SunPower or LG?

[GDunk]

The inverter being quoted is Enphase IQ7HS Microinverter with SP panels.

[Calsun]

Solar panels only vary in their use of bypass diodes to minimize output power loss with partial shading of a panel. It is the efficiency of the inverter and its reliability that should be the focus. My inverter failed in October of 2022 and as of February 2023 SunPower continues to blow me off. Having an inverter under warranty is of no value if the manufacturer/distributor decides not to honor the warranty.

I replace the SunPower (Sunny Boy) inverter with one manufactured by Solis that appears to be the best one can buy for residential applications. Their "5G" models will also suport a battery bank backup system with charging provided by the solar panels. Wifi is easy and inexpensive to add to any of the Solis units through an externally accessed port (same one used to apply firmware updates). I can check the new Solis inverter at its display or over the internet with a computer or using a smartphone.

[J.P.M.]

Sunpower has put their label on Sonny Boy inverters so that is what you may be getting with your quote. On the other hand LG announced some months ago that it was exiting the solar panel market. LG is offering $1 per Watt to its existing customers to swap out their failed panels which are producing only 70% of specifications after 2-3 years of use.

Sunpower never made an inverter. They've always rebadged other's products. Sunnyboy and Power One were two back in the day.

As for their panels, and seeing as how this thread is all over the place, they were once sort of the quality standard, part of which was true and another part of which was B.S. marketing.
I bought and knowingly paid a premium for a S.P. system to run experiments and comparisons with neighbor's equipment as I've documented and written about on this forum to see if their marketing hype had any truth to it with respect to their "most efficient" claims.
After 6 or 7 years of careful comparisons, I believe that claim to be B.S. largely used to dupe the solar ignorant (which is mostly everyone).
My panels however, have operated flawlessly for about 9.5 years and I believe have produced output somewhat better than their data sheets claim as well as slightly less performance degradation than the spec sheets claim.

But I'm just as sure that, after pretty careful comparison with data taken from about a dozen cooperating neighbors that S.P's overall performance is no more superior in terms of annual specific output (kWh/installed STC kW) than other quality panels.
At the time (~ 10-12 years ago) S.P. were able to garner what was about a 20% smaller S.P. footprint for ~ 25% more $$s up front based on the bogus area efficiency game. All they had was an area efficiency. Most of that B.S. is still true, except I'm no longer sure their quality is as good as it was.
Result then and I believe still true: All equally sized (from STC wattage standpoint) systems using reasonable quality equipment that's professionally installed, operating in the same location and orientation will (within a small tolerance of a % or so) produce about the same annual output.

I do know however that back in the day I also cleaned up on S.P. stock whose hefty premium was supported in large measure by their "most efficient" advertising hype that supported the (inflated) premium price.

[Old_Man]

Longi has long-been the bleeding edge of solar technology. Were I buying for my home or a class A RV, Longi is the only brand I'd buy. Better and less expensive. I no longer care about buying anything American . They've screwed me around long enough. Longi FOREVER!!!

Edit: Longi are also Tier 1.

[Calsun]

Sunpower has put their label on Sonny Boy inverters so that is what you may be getting with your quote. On the other hand LG announced some months ago that it was exiting the solar panel market. LG is offering $1 per Watt to its existing customers to swap out their failed panels which are producing only 70% of specifications after 2-3 years of use.

[Ampster]

[QUOTE=Calsun;n436398]There was a recent post by someone whose LG panels have reduced their output by 23% in 7 years time and LG is giving this person cash to put toward new panels, but from a different company as LG is leaving the solar market.

The problem with a company like LG is that they are engaged in many different businesses,, ....../QUOTE]

I bought some BP solar panels ten years ago and I cannot agree with you more. Five years later they were recalled and with the money I got I purchased Canadian solar panels with 25 percent more capacity than the original BP panels. I consider myself luck. The only Sunpower panels I have purchased were used ones for $0.25 per Watt and they have served me well over the past three years as extra power in a non critical applicationl

[Calsun]

There was a recent post by someone whose LG panels have reduced their output by 23% in 7 years time and LG is giving this person cash to put toward new panels, but from a different company as LG is leaving the solar market.

The problem with a company like LG is that they are engaged in many different businesses and they continually weigh the return on investment for each business group. They decided to drop solar and that is that. A company like SunPower derives 100% of its income from solar products and is a safer bet.
A warranty on panels or an inverter is worthless if the company is not around in 10 years time.

Important with any expensive item to consider the after sale customer support which varies considerably. Dell is terrible in this regard and Apple and Hewlett Packard and Lenovo are excellent. Guess which companies products I but for my business - and it is not Dell.

[mdpo]

Yes, $2.35/W to be exact, from Solar Optimum
Only thing is there is literally 5 months left before Nov NEM3.0 might take effect, not sure if I should be concerned about the timeline... trying to push a completion date committed in the contract but seems hard to get... what's the chance of taking over 5 months from into contract to PTO? Roof is ~11 years old in fairly good condition and main panel 200A no need to upgrade.

I do have a pool that will use a lot of energy running pump 6 hrs/day in summer, no EV at house yet but might consider getting one in next few yrs. I could probably go a little lower to 11KW, which is optional after site survey before finalize the plan, but likely will go for it just to take advantage of a good price.

InmarketforPV can you share to me your sales guy? I can also use you as a referral if you want. Please PM me.

thank you!

[robbyg]

But after 70 odd years I've come to see life as a set of probabilities that I have some, but little control over, with the highest probability of keeping the greatest amount of B.S. out of my life by being selective about who and how much of that B.S. gets in.

Seems to me it was a lot easier to be well informed in the past. But then, I was younger and so was infused with the naivety that comes with youth and lack of a cosmopolitan outlook that comes with experience that some folks just don't seem to be able to outgrow. They only seem to be able to see what they want to see and believe what makes life easier for them with little concern or even knowledge of reality. I ascribe most of that to a general decline of critical thinking skills in the population.
.

First of all those kids that you refer to are a whole lot smarter than we were at that age. If you doubt that try to do a 16 year olds home work or have a debate with him or her about some country in the middle east. When I was in high school I got maybe 30 minutes of homework per night. My kids use to get 2-3 Hours worth of Homework each night. I did a whole lot of Math and Physics at University and it surprises me that some of the math they are now doing in High School is the same **** I did in University! When I was in University I did not even have a clue about what was going on Geographically, Politically, Medically or even what was the major topics in the news. I pretty much only knew about Electronics, Girls, Music and what NASA was up to.

Our generation had life so F'in easy it was not funny. When I was in my third year of University I already had 5 Job offers from IBM, Motorola, Rockwell, Tektronix's and lastly the Air Force who was desperate for EE's and CE's. My first choice was the Air Force, so long as I could fly jets. Once they shot down that notion I took another one of the Picks. My total student debt was something like $5000 when I graduated, compared to like $200K that my Son is carrying. I was able to buy my first car with my fourth Pay Check and my first house after only 18 Months of working. Kids today cannot even dream of owning a house and most are paying off huge student debt loans.

Our Generation, the Boomer Generation is probably the worst generation to ever be born. We lucked into a booming economy and anyone with any kind of gumption made it rich very quickly. As we got older we then decided that being a millionaire was not enough, so we moved all our **** abroad to China to make even more money using low cost labor. On top of that we used our political influence to shift the Tax burden off of us and onto the shoulders of poorer Americans. Most of us don't give a **** about Global Climate change because we figure we won't be around to experience it. Even if we are around we have the money to move to countries that will be the least effected.
Our generation can sit back and mock the younger generation as being Lazy and Naive, it comforts us to put the blame on the Kids when we all know that the truth is that we are the ones that ****ed up the place for them.

[J.P.M.]

In my world not everything is a complete lie and not every politician is a crook, call me naive but I don't see any benefit in living my life believing everything is a scam. I have been on the other side of the fence so I know that often times what the public perceives as a lie is very often the truth,

Nor do I believe everything is a scam - never said/wrote any different.

And, I too have spent a lot of time trying to convince people of the veracity of what I was saying - a lot of it to my financial benefit.

But after 70 odd years I've come to see life as a set of probabilities that I have some, but little control over, with the highest probability of keeping the greatest amount of B.S. out of my life by being selective about who and how much of that B.S. gets in.

Seems to me it was a lot easier to be well informed in the past. But then, I was younger and so was infused with the naivety that comes with youth and lack of a cosmopolitan outlook that comes with experience that some folks just don't seem to be able to outgrow. They only seem to be able to see what they want to see and believe what makes life easier for them with little concern or even knowledge of reality. I ascribe most of that to a general decline of critical thinking skills in the population.

It was a lot easier to be well informed in the past. Now, I'm not sure I understand what passes for information at all, and given what I see as the decline of the general intelligence, I don't have a lot of hope for a return to a more informed society.

Social entropy at work.

So, while I don't see the world in absolute or dichotomous terms as the tone of your post seems to put your outlook (a characteristic that seems to me to be more common in people's thought processes these days and an inevitable consequence of the great dumbing of the world), I'm a lot more careful about how I spend my time and effort with what mental resources I have left.

But all this is off topic. Still, take what you want of it and scrap the rest. The last word on this tripe is yours.

[SunEagle]

To robbyg and azdave. I am not sure why both of your posts go to the unapproved folder. I have ask IT support to see why and fix it if possible. Otherwise I will ask for you both to be patient and I will approve your posts as soon as I can get to them.

[azdave]

BTW why does this forum flag every one of my posts as Spam that requires moderator Approval?

Same things happens to me every single time when I post from my PC at work but it never happen when I post from my home office PC.

[robbyg]

BTW why does this forum flag every one of my posts as Spam that requires moderator Approval?

[robbyg]

Since I have little to no faith in any news media, left, right or center - especially of the type you cite - and, for the sake of whatever remains of my sanity and critical thinking skills stopped wasting my time interacting with such tripe, I don't think so.

Do you believe everything you watch on the idiot box, hear from slimeballs on the radio or read what written by assholes who are clueless about what they're writing about and only do so to create copy, and collect a paycheck ?

It's pretty sad state when I see people who have reached a point in their lives where they no longer believe in anything they read or watch. I guess your faith in the media was buried with Walter Cronkite. In my world not everything is a complete lie and not every politician is a crook, call me naive but I don't see any benefit in living my life believing everything is a scam. I have been on the other side of the fence so I know that often times what the public perceives as a lie is very often the truth, it's just that people don't want to believe it because some parts of the story do not line up with their personal beliefs.

In any case what Redwood is doing is not some pie in the sky PR stunt nor is it a money grab! If you do some research on Lithium batteries and recycling you would know that there is a ton of material inside batteries that is very profitable to recycle. The only spin on his true intent is that they have some kind of interest in small batteries found in phones, laptops etc. as a way to save the world. Those tiny batteries will most probably end up being shipped off to some third world country to be cannibalized by cheap labor. What is true is that EV batteries and PV battery systems are a very lucrative item for the recycling market. You have large quantities of fairly expensive material that is not very difficult to access and reuse. Given the rise of Solar and EVs it is not only logical that recycling will be taking place on a large scale but it is also necessary as there is absolutely no way they can dump thousand of 5 - 100KWH packs into a landfills each year going forward.

[InmarketforPV]

Any updates on your solar project with Solar Optimum?

It went pretty smooth, just had the system installed last week (36 days after signing the contract), waiting for de-rating the breaker from 200A to 175A to comply with 120% code with solar added (they ordered breaker just shipped), then final city inspection.