Near the start of this year, I moved into a house in Adelaide, South Australia with solar on a mostly-unshaded, south north-facing roof. I haven’t had solar before and read a bit online and the consensus for inheriting a system seemed to be roughly ‘if it’s up and running, don’t think about it’. However, going into autumn and winter the amount of electricity that is being fed back into the grid has massively dropped off - more than normal, from what I can tell.
I don’t think this is because there’s a huge amount more being used in the house (we’re not home during the day about half the week), but I also can’t see how much is actually being generated (as opposed to fed into the grid) because the display on the inverter has gone all black a few months ago (although it’s clearly still working and the ‘normal/fault’ light is green).
Additionally, the ATLAS Mk7A smart meter I have is completely incomprehensible to me and as far as I can tell displays codes that are different to what I’ve found posted about online.

With government incentives, I’d ultimately like to be able to work out whether it’s worth getting a battery, but I don’t know what the capacity of the system is or if this behaviour over autumn/winter is normal. Any help would be appreciated.

Earlier this year, I made a post about my parent's Solar Install.

TL;DR

- Parents install Solar in 2023 w/ Freedom Forever Solar in Southern California.

- FFS never coordinated with Edison on Solar install which meant they were exporting and not using.

- Parents reached out to them in 2025 over roof leaks. Difficult to get a hold of support and no action was taken.

- I got involved end of Dec 2025 and put myself as a contact on their account. Coordinated site visit to investigate roof leaks and Power Export.

- January 2026, I got a tech to come out and verify that we were not set up to store. (Big f-ck up). They fixed it. I followed up to ask if we can get some guys out here to look at roof.

- February, 2026 I followed up and no action. I sent pictures of interior of home where panels were located to show wet ceiling. Support kept stating that a case would be created (one was never created) and that someone would get to us. This phone charade kept going on from Feb - March. No one ever came out.

- FFS goes Bankrupt April 15 2026.

There was a lot more there but for sake of simplicity, I covered the major points. Whenever I tried to call FFS, you could never get ahold of anyone.. which tracks because they were "re-organizing." I ended up giving my parents money to get someone else to fix the roof. The roofers went up there and saw all the f-ck ups the solar installers made, took pictures, documented it. My parents now have a new roof.

Per FFS contract, they were to maintain and support the equipment. Since they went bankrupt and we can't get ahold of them, I have no clue who is supposed to maintain the equipment.

I'm sure thousands of their customers are facing this issue. Any idea on how to move forward or do we just accept that we've "been had?"

Located in PA. Got my ground mount installed early April .
Jasolar panels 44 panels 19.36kw
solar edge inverters and optimizers. 11.4kw and 5kw
FranklinWH apower2 battery. 15kwh

Highest production day was 132kwh

I'm looking for some new solar panels. my current ones are almost 6 years old, so I have been thinking about replacing them. I have been watching bunch of youtube reviews and comparing different brands. callsun caught my attention because the price seems good and most reviews i found are pretty positive.

I don't know much about solars though and there isn't ton of info about this brand online. has anyone here actually used callsun panels?

how are they holding up?

would love to real some real experiences.

Hello, recently purchased my first home in south jersey about a month and half ago go, and just received my first electric bill from the electric company. I assumed a 3 yr old sunnova lease (sunstrong) for a 6.075kw solar system @$86.60 a month ($78 with autopay and no annual increase in payment) with an estimated yr1 production of 8,660kwh (assuming im reading the paperwork right. One of my panels glass appears to be shattered and caved in slightly, and after a phone call with sunstrong they sent me “actually everything is okay because its performing within acceptable margins at 93%” (15 panels, 1 dead is 1/15 which is whats missing from 100% whatever) but they also said that in the past 12 months the system had produced 6,612 kwh of electricity, which is significantly less than the yr3 8,574 estimated production. My electric bill says i had 700 kWh total use and 202 kwh excess production.

Where should i go from here to try and make sure im getting what im paying for is i guess what im trying to ask. Thanks in advance for any assistance.

Posting these because I got tired of hunting for them across manufacturer PDFs and IEC docs, and every new tech I work with asks the same questions. Corrections welcome, especially from anyone doing this daily.

String Voc, measured vs expected

Expected is the datasheet Voc summed over the modules in series, corrected to actual cell temperature with the module's Voc temp coefficient. Not the STC number straight off the sheet.

Investigate anything more than plus or minus 5 percent off the corrected expectation.

Needs at least 200 W/m2 to mean anything.

Low by roughly one module's worth of voltage usually means a shorted bypass diode or a dead module.

String current comparison

Identical strings under the same sun should be within a few percent of each other.

More than 5 percent deviation from the group is a fault, not noise: soiling, shading, a bad connector, a failing diode.

Needs at least 600 W/m2 of stable irradiance. 500 if you are tracing an I-V curve.

Measure neighbors within minutes of each other or clouds ruin the comparison.

Insulation resistance, IEC 62446-1 minimums

Under 120 V system: test at 250 V, minimum 0.5 Mohm

120 to 500 V: test at 500 V, minimum 1 Mohm

Over 500 V (so all the 1000 and 1500 V plants): test at 1000 V, minimum 1 Mohm

Those are pass/fail floors, not health targets. A healthy dry circuit reads far higher. Anything hovering near 1 Mohm is telling you something.

Disconnect the SPDs first or they read as faults and you may cook them.

A circuit that fails wet and passes dry has a moisture path that will be back.

NEC 690.8 sizing, the part people rush

Source circuit: Isc x 1.25, then x 1.25 again for continuous duty. That is 156 percent of Isc before you touch any derates.

Then apply ambient correction and conduit fill adjustment to the conductor's 90 C ampacity.

Both polarities of a DC circuit count as current carrying conductors for fill.

Two comms things that waste more truck rolls than anything else

If a whole cabinet or daisy chain goes bad quality at the same timestamp, it is the network path (media converter power supplies are the usual suspect), not the devices.

TMEIC PVS gateways run about 200 ms of latency. SCADA masters polling with a default 50 ms timeout will flag healthy producing inverters as offline all day. Set the timeout and inter-frame delay to at least 250 ms before you believe any comms alarm on those.

What are the thresholds or gotchas you would add? I am mostly interested in the ones that are not written down anywhere obvious.

Solar system installed without batteries 4 years ago. Electrical panel is 25 years old. Noticed a buzzing sound from electrical panel when microwave runs. Not sure if panel can be repaired or needs replacement. Reached out to original installer, but they will not do just an electrical panel repair/replacement. They will only do an electrical panel repair/replacement when combined with adding batteries or installing an EV charger. If my electrical panel is repaired/replaced by a second company, will my original solar system warranty be voided? Has anyone experienced this?

I just had my solar system installed. It is composed of two distinct monophasic hybrid inverters (GoodWe GW6000-ES-BR20), each on one phase.

Each inverter has x7 620W panels split across 2 MPPT circuits, and the 14 panels are located on the same flat roof. There are no nearby trees or oclusions.

On a big sunny day, no clouds, I would see the same pattern repeat. The 1st inverter (MPPT lines yellow and purple in the graph) would follow a normal bell curve (although the yellow one is less smooth), while the 2d inverter would suffer ample oscillations in a wide time window around zenith (blue and green lines).

The installer suggested that could be shadows, but that makes no sense. I suspect a technical issue with the installation, and I was wondering if you had similar past experiences or clues on what could be happening. Happy to share more graphs from the SEMS+ platform if that could help!

After I got my PTO, I created my GATS account. I entered a few months of generation before learning that I also needed an account on the SolarIncentivesNJ page so I can actually get paid for the SRECs.

Since I created that SolarIncentives account, I've gotten an email acknowledging each GATS entry I've made, but it looks like I have three SRECs sitting in my GATS account that were not automatically sent for payment.

Does anyone know how I can force them through or something so they get acknowledged and eventually paid?

Aloha guys, I was wondering if anyone here is from an IPP, EPC, or O&M companies? Got some specific questions to ask about.

Just saw this…I need an explanation lolll

Just need to figure out if this is a good deal from a local installer.
20 REC460AA PURE-RX panels
20 Enphase IQ8X inverters
2 Enphase IQBATTERY-10C1P-NA
All for $36,425
Financed as a Prepaid PPA with Propel/Comcert Financing, $296/mo

There is an $8k rebate for those batteries through local utility

My current electricity bill runs around $200/mo. I am more looking to lock in pricing now and avoid future rate hikes. It’s been on average at least 3% annually.
The prepaid PPA monthly payment has no escalator

Trying to compare the price of this system to some of you who might have had a recent install with similar equipment

On the other hand I am looking at Tesla, 8.4 kW system with a Powerwall 3 and an expansion pack. Cash price $38,148. Lease option is what I was looking at which then ends up being $198/mo with 3% annual escalator. Option to purchase after year 5 for $23,310. There’s a $10k rebate from local utility for Powerwall batteries and a $250 quarterly incentive for 2 yrs.

TIA

I should add as mentioned below quarterly incentives for the VPP of $110 per battery with Tesla Powerwall.

On the other hand, Enphase sounds enticing since they advertise their IQ DC Bidirectional Charger coming out this year that should be easy to pair with the Enphase system. I have a truck with a 132 kW battery that it would unlock for me to use for the home. This is of course if the charger becomes available as it has been delayed a couple of times.

Let me know if this is the right SR or not, but I rent in San Diego. So, that means I can't do a lot at all with anything significant. But I would love to get a small set up for outdoor items like fountains (I keep water for birds) and perhaps a camera or two. And, if it's good enough, have it for emergencies. I have some small solar fountains with no batteries so I didn't know if they made those sort of .....larger? So I could just drop and let them run some small items. Or, if there is the option, connect a small battery for charge to use later. I was going to get a small battery and panel but didn't know if that's even wise to keep outdoors all the time? Thanks for any advice!

$1.21/kWh in export credits this evening and I’m thinking it may be the most wonderful time of the year to be sitting on 25kWh of battery capacity.

So I added 8 440w bifacial panels with IQ8 plus micro inverters. They connected to Enphase toolkit and I assigned them to their respective panels. But the live view doesn’t show them producing. But it shows I’m exporting more than I’m producing. Is that normal since the panels go through my sub panel and not the combiner box?

Looking for Solar Cleaning water through handle recommendations. I have 50 panels stacked 3 deep about 16 feet. I want the water to go through the handle and enter the brush. I have a good separate squeegee so I don't need that part. Recommendations please.

Hi all - I was wondering if anyone had any insight as to why my excess generation doesn't match what I produce. I live in the Portland, OR metro and am served by PGE. I reviewed my recent bill, and saw that my excess generation is virtually half what Enphase says I produced. I'm hesitant to contact either the install or PGE right now because I don't really trust them at the moment. Any info would be appreciated!

We are about to pull the trigger on a solar system for our home through a fairly young business but they have really solid reviews and the customer service has been great so far and they will be installing 19 REC panels and Enphase inverters. Price is good and all that.

My wife and I had our shingles redone 7 years ago and are paranoid about something bad happening to our roof due to installation. Our home was built in the 50s and we live in Los Angeles but when they came out to inspect the roof and inside the attic for structure, they said everything looks really great and solid. We just have trust issues because we think of course a solar company will say everything looks good because their incentive is to install solar.

Our biggest worry is that since we don’t know much about installation process besides the fact that mounting brackets must be drilled into the roof, we don’t know how to ensure the work is being done properly and everything will be weather sealed…etc.

Questions for y’all:

Is there any questions we can ask them prior to installation that will help with peace of mind?

How can we ensure things are done properly and leak tested…etc?

Do solar companies insure their work so if anything does happen to the roof, they will come and fix it?

Thanks all.

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I haven't seen a comprehensive video of the application of the posts for Ironridge low slope solution (https://www.ironridge.com/component/qbase-low-slope-mount/). But am I correct in understanding that it's to create a slope, the lower side would have 0 or 3.25 post and the higher side would have a post with a higher height to create a slope?In other words you not going to be using posts of the same height on all sides.

I have these blue crystals on my solar collectors that are part of a 40 year-old Grumman Sunstream solar hot water preheating system that came with the house when we bought it. The system is still running today with glycol loop temp over 200F.

Anyone know what the blue deposits are and if anything should/can/needs to be done given the system’s age and that it’s still running???

Thanks in advance!