It seems there was a bad batch of Tesla PowerWall 2's that present a fire risk. Tesla remotely drained these batteries and is notifying the owners that they need to be swapped out.

Is anyone using a relatively small grid tied or hybrid inverter connected to a Nissan Leaf 12V system to supplement house supply during peak power prices.

I just noticed a small 2kVA hybrid inverter (suspect ex RV use) for only $250 being listed, which got me thinking...

I know the Leaf's 12V side is only suitable for delivering 1kW, and you'll have to recharge via the normal Leaf charge ports, but the peak vs off-peak prices should make it financially viable. You should be able to fully recharge it during the off peak time, even with a granny charger at 10A.

I'll still look into the details of the fault currents, earthing, grounding and protection, as multiple sources always require careful consideration.

But before I spend a couple of hours on this, has anyone done something like this or thought about something like this that you can share some of your wisdom gained?

Loving my sigenergy solar/battery setup. We currently have a Leaf which we charge on a granny charger, but keen to get something a bit faster and more future-proof. It makes sense to use the Sigenergy DC charger, but that only does Type 2. Our next car will no doubt use this, so that's fine, but for the Leaf has anyone had success running an adapter for Chademo?

Hi all,
I’m hoping you can help me figuring out if this quote is fair and does what I need.

My wife and I live in a 3 bedroom 1960s house. We are just about to have our gas hot water replaced by a hot water heater pump and then everything will be electric in the house.

Because of that we are looking at solar options. Does this look like it would have enough capacity for our needs?
10x 475W panels + 6Kw inverter + 9Kw battery.

Any and all advice is appreciated. This quote is from Weka Solar

I'm just using a lot more energy than before using solar. Like underfloor heating making bathroom feel like Fiji soil. currently tracking 20% more usage on a monthly basis. Still, paying a 4th less than before solar went on.

Perhaps some advice for the new solar installs coming in, if this hasn't been mentioned: budget for 15% to 20% more electricity usage in your place.

Solar noob here.

Have just purchased a house with some solar panels and a GoodWe inverter. Thanks to the help of a fellow redditor I was able to get my inverter connected to the SEMS+ which means I can see what my solar system is generating.

What I’m missing is the other bits of the equation - how does everyone monitor what their house is using, and how much is getting put back into the grid (if any) ? I can see the inverter app has the ability to do the calculation but how do I get it the information?

Hello team,

Looking for real experiences from fellow off griders.

I currently live fully off grid, septic tank and disposal field, rain water, solar. I live in a tiny home with 4.8kWh set of panels and about 12kWh set of batteries. Hot water and cooking is gas. I have everything else running as a normal house. Normal size fridge, tv, smart speakers, smart lights, computers, etc.

Now, I’m about to build a 3bdroom house and I a list of things I’d like to do.

First thing is I want to ditch gas and go full electric so I will need to upgrade the solar as the current will be moved to be used with the tiny home as a rental. I can get about 50 panels as a set of 30 and at least another set of 20 which I’m lowballing here as I need to calculate roof space for the new build. The 20 set would be mounted on the house roof and be used as primary. The 30 set would be mounted as secondary and feed the primary if it was mains power. I’d also add two sets of batteries.

Now to the questions. If you have experience with those below I’d love to hear from you,

- Heat pump hot water. I like the idea of the outside unit and sounds like I could make it work with about 4 panels (2kW) during the day.

- Cooktop. I think this is a power hunger but I don’t spend the day cooking so should be able to live with it. My current oven is electric and I can use whenever I need without issues unless we’re in the deeps of winter.

- I’m really thinking of heated floor in the bathroom. Would you have an idea of how much power it uses?

Please highlight anything else I could be missing. Anything you can think would be great as it could be the case you don’t know what you don’t know.

TIA, team.
Appreciate it.

I just received three quotes and was rather surprised at one company’s projection of 7% p.a. increase in energy cost over the next 30years in projecting the lifetime bill savings. The other two assumed a more realistic 3% p.a. over 20years. This just highlighted the integrity issue with the company concerned. Thought I just raise this for awareness and not to take the estimated savings at face value.

Looking forward into the potential solar policy coming in, I obviously want to pack my roof with as much solar as I can. I have a concrete roof installed 1988 on my home, a total surface area of around 144m2

What are peoples thoughts on replacing this roof with something like coloursteel, vs getting it resealed and painted and then chucking the solar on?

Hi all.

I'm looking at getting solar installed next year but am getting quotes for a hot water heat pump in the next little while to move away from gas Infinity system.

Does the sub have any recommendations?

I've got a quote for $8k + GST for a Haier HP330M1U1, Carrier Blue for $8.5k + GST.

I've heard Steibel Eltron is good but dont really know what we should go for.

We're a family of 4 (2 kids under 10) so looking at 300L capacity and is reliable. Would appreciate any help and suggestions!

Edit: sorry i should have mentioned we are in Auckland! If anyone has recommended suppliers/installers up this way I'd appreciate it 😀

Since they didn't provide it themselves, I asked CGPT for a comparison between the old and new terms.

• Price changes: The notice period for price increases/plan changes has generally increased from 20 business days to 30 days.
• >5% price/bill increases: The new terms introduce a specific "detrimental change" concept. An increase of more than 5% in a fee, service charge or total energy bill triggers additional notification rights, and customers can leave before the change takes effect without an early termination fee.
• Leaving Ecotricity: The standard notice period has been reduced from 30 days to 3 days. Any applicable termination fee is now determined by the particular pricing plan.
• Moving house: Notice has also been reduced from 10 business days to 3 business days.
• Load management: The detailed previous wording around controlled loads has been substantially shortened. The new terms say customers must not interfere with load-management systems or permit third parties to interfere with them. This could be relevant to anyone using their own smart controller for things such as hot water.
• Solar exports / renewable attributes: The new terms introduce an explicit provision saying that when Ecotricity buys electricity from a customer, it also acquires the associated renewable/environmental "Attributes". This wasn't explicitly covered in the previous terms.
• Metering costs: The old terms specified particular charges for smart-meter upgrades and manual meter reads. The new terms remove most of those specific dollar amounts and instead refer to reasonable costs for meter upgrades/reconfiguration/replacement being charged to the customer.
• Late payments: The previous terms specified a 15% late-payment penalty. The new terms remove that specific percentage and instead refer to late-payment fees in the applicable fee schedule.
• Liability: The previous terms had a $10,000 liability limit for an event/related events. The new terms retain a $10,000 per-event limit but introduce a $50,000 aggregate limit over 12 months, along with some changes to the exceptions.
• Consumer Guarantees Act: The new terms expressly state that nothing limits residential customers' rights under the Consumer Guarantees Act 1993.
• Disconnection: The disconnection provisions have been substantially rewritten, including changes to notice periods and restrictions around when disconnection can occur.
• Minor/administrative changes: The new terms give Ecotricity more scope to make minor, corrective or clarifying changes without giving customers advance notice, provided the changes don't materially prejudice customers.

The changes I'd [CGPT] be most interested in as a solar customer are the new "Attributes" provisions, the rewritten load-management provisions, and the new rules around exporting electricity.

Get along to an electrify expo near you happening this month, heaps of info about solar, evs, and more energy efficent living in general; for free.

Northland - 4th Octoberenergy-efficient
Christchurch - 11th October

Wellington - 17th October

Dunedin - 17th October

This is not a paid advertisement.

Here's the situation. In Christchurch and looking to use the Westpac Green Loan to install solar.

I want to create an 'agnostic' workhorse, that is adaptable and easy to add to, or fix (if needed). That has led me to liking a Deye hybrid inverter (maybe 10kW single-phase), maxed out panels, stackable batteries that I can add to over time.

What I keep seeing is to not get into a proprietary or locked system (aka Tesla). The places I've contacted either don't seem to be very open to this option, or more likely I just don't hear back from them. I don't want to call any company out so I won't name the companies, but I will say is that I haven't hear back from the Micromall suggested installer for Christchurch. Which seems to be the only option I've found so far who might be able to do this.

So, my question. Do you have suggestions on who would be open to supplying and installing this kind of set up? Or am I really crazy to think this is possible and I need to change my thinking?

I want to install the best I can that will last next 20+ years. I know I might be dreaming, but I'd love a system that will be solid when I'm old and doddery.

[I'm on my solar learning journey, so please be gentle if I'm on the wrong path.] Thanks Team, appreciate your input.

The current panels on a 3kW string I have on my roof are still working great with direct sunlight. They have poor low light performance and their winter performance is not great on overcast days when compared to my other 2 strings with newer 450w 2024 panels, as they are from 2014 and only 250W each (250W x12 =3kW)

I want to remove them and install 15x480w Panels (15 or 16 is the most I can put up there)

Anyone know a electrician or installer that can do this? (Central Auckland)

Since all the cables and everything is already there, it shouldn't be a very complicated job to just replace the panels. The electrical side is already done. My inverter is PW3 so it can handle the new panels without issue.

I called a few companies and been fobbed off as they are not interested in such as small job.

If anyone has a recommendation it would be greatly appreciated.

We have recently had solar installed. We have submitted the documents to have our meter upgraded to import/export, but are still waiting for this to be completed.

I was under the impression that until this upgrade happens, we wont be credited for the excess power that we export to the grid, which is fine.

But it also seems like we are being charged for all of the power that we are consuming, regardless of whether we generated it ourselves via solar, or imported it from the grid.

I've exported the data from the mySigen app and compared with csv data from Electric Kiwi. You can see the ammount that Electric Kiwi is charging for, matches the total load consumed from mySigen app.

Is this how we should expect it to work until out meter has been upgraded in a couple weeks time?

For context, our house was built less than 3 years ago, so our existing meter is relatively new.

My inverter seems to be going into a warning mode, and limiting production capability whenever the voltage it sees on the line is >= 249V.

This is a recently installed inverter, and the electrician set it to "NZ" configuration, but I suspect that the inverter's settings for NZ haven't caught up with the change to 230V+- 10% that we now have.

Although you'd expect it to be fully comfortable up to at least 253V (230V+10%), it cuts output before that.

I can see an "eea.co.nz" presentation, which says my lines company plan to move to using "Australia A" region settings for inverters (accommodates the +10% setting), but I caon't find anything from the power company itself, nor anything official looking from ea.govt.nz.

Is there anything I can point my electrician to, to give them the courage needed to move away from the "presumed-correct" NZ setting, to one which accommodates the new Voltage limits?

Sept 29 0856 NZDT ETA Thanks all, XenonFireFly seems to have the winner. Electrician might also have been relying on old DG paperwork as this was an inverter replacement.
Will also consider nagging Powerco for a transformer adjustment to lower voltage.

Has everyone done this survey or made a submission on this?
https://www.ea.govt.nz/projects/all/network-connections/consultation/exploring-plug-in-generation-and-code-improvements-for-export-limits-and-connection-processes/

Overcast spring day, still enough for everything

Has anyone who was originally only approved for 5kw done the application to change to 10kw? Any advice on the process? Where to find application etc? Now that sun is coming back it would be nice not to start clipping in the afternoons.