fact that I am using most of my energy in the afternoon when the east panels are no longer getting light? I guess I thought that net metering would make time of generation vs time of consumption irrelevant? Or do east-facing panels somehow get less overall sunlight, and I'm just ignorant of that fact? I had thought about switching to Time of Use billing after talking to a few friends that went solar, since apparently the electric company has to reimburse you at the rate they charge... so you get more money during the peak hours when west-facing panels are at their peak generation... so maybe that's what you were getting at? Thanks for illuminating me on the subject!

Finally, regarding 100% offset... that's actually something I have been telling vendors to size at. The way I see it, my energy usage is only going to go up from here, especially once I start getting "free power". Also highly considering an electric car in the not-too-distant future, and while I could just add to my array at that time, I figure the collective labor to split it across two jobs would likely be more expensive than if I just got it all done at once. That, and tier 1 prices here for socal edison are $.15/kW, and tier 1 is very small (275 kW). So, I figured the more of my landline power I offset, the quicker my payback period would be. Let me know if this is logical, or if I've filled my own head with nonsense.

Appreciate your help!

**randomuser** · 03-18-2016, 08:31 PM

I contemplated the SolarWorld vs LG panel choice myself. Oh, I see your reference to SRE in your first post. I signed my contract with them today, having interest in speaking with them from reading posts here. It's interesting that up in OC, you're not getting any quotes for LG. All but one quote I got had the installers all chose LG. The single company which recommended SolarWorld is an OC based company which I would never do business with nor recommend to anyone who asks me about solar companies. Most of the companies I spoke with, I'd be willing to do business with. I selected SRE because I felt the most comfortable with them or more like "him".

The price difference of about $1000 wasn't enough savings for me to choose SolarWorld. I researched that company and also had the conclusion you did. Will they be around? My research of Enphase vs SolarEdge was the same. SolarEdge is a profitable company. Enphase is in the red. They both generate about the same amount of revenue. Everyone touts the 25 year warranty but that's scary for a company which doesn't make money. I know we can talk about Amazon but is Enphase purposefully losing money, like Amazon's game plan?

Good luck Noblesoft. I also spoke with about a dozen companies. Price was a factor in my selection process but it wasn't the whole reason. I learned a lot about questions to ask from people on this forum. The most important thing about the solar system to me is the integrity of my roof. Any system can make electricity I think. I want to feel safe about the roof after the install.

**Noblesoft** · 03-18-2016, 09:33 PM

All great points Randomuser. I thought it was odd no one offered me LG, too. Thinking I'll reach out to SRE, see if they service orange county. I was mostly concerned about the size of the company, and the volume of business they do... pretty small... if they go out of business due to the changing solar landscape, my warranty for installation/labor/roof penetration goes out with them... so that's a factor I'm giving some weight to.

Good point on SolarEdge vs. Enphase. Most of my research on them had been the technical/reliability factors... not the business offering the warranty... but much like I'm concerned about the longevity of the company doing my install, I should be similarly concerned about the longevity of the inverter manufacturer. They definitely have a large share of the market at the moment it seems, and lots of the companies I got quotes from recommended them over a central inverter for all the typical sales-y reasons... but financial viability of the company was never a part of the discussion, oddly. I'll have to scratch my head on that some more.

Agreed about the importance of having a safe/proper installation. Seems like you might have heard some horror stories about solar installation?

**Noblesoft** · 03-18-2016, 11:47 PM

Just finished meeting with yet another vendor, and they were able to offer the following:

22x SunPower 327w AC panel
Inverter included in panel (SolarBridge I assume?)
7.194 kW system size
10618 kWh estimated system output
$32,594 total purchase price
$4.53/watt price (before incentives - $3.17/watt after)

All in all, seems like a pretty good price? Has anyone done better for SunPower? I'm tempted to go with this quote, as I have a tendency to buy higher quality as long as it's not too outlandishly priced. The major selling points are that it takes up less space on my roof, so I can avoid shading better, and the panels reportedly suffer less degradation than most. Also the warranty is backed by a fairly large and somewhat stable company, which has increasing meaning to me.

Now to look into the installer's company.

**sensij** · 03-18-2016, 11:54 PM

Equipment warranties are unlikely to be worth the paper they are written on. Read them close. Just sayin.

That isn't really a great price for Sunpower. I don't understand how the electricity produced by a Sunpower panel is of higher quality than the electricity produced by another.

**Noblesoft** · 03-19-2016, 01:01 AM

Thanks Sensij, point taken! I haven't honestly endeavored to read the warranty literature from any manufacturer yet. I suspect they're all about the same, as far as what they include and exclude. SunPower seems as reputable and well regarded of a company as any, so I'm making the (possibly fallacious) assumption that their warranty is as least as good as any other. A few places report that their warranty is the 'only comprehensive 25 year warranty available.' That said, you've piqued my curiosity as to the actual contents of the warranty... maybe I'll download a copy, and read it to put me to sleep tonight. :P Do feel free to share if you have any specific knowledge to pass on!

Appreciate the feedback on price. Sounds like you've seen better... I'll try and find some examples and push a little harder, see if I can get it to go lower. I was perusing the CSI database a little while ago... I'll see if I can filter it down to SunPower systems, and figure out the average going price, to see if that can help my case at all. Not afraid to beat up my vendors.

As far as the 'electricity quality', we're on the same page; watts are watts. I was more referring to the quality of the panels themselves. My supposition is that, based on Sunpower's claims of efficiency and less degradation over time, I will simply be getting more watts over the life of the system, and using less space to generate them. While I have lots of space on my roof, I have some potential shading issues that limit the 'prime' space down to around 20 panels from a typical manufacturer. SunPower's seem to be a bit smaller, so I can fit more in that prime space, and potentially have room to add to the system down the line if my energy usage increases.

I wasn't quite aware of the extent of the shading issues I had until the latest vendor shared some aerial view photos from a different time of day/season than what I had been seeing. I'm starting to worry that most of the other vendors hadn't really been looking at shading at all, and thus the efficiency of their systems might be a bit overstated...

I've done some math of my own, and it seems that I will be paying about $.107 per kWh with this SunPower system, if I average my costs over 20 years of generation. PVWatts calculates the cost to be closer to $.16 assuming a 10% loss, 270 degree facing, and 20 degree tilt. I'm not sure if these settings are perfect, but they seem about right. I'm not sure why my calculated cost is so far off from what PVwatts estimates... probably because I do not factor degradation into my yearly kwh generation. Either way, I just learned that SCE changed their Tier 1 rate to $.165 as of 3/1/2016... so even with the 'sunpower tax', I'm still coming in under tier 1.

Thanks again sensij! Appreciate your no-nonsense perspective.

**Noblesoft** · 03-19-2016, 01:08 AM

One thing I just thought of that I should probably make sure I am calculating right... when people post their price/watt, they are taking the total "installed" price of their quote ($32,594 in my case, which includes labor, panel upgrades etc), and dividing it by the DC watt size of the sytem (7194w in my case). Right? Or are they talking about the ''panel price' without any other misc cost accounted for?

If we talk about 'just the panels', the vendor is telling me that they are at $4.00/watt exactly. The extra $.53/watt covers labor, panel, etc...

Just making sure I'm speaking the same language as everyone else. :P

**sensij** · 03-19-2016, 01:29 AM

Yes, you are calculating $/W correctly. Your panels are an odd duck in that the inverter is "built-in"... a microinverter that is factory installed. That means your panel cost would be more comparable to a more generic panel + inverter cost. In any case, $4/W for "just the panels" with only 0.53 / W for everything else is an outright lie. The downside to AC panels, as they are sometimes called, is that if the inverter fails (it will, eventually), it might mean the whole panel needs to be replaced. Or, if something unlikely happens to the panel, you may have to replace the inverter with it.

With respect to your average cost of generation, I would encourage you to apply some sort of discount rate to account for the fact that you are playing in today's dollars for energy 20 years from now. A lot can happen in 20 years that could change the outcome... personally, I really wanted a system that would pay for itself in no more than 8 years, and as primarily a Tier 1 customer (before the EV), getting a deal to achieve that took a lot of research and time talking.

Of course, take whatever calculation you use and see how it comes out for the non Sunpower quotes. It is true that Sunpower could save you money over utility rates, but it is also true that SolarCity leases could save you money too. Just saving a little bit of money doesn't make it a good deal, when you could be saving thousands more.

The parameters you used for your PVwatts run sound about right for estimating the generation potential. The financial calculation it offers is really basic... I wouldn't rely on it for much.

With respect to your usage today and in the future, it sounds like you might benefit from taking some time to understand TOU rates, as others have suggested. Especially when EV's are involved, if you can limit your charging to overnight hours, you can essentially pay less than Tier 1 prices for as much energy as you need. I have an EV that more or less doubled my household energy consumption... my PV system produced something approaching 5500 kWh in the last year, I consumed close to 8000 kWh, and I will finish my year with TOU credits on the books having only paid minimum bills. (official numbers coming soon... I'm in my 12th month now and wil get my true-up statement at the end of the month). I am very, very glad I did not spend extra for a system that would have generated 8000 kWh... that would have been money spent that might not ever get recovered.

TOU rules will change, and the benefit is likely to be reduced, but even under the proposed plans they can still be a better deal than sticking with the default tiered plans. Spreadsheets exist that can help model the costs under different rate plans on your past or projected consumption (with or without solar), and you should be able to download that consumption history from your utility website at hourly granularity or maybe even 15 min.

Edit:
I didn't comment on shade... that can be a really big deal. There are tools that can fairly accurately predict the impact of shade throughout the year, and any competent installer should be able to do the analysis and share the results with you.

**Noblesoft** · 03-19-2016, 02:50 AM

Thanks for all the input Sensij!

Great point on the 'inflation' factor. Indeed, today's dollar is worth much more 20 years from now. Hard math, but worth considering. I think your approach is probably best... just shoot for as short of a return-on-investment period as possible, to limit the impact of inflation on your initial investment.

I'm no stranger to Tier 3 and Tier 4 unfortunately, so my average utility cost over the last 12 months has been more like $.23/watt. SCE continues to push up their rates, especially the lower tiers, so I anticipate this will only get worse as time goes on. I did a calculation assuming a steady 6% increase in average kWh cost for utilities, and it came out to something like $.425/watt paid over the same 20 year period... so I guess that also factors into my effective payback period. Not sure how realistic the constant 6% increase is, but over the past few years it's been that.

Unfortunately, no installer short of this last one has taken the time to bring my potential shading issues to my attention. Perhaps they were waiting until I approved the initial quote to bring it up... :P

Regarding the upside/downside to an "AC panel"... given SunPower's comprehensive* warranty (*validity TBD), one would expect that a failure of the inverter would lead to a full panel replacement, which would be a 'positive' rather than a 'negative', no? That gives me a fresh panel and inverter whenever any one of the two fails... and since the inverters are more likely to fail, it seems to me like I would be getting new panels with 'fresh legs.' Seems like tying these two components at the hip is not only logical, but financially beneficial, as long as the warranty covers them... or am I reading this wrong? Of course, if the warranty isn't really comprehensive, then it could be that the failure of a particular component is not actually covered, which would make replacing the whole kit more expensive since I cannot replace just the part that failed. I guess it all comes down to how solid the warranty is.

Point taken on the $4/watt comment from the installer. I could have misinterpreted what he was trying to say. He could have also had no actual idea, and was just making up nonsense. Seems to me the cost of the panels are probably more in the $2 range, and the rest is labor/permits/etc.

I downloaded the CSI database and did some sorting... looks like the best price for a system of my size sold in the last year for the proposed panels and DC system size was just over $20k... that seems like an outlier though, as the next closest is $25,800, and the average looks to be more like $35k. I couldn't find an exact comparison for my system though, due to the aforementioned "odd duck" problem... almost all of the installs in the database were with SPR-E20-327 panels and SMA inverters. I figure it should be fairly comperable, though. The average price doesn't help me much... but I could potentially make the case that I am an "informed customer", and thus should be getting "better than average" pricing. I'll see if it flies.

All SunPower business aside, your thoughts on the SolarWorld/Phonosolar quotes, if any? Keep looking?

Thanks for all your time!

**randomuser** · 03-19-2016, 08:46 AM

I thought when people report on $/watt for a solar system, if there's electrical panel work, that's not included in the cost. Noblesoft, are you adding the panel upgrade into your calculation? That would make your calculation different from mine. I don't need a panel upgrade, so if you're adding your cost of that in, then our pricing isn't apples to apples. Or if someone has to perform roof repair, that would be a different apple too.

Oh, I don't know if you've asked some of your contractors for a contract for their proposed system install. I went with my installer partly because of the contracts from different companies. For me, I disagreed with every contract I read from every company. One seemed to be written by a 3rd grader. I was super surprised and actually asked every one of them if people just sign away $20 - 30K without reading the contract first. My guess is that's the case. No spell check. Really??!! This sort of made me think that large companies aren't big because they've learned more lessons and offer a better product (product meaning the people knowledge and labor of the company, not hardware product used).

I thought about the Sunpower warranty over and over too. My wife kept saying to just get a Sunpower system to sleep soundly at night with their warranty. I need about a 15 year warranty I think. If I outlive a 25 year warranty, that'd be great. I'm too old to think a 25 year warranty is meaningful for me. So the LG and SolarEdge 12 year warranties work for me. SolarEdge has 20 year and 25 year extended warranties for peace of mind but for me, I look at this part as something I'll replace down the road. The $300 or $500 upfront insurance is something I'll not get. I hope that I get 15 years from my inverter and at that time, the cost of a new one will be 1/4 the price of what I buy today. Does Moore's Law work with solar equipment?

For me, over my course of learning about solar from this forum and other websites, I got more into watching training videos on Youtube for Quick Mount PV and IronRidge than about the panels and inverters. Again, my paranoia about roof leaks.

Good luck with your journey. I'm glad to have got to the point of selecting my installer. Hope this is the easy part, compared to the work in the selection process.

**randomuser** · 03-19-2016, 08:59 AM

Originally posted by sensij

With respect to your usage today and in the future, it sounds like you might benefit from taking some time to understand TOU rates, as others have suggested. Especially when EV's are involved, if you can limit your charging to overnight hours, you can essentially pay less than Tier 1 prices for as much energy as you need. I have an EV that more or less doubled my household energy consumption... my PV system produced something approaching 5500 kWh in the last year, I consumed close to 8000 kWh, and I will finish my year with TOU credits on the books having only paid minimum bills. (official numbers coming soon... I'm in my 12th month now and wil get my true-up statement at the end of the month). I am very, very glad I did not spend extra for a system that would have generated 8000 kWh... that would have been money spent that might not ever get recovered.

Sensij, I'm wondering what your usage was without the EV? I use about 5000 kWh now but plan on purchasing an EV after the solar installation. I sized my system to generate about 8000kWh. Is that a big oops on my part?

Noblesoft, sorry for hijacking your topic. I wish I could PM Sensij this question. Sensij, if you want to take this offline, you can email me.

SunPower vs SolarWorld/others, price and quality?

SunPower vs SolarWorld/others, price and quality?

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