Questions about future solar installation after meeting and speaking with some installers
Hi /r/solar
We've been meeting with solar installers and I wanted to bounce some questions off all of you as part of my independent inquiry and research.
I'm in California and we are shooting for 10.5 to 11.5 MWh annually based on previous energy bills and usage. Due to fire code we've been given a range of 14 to 20 panels on our best roof, 5 on our second best, and we have room for another 18 or so panels on not so great roofs. In regards to our best roof the low range of 14 is with fire fighter lanes on both sides; we may be able to get permitted to remove the lane on a single side and fit 2 or 3 more panels.
Are the spec sheets and output predictions for panels made by Canadian Solar on the conservative side? In other words does anyone have experience installing Canadian Solar product and find that they produce more than anticipated? How common is this with Canadian Solar? How common is it with other panel manufacturers?
Panel failure rate. Unless they are physically damaged by something I've been told panels rarely fail and the point(s) of failure is usually among the optimizers, microinverters, or main inverter. What's the truthiness of this statement?
Microinverters and Enphase. I understand well the talking points and system design advantages of microinverters. However Enphase seems to be the only game in town in their production and to me that is just a different type of single point of failure. How well is Enphase honoring their warranty program, especially in regard to paying for installer time to replace failed microinverters? Are there any other companies on the horizon that microinverters can be purchased from? I've looked on yelp and BBB for reviews, complaints, and company responses and it's not encouraging in some regards; is there another forum or avenue where I can read about real world customer experience with Enphase?
Monitoring with Envoy. Do we need to pay extra for the per panel monitoring access? What's the warranty and replacement cost of the envoy box the microinverters feed their information into. How reliable are these?
String inverters. To my knowledge the existing players are Solar Edge, Fronius, and SMA. With which of these can I use optimizers and which of them offer monitoring and what kind? My understanding is some string inverters only give you overall system monitoring and some, via optimizers, can give per-panel monitoring similar to micros.
In regards to optimizers and microinverters both. More parts -> more failures. A string inverter system without any optimizers should be the most reliable in theory due to less moving parts. How hard is it to swap out a failed string inverter? What's the turn around time for installers on /r/solar that support them? It's not a big deal to me to be down 2 to 5 days if a major component fails; it is a big deal to be down weeks or months.
Our best producing roof gets some shade part of the day. If using a string inverter installation how do we go about placing optimizers? Only on affected panels? All panels? What's the practical failure rate of optimizers? I've been told it's fairly low since they only kick in during shade time whereas micros are on 24/7. Would it be better to eliminate the shade (I think it's one tree in our case) and just not deal with optimizers at all for a string system?
Also on our best producing roof are 3 metal vents that are shaped like funnels. They are scattered on one side of the roof and would obstruct panel placement. How best to deal with these? I've had one installer say they can angle them 90s and reroute them under the panels; another said they often cut them but it's not to code. I don't really want anything not to code on my house. Should I have someone reroute them before doing the solar install? What type of contractor for this (roofer, plumber, hvac, etc)?
Thank you anyone in advance that can provide information (with supporting links especially) so I can sort all this out.
(edit) Additional question regarding my electrical box and sub panel. Most of the microinverter installers are wanting to route into my main panel (200A) and do a derate. Another who favors a string inverter installation is aiming for a sub panel in my laundry room (150A) and says it would be the most unintrusive and invisible routing of conduit. Thoughts and opinions on both of these? Any banana peels to slip on if routing to a sub panel?
(edit) typos
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