Here's some info - hope you find it useful. Thinking of getting some more panels to try and get up to 5kw if I can get organised enough. On 28 May 2012 10:59, dan062 <dan062@yahoo.com.au> wrote: ...

Anyone is willing to share experience, good and bad, and any recommendation please?

I will probably be installing a small system which will most likely meet most of my needs.

Cheers Daniel.

I got my panels installed around 3/9/2010 It was a lot of paper work, you need to get them inspected and not meant to switch them on till then which takes weeks, you need a new meter and you need to be home for many of these events. You also have to fill in the forms from your power supply company to apply for rebates and special rates - but well worth it. We have a rate based on time of day 30c 7am-11pm week days and 11c ("offpeak") otherwise so check your electricity bills to compute whether it's worth while. For us it was well worth it because we got a 66c /kwh buy back, so when at work and they generate an excess of power the company pays us 66c/kwh. We haven't paid an electricity bill since (we got 3kw system). Origin billing is a night mare because it takes ages on the phone to get through to a human, you have to talk to a special solar power section, they stuff up the billing quite a few times. No reading, sending the wrong billing (not paying the credit - took three calls to get it straightened out). But all said and done they did what they said, eventually... Here's some questions I answered to another query - just cut and pasted it below: ----

how much roof area does it cover?

We have a north facing roof (the best facing) which gives apparently 97% or so efficiency. Of that we have used about half (we have a reasonably large roof). The electricity company only lets you supply up to 5KW (other wise you have to become a different type of contract) so we should be able to expand up to that if we wanted to.

how many panels she has and/or what is the output in KW 16 from memory - 3KWh

how much did it cost to install about $10k roughly including installation and related equipment such as the 3KW inverter

.... You really have to look at your last electricity bill to see how many KWh (kilo-watt hours) you use per day. On a sunny day, in the middle of the day a 3KWh will generate at least 3KWs in winter perhaps a little less and much less if cloudy. We seem to get between 6 and 12-14KWh per day from our system. We use an average of 14KWh per day so we are hoping to be nearly neutral over summer. ----- We got it through Bunnings but here's the consultant who did the work and I was very happy with. The major problem with it was cracked roof tiles - they cracked 1-2 on setting up the system and we had another might have cracked later during a windy day. But that was a hair line crack which you couldn't see and only noticed water coming through on very heavy rain - which made it hard to identify. The consultant didn't want to come back until we could find the cracked tile (busy man et cetera) which I finally did during one rainy day (took photos on the phone and e-mailed it to him). He then came back and replaced the crack tile (we have a pile of spares) and checked everything else. No problems since. Here's the details of the consultant - have no troubles recommending him. ... Anthony Devlin Energy Consultant & Assessor T: 1300 954 041 F: (03) 9438 3186 M: 0411 428 397 E: tony@smartergreen.com.au www.smartergreen.com.au