Let's Talk Solar 101.....Part #1

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Ready to unlock the mysteries of solar energy? Come join us as your hosts Ralph and Ben embark on a sunny journey through the fundamentals of solar.  Confused between a power warranty and a production warranty? We've got you covered. Are you curious about the role of inverters in converting DC power into AC? Let's decrypt it together. From exploring the impressive Tesla Powerwall Battery System to debunking common misconceptions, we're here to guide you through the fascinating landscape of solar energy. We delve deep into all of the components of a solar system as we unravel  pros and cons of the components, warranties, etc.
So, buckle up for an enlightening ride as we navigate the solar energy terrain, empowering you with knowledge and insights on every twist and turn. Let’s shine a light on solar energy together!




7:56 Understanding Solar Panel Warranties and Inverters

14:52 Comparison of Microinverters and String Inverters

22:17 The Tesla Inverter

23:25 What is Clipping?

25:34 Shading, Is it a real issue?

30:49 Batteries

39:13 Solar Panel Upgrades and Grid Integration

44:22 Understanding Grid Constraints and Solar Production

49:03  Factors to Solar Production

52:28 When is the Best Time to get Solar?

Episode Transcript

Speaker 2 (00:24):
Welcome to another episode of the Harman solar
podcast.
I'm your host, Rob from mono.
Vp is sales marketing at Harmansolar.
With me is my co-host, BenWalsh Lager.
He's also known as MrEverything Ben great to be back.

Speaker 1 (00:36):
Yeah, thank you.

Speaker 2 (00:37):
Good to have you back Now.
Okay, we got to do this again.
Let's get it out of the way,let's get it out of the way.
Okay, we started with abusiness card Yep.
Then we went to a pamphlet,then we went to a scroll no,
newspaper newspaper, then scroll, scroll, then adventure book,
then readers digest Yep.
Where are we today?

Speaker 1 (00:58):
Actually some breaking news for you.
Breaking news yeah, we're goingbackwards now.

Speaker 2 (01:02):
I had to.

Speaker 1 (01:03):
You know somewhat, give up a small role.

Speaker 2 (01:05):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (01:05):
We hired somebody else at Harman, so I'm no longer
adding things.
I took away one, so I guess,I'm I don't know down to like a
PowerPoint presentation.

Speaker 2 (01:13):
You're a PowerPoint presentation, so that's your
business card, okay.

Speaker 1 (01:16):
This card is just.
Here's my PowerPoint goingbackwards?

Speaker 2 (01:19):
Yeah, that's fine.
Yeah, backwards is okay.

Speaker 1 (01:20):
I think I should join the rest of the world and just
be a normal one.
One Mr, one thing.

Speaker 2 (01:24):
Mr One business card.
Here it is no, you actuallyapproved me this week that you
are Mr Everything because Iasked youa question.
I'm like how did you even knowthis?
And you go because.

Speaker 1 (01:31):
I'm Mr.
Everything I started and didn'tanswer the question.
I just said no, I just knowthings.

Speaker 2 (01:35):
That was hilarious, I know you.
So today, this this is this isa great one.
This is the podcast.
Yeah, this is it.
I mean, this is what it's allabout.
This is why we started this.
We are going to talk.
It's called Solar 101.

Speaker 1 (01:47):
This is the one we probably should have started
with.

Speaker 2 (01:50):
Probably.
That's okay, though, but thisis Solar 101.
And I mean this is going todeep dive into what solar is and
the proponents of solar, howyou finance it, the same.
I mean this is going to be alot of fantastic information.
You don't want to miss this one.

Speaker 1 (02:05):
Yeah, we, we started off by doing all these little,
tiny little subsections of solar.
And then we realized wait aminute, we haven't talked about
the big picture, let's talk bigpicture now.
So that's what we're doingtoday Big picture.

Speaker 2 (02:16):
And this is going to be part one of the two part
episode that we're going to doon Solar 101, because it's such
a big topic, there's so much inthis.
We want to take our time and gothrough the components and the
first part and kind ofunderstand what goes into a
solar system and then also maybejust touch on you know the time
to shine of, you know the sun'spath and the different things

(02:38):
and as myth and all that goodstuff and what we need to put a
panel in the perfect spot toproduce energy.
So that's what we're going totalk about in part one, and then
the part two we'll get intolike savings and purchase
options and all those differentkinds of things as well.

Speaker 1 (02:50):
Yeah, this is all important information, so we
want to go in depth with it.
We don't want to just skim it.

Speaker 2 (02:55):
Right, exactly, so let's get started with part one.

Speaker 1 (02:58):
So usually we got a guy you got a guy, say I got a
guy, you wore your, I got a guysweater, I got a guy.

Speaker 2 (03:03):
However, we don't have a guy today?

Speaker 1 (03:06):
There's no guy here.

Speaker 2 (03:07):
You know who we have today, Me and you, because we
are experts in solar 101.
I've done seminars, You've doneseminars, so we're going to do
a podcast seminar in a sense.
Yeah, and we got a lot of greatinformation to share.
Buckle in, this is a good one,this is a good one.
So we are.
We are going to start on thebasics of solar right.
First thing I want to do istalk about so Harmon's solar.

(03:30):
In case you you've never beento our facility or never seen it
, I mean, this is actually thefront of our building.
It's really we live.
We have a beautiful building at.

Speaker 1 (03:38):
Harmon.
I like to always tell peoplewe're not just a you know guy
working out of his mom'sbasement Like.
We are an actual company, youknow, with a building and you
can Google us.
We actually have solar in ourback lot.

Speaker 2 (03:49):
Yeah, I'm going to show you that, in a second too,
we're a product of a product.

Speaker 1 (03:52):
So we're a legit company.

Speaker 2 (03:53):
We're locally owned, operated since 1975, where we
started as a commercialelectrical company.
I got into solar in 2008.
And, as you can, ben justmentioned, we practice what we
preach.
That's our.
We're showing a picture of ourarray, our array in the back of
our building, which basicallypowers our building.

Speaker 1 (04:09):
I like walking in every morning and you have that
display right on the front deskand see how much power you've
generated.
Here at the we have a littledisplay of how much power have
we generated and you know todayand the year, so we can see how
our system is doing every singleday.

Speaker 2 (04:23):
And we park our trucks under there.
We put this up in 2012.
It's an 80 K system and, like Isaid, it takes care of the
building.
So it's it's we practice, whatwe preach, I mean, which is
important, right?
If you're going to be livingthis world, you got to be part
of it.
I have solar in my house Rightwhen Ben gets his new house, I'm
sure he'll have solar on it aswell.
So we know it's a big, it's abig benefit for us, and so as a

(04:43):
business, we know that too.
And here you go.
Just wanted to show everybody apicture of that, and if you're
listening on Spotify, I'm sorryyou could just imagine it.
Yeah, Imagine.
So we're going to go like Isaid we're going to start off
real basic with the componentsof the solar system, Right?
So there's a few differentareas we're going to go into.
I'm going to go ahead and I'mgoing to move past this one and
we're going to start at the mostbasic thing that you need in a

(05:06):
solar system Solar panel.

Speaker 1 (05:08):
That's right, you've got to have a solar panel.

Speaker 2 (05:11):
What's a solar panel?
Right, so you look up thedefinitions.
Basically it's a bunch of solarcells that are combined into
one panel.
That's what it is these cellsare.
Majority of these cells aretypically made in China.
That's just a fact, most of themare made in China and then
they're shipped out to differentcountries where they take them
and they put them together aspanels, I mean.

(05:31):
So I know people are very bigon I want US made this, I want
US made that, and that'sfantastic and I'm glad you do.
But typically this stuff isshipped out of somewhere else,
in a lot of its China, malaysia,some parts in Europe.
We do have more manufacturersnow that are in like North
America, like Canada.
There was solar sun power wasin Mexico.

Speaker 1 (05:51):
Yeah, I always tell people look around your house.
Not everything in your house isAmerican made, it's your point,
your phone that you have inyour hand right now.
Whatever you're listening toright now probably not made in
America.
It's made somewhere overseas.

Speaker 2 (06:03):
And remember I mean the statute for we.
It was made in America.
It doesn't have to typicallyall be made in America.
You could be assembled inAmerica, yeah.
So, and that's typically whatyou have with solar panels
they're assembled.

Speaker 1 (06:13):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (06:13):
They could be assembled in America.
It doesn't mean the parts areactually made here.

Speaker 1 (06:16):
You do have kind of those shady companies out there
who are like yeah, all of ourstuff is made in America, all
the panels the inverters areracking.
Everything that we put on yourhouse is made in America.

Speaker 2 (06:26):
And it's like not so much.
Let's be honest with yourcustomers here.

Speaker 1 (06:29):
You know it might be assembled in a few spots in
America, but not necessarilymade in America.

Speaker 2 (06:34):
So what I'm going to show here next is this is a.
Every panel has a data sheet.
It's a cut sheet.
We call it a cut sheet as adata sheet, and what I'm showing
you guys here on YouTube is theHyundai solar module data sheet
, and it has a lot of basicinformation.

Speaker 1 (06:52):
Yeah, this isn't just the only panel we offer, we
have other panels.
So this is just kind of anexample.
So don't, you know, just assumethis is the only one we have.

Speaker 2 (06:59):
Right.
But we all you know Hyundai isone of those brand names.
Everybody knows what Hyundai isor who Hyundai is.
You've just seen the Hyundaicars.
I mean that came from Korea,south Korea.
They got into the solarbusiness and they make a very
good panel.
So it's just brand recognition.
A lot of times You'll seecompanies like LG, who used to
be around.
Panasonic used to be around.
I don't think they're beingmade here anymore.
Hyundai Hanwha has become a bigname in the U?

(07:23):
S for solar panels REC.
Y'all know REC.
I mean they got in the solarbusiness.
Ge was in the solar business.
I'm not sure if they're stillin it or not, but there's a lot
of companies that have gotteninto the solar panel business
and some have gotten out.
But yeah, so this is just aprime example.
Whenever we look at a solarpanel, we give this also to a
customer on an appointment, butit just, it just shows a lot of
good, detailed information.

Speaker 1 (07:44):
Yeah, it's all the technical aspect.
You know the heat degradation.
How much is producing warrantyinformation, things like that?

Speaker 2 (07:51):
I wanted to hit on the warranty.
I think I gave you a sheetright, Probably, so focus on the
warranty.
It's actually, I think it's a25 year.
It talks about a power warranty.
It talks about a basically apanel warranty and what those
mean.

Speaker 1 (08:04):
Like bumper to bumper warranties in your car like
that Kind of I know, I guess.
I know the answer to that yeah,yes and no.
So maybe you want to explain.
So the warranty you get to lookat your warranty.
There's two aspects of thewarranty how is the panel going
to hold up?
Is it going to break?
Is it going to bend?
Is it going to shift?
You know things like that.
And then how is it going toactually perform?

(08:25):
Because that's probably thebiggest thing there is.
If it's up on your roof, youdon't want it to fall apart.
Obviously you don't want it tocrack, and you know.
So that's that's not theproduction warranty.
The production warrantieswhat's most important, because
that affects your bills.
So when you're looking atwarranties, you should probably
look at what type of warranty AmI getting?
Am I getting a productionwarranty or am I getting a

(08:45):
manufacturer warranty Right Onthe actual equipment?

Speaker 2 (08:48):
They call it a linear warranty now, don't they the
the?
It's a degrade so much per yearover 25 years.
And I think, for instance, thisHyundai panel.
I want to say it.
It degrades down to 85% ofoutput, which is pretty standard
over 25 years.
So what that means is, by year25, it's producing 85% of what
it was today.

Speaker 1 (09:07):
Yeah, and don't get hung up on that.
That doesn't necessarily meanby year 26,.
It all of a sudden goes to zero.
We laugh.
But we actually have thoseconversations like well, what
happens after?
It's like, does it stopproducing?
Do I need new panels?
Like no, that's just saying onaverage, the testing that
they've done.
It's saying it's going to beabout 85%.
Who knows, you might have 90%or it.

(09:28):
You know it could be kind ofaround 85%.
It doesn't mean it's going todrop off to zero after that.

Speaker 2 (09:34):
But what I, what I would say is it's pretty
standard today for modules tohave 25 year power, power and
performance warranties.
That we're talking about.
If you get someone showing youa module that has like 12 years,
I mean that's five years ago.

Speaker 1 (09:48):
Yeah, I remember when I first started the industry,
the warranties were hugedifference.
You know you would have, youknow, 20 year warranties and
five year warranties.
So it's like right.

Speaker 2 (09:57):
So it's changed.

Speaker 1 (09:58):
Yeah Now, now everyone's pretty much aligned.

Speaker 2 (10:00):
They're all if somebody shows you a 12 year
warranty on a panel, you need toreally block out that, because
everything out there I would say25 years is a standard today.
Yeah.
And then when you talk warrantyso for instance, this is my
favorite living in Arizona isyou have a lot of people live on
golf courses and there's a lotof bad golfers out there yeah,
I'm one of them.
And if you're on a golf courseand the panel gets broken by a

(10:22):
golf ball, it's kind of outsideof the warranty.

Speaker 1 (10:26):
Yeah, it happens.
I actually talked with acustomer a couple of months ago
that, looking at their aerialviews, I noticed a lot of,
because they called in and saidhey, I think my panels are under
producing, so naturally we takea look at it and go so you live
by a golf course and you have awhole bunch of little dots all
over your panels.
I see he goes yeah, I usuallyfind golf balls in my backyard

(10:47):
and go well, that's probably whyyour panels are under producing
, because they're gettingbombarded by all those bad
golfers.

Speaker 2 (10:51):
Yeah, so the manufacturer's going to be too
keen on replacing that panel forhalf a free Right.
Right.
So just to understand that, theone thing about Harman is when
we install it we give a fiveyear.
Basically there's like a fiveyear warranty where if anything
does happen to it, we'll pay forthe part, and the part is paid
by the manufacturer but we'llpay for all the labor to come
out and do all the stuff thathas to do After five years.

(11:12):
It's between you and themanufacturer and it depends on
the manufacturer.
They're all different.
Some cover all the labor, somecover part of the labor.
So just to understand that,everybody's out there saying,
yeah, it's bumper to bumper,it's not yeah.
Manufacturers don't work thatway.

Speaker 1 (11:25):
Make sure you really look at the manufacturer and
read into the warranties andwhat they are, yeah, but the
nice thing about Harman is that,even if you don't know because
I know you're dealing withHarman and then you have your
manufacturer of your Hyundaipanels.
You're like, who do I call?
Just call us.
Yeah, we'll take care of it.
We're not necessarily the onewho is going to be doing the
replacement or the cost for it,because we'll probably reach out
to our suppliers andmanufacturers to do all that.

(11:48):
But I keep preaching to people.
It's one number to call.
Call us, we'll take care of it,because I know there's a lot of
solar companies out there.
If something breaks they go, oh, contact the manufacturer, we
sold it or we installed it, butafter that it's out of our hands
, it's all on you.
But we're not like that.

Speaker 2 (12:04):
So back to the 101 theme.
You need sun for solar.
The light hits that panel andit produces DC power, direct
current power.
Now homes run on AC.
So there's, a problem there,the guy to convert that DC to AC
.
And how do we do that?
Well, I'm glad you asked, I did, I asked, you did you asked.

(12:27):
We have what's called aninverter in the system, so this
is the next component.
We're going to talk about ourinverters and they do exactly
what I just said.
They convert DC power to ACusable home power.

Speaker 1 (12:37):
Yeah, from direct current to alternating current.

Speaker 2 (12:41):
And there's different types of inverters and we sell
them all.

Speaker 1 (12:44):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (12:45):
And there's positives about all of them and there's
probably some negatives aboutall of them, and we're going to
kind of go into the differencesand what that is.

Speaker 1 (12:53):
I hate hearing from other sales rep from other
companies who say like, oh, youdon't want that type of inverter
, you want this Like.
Well, how do you know what Iwant?

Speaker 2 (13:00):
I can give you an argument for or against every
one of these Exactly.

Speaker 1 (13:05):
There's pros and cons to each.

Speaker 2 (13:06):
And what you have are people selling one inverter and
they only give you the pros forthat and the cons for
everything else, and I can comein your door after you're done
talking to him and tell him whyyou shouldn't get that inverter.
Yeah, it's a personal decisionwhat you want.
It's a cost to each one, so itjust depends what you're really
looking to do.

Speaker 1 (13:22):
Which is nice about Harmon, because we're not going
to say you don't ever get thistype of inverter Right.
We're going to present you withoptions.
We'll say, hey, depending onyour lifestyle or what you want
and costs and everything, here'syour options, let's figure out
what works best for you.

Speaker 2 (13:36):
That's right.
So, and this next slide forthose of you on YouTube.
So I'm going to show you acouple of different ones that we
offer to you and kind of howthey're set up.
So I'm going to start with themost, probably the most popular
inverter over the last, I wouldsay, 18 months.
In Arizona, inverters gothrough cycles.
Oh yeah, it's really funnybecause it's all about you know

(14:01):
who's offering the best price tothe installers, what people
think is cool, and all of asudden you see these cycles
where we'll go from.
This one goes for 18 months andthe next 18 months it's the
next one, yep, so, like I said,I can sell you any of them, but
people seem to gravitate to oneand then they ride that horse
and then, once that horse getstired, they go to that next one
and they ride that horse.

(14:22):
So I'm going to show you allthe horses.

Speaker 1 (14:23):
Yeah, I've been in the industry for about eight
years and I've seen it shiftmaybe about three times during
that time.

Speaker 2 (14:29):
Yeah, I could think of even a couple more.

Speaker 1 (14:31):
Yeah, it's kind of crazy Like okay, well, if that's
what you want, then that's whatyou want, but at least you know
the pros and cons to everyone.

Speaker 2 (14:37):
So I'm going to start with the current horse.
This is the horse that's beengoing on for about 18 months and
there's a shift coming.
Yeah, but this is the horsethat's been going on for 18
months and this is a goodproduct, right?
So it's an end phasemicroinverter.
End phase, good companymicroinverter.
It's a great product.
Let me explain what amicroinverter is.
So if you look at the top rightof the slide, you see that
black microinverter thatattaches to the panels

(15:00):
underneath the back end of thepanel the individual individual
panels.
Every panel has its own littlemicroinverter Really cool, right
?
So that really means that youcan actually register and see
how every panel in your systemindividually is doing through
your monitoring app.
Right, if you're a techie, ifyou're an engineer, you just got

(15:20):
a big smile on your face.
If you're a normal person,you're not that you're not
normal.

Speaker 1 (15:24):
if you're an engineer , you got to say that.
Wait a minute.
Disclaimer to all engineers outthere.

Speaker 2 (15:29):
But if you're the common person, the average
person, that's great, it'sawesome.
We have no idea what that means, but you might look at it once.
I looked at my app once.
Yeah, and I never looked at itagain.
Yeah, because I just got betterthings to do than see how my
solar panel is doing today.

Speaker 1 (15:45):
I talk with people all the time.
We were like monitoring everyindividual panel and weather
cycles and the clouds going overhere and this is doing that
Like okay.

Speaker 2 (15:54):
And your sales guy that only sells this is going to
give you all that.
This is very important becauseit's level, it's a panel level
monitoring.
Yep, wow, who cares?
It's still a great product.
But they're also going to sellyou on this next piece and that
is shading.
Yeah, and this panel, thisinverter, is going to help

(16:16):
because when you get shade on apanel, it can tend to produce
less.
And with this inverter so let'ssay, this panel here has
inverter and it's getting shaded, but this one here is going to
invert and it's not gettingshaded this one might produce
less.
This one keeps doing what it'sdoing.
Right, because panels work offthe sun and that's important.
In a second I'm not going toI'm going to tell you why it's

(16:37):
important, but not just yet.
But it's a big selling point onend phase is that every panel
has its own inverter.
I'm going to give you thenegative.
Now it's 160 degrees on yourroof in the summer and you have
a mechanical inverter.

Speaker 1 (16:51):
Yeah, equipment a little piece of equipment like
40 of them.
Yeah, if you have 40 panels,you have 40 of them on your roof
, on your roof Now.

Speaker 2 (16:57):
When Enphase first started, they had a lot of
issues with inverters and butthey I'll give them this They've
improved these inverters, sure,and they perform a lot better.
They've got a 25 year warrantyon them.
It's a great product.
It's also the most expensiveproduct, just so you know.
There's a price for everything.
So that's product, a greatproduct.
Most expensive, has the benefitthat it protects you from some

(17:19):
shading and also panel of amonitoring.
Those would be the keys to thatinverter.
You then have the step sisterof this, and for us it's the TGO
, it's Solar Edge does it aswell and it's called the string
inverter with optimizers.
That's a mouthful yeah, so astring inverter.
What does that mean?

(17:39):
So panels are put up on theroof in strings, and let me
explain that.
Well, you know what?
Let you explain that.

Speaker 1 (17:46):
Go ahead.
It's pretty easy to explain.

Speaker 2 (17:48):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (17:49):
You know you have your array that may have you
know 10 panels so they have tobe strung together because all
that electrical while has to befed to your, your home, so they
tie them all together.
Think Christmas lights.
They're, they're all strungtogether In one strand of
Christmas lights on your, onyour roof.

Speaker 2 (18:05):
So, and they have like I think this the some tie
goes, I think they have fouroutput strings.
So basically you can you know,per inverter you can string,
let's say, four strings.
So I can have four strings of10 or four strings of 11, or you
can have a string of four hereand a string of 10 here and a
string of five here.
So I mean that's what we meanby when we say a string inverter
, versus a micro inverter, whichis per panel.

(18:26):
This is per string.
Now, what they also do on thisstring inverter is they put on
something called an optimizer.
Optimizer looks exactly likethe end phase that I just showed
you.
It goes on back of every singlepanel and what it does is it
optimizes, optimizes.
Right, it's Mr Optimizer.
He's going to, he doesn't, hedoesn't make your panels
optimistic.

Speaker 1 (18:46):
What he does.
It's cloudy up and my panel saythey're not.

Speaker 2 (18:50):
My panel say it's a blue sky?
No, so what it does is is ifthere is shade.
So here's the difference with astring inverter If there is
shade on, let's say, two of theeight panels in a string, it
affects all eight panels, right.

Speaker 1 (19:03):
I always tell people think of.

Speaker 2 (19:04):
Christmas lights, you know again.

Speaker 1 (19:05):
Great, yeah, do you take one bulb out?
The whole thing goes out.
Yep, that's a string inverter,micro inverter.

Speaker 2 (19:11):
You take one bulb out , just that one bulb is out, and
that that is the biggestdifference.
Now, what optimizers do is, ifthey start seeing shading, they
will optimize the output of thepanel and it actually fights
against that shade and doesn'tgive you that big negative
impact that you would seewithout it.
So that that's what anoptimizer is.
So that's kind of like thestring inverters little sister's

(19:34):
best friend that helps you getinto the same playing field as a
micro inverter.

Speaker 1 (19:39):
I have string inverters on my house Like a
hybrid.

Speaker 2 (19:41):
Yeah, it's a hybrid and this is exact setup I have
in my house and it works great.
A fights against shade and allthat it's.
I don't have any issues.

Speaker 1 (19:50):
Yeah, cause you do have a big tree, I think out
front, right, I now have.

Speaker 2 (19:53):
I now have four big palm trees on my West that
weren't that big when I putsolar on seven years ago, then I
now have to decide whether I'mgoing to cut down or not, and
they're starting to look ifthey're going to come down.

Speaker 1 (20:04):
Yeah, you're looking at your those APS bills and
going well, late day, late inthe day, right Cause of the.

Speaker 2 (20:07):
West and it's I lose some production in the later
part of the day.
So those are the decisions youhave to make Right, and for me,
I'm going to have to make thatdecision.
If I had a micro inverter, itstill would impact the micro
inverter because I'd still goingto all of them get shade.

Speaker 1 (20:20):
Right.

Speaker 2 (20:21):
Yeah, it's just my situation, Just that's me.

Speaker 1 (20:24):
So if you do have a house that has, you know,
partial shading because of treesaround, you know, consider that
.
Don't just be stuck into onetype of inverter with the the
quote that you're getting.

Speaker 2 (20:34):
Right, and this, this inverter, I would say price
wise, is a step down from themicro inverter.
It's a little cheaper dependingwho you're dealing with, but I
know for us it's a littlecheaper, yeah, but again,
another really good product thatwe use has really good
monitoring as well.
You can you panel level monitorbecause you have optimizers so
you have to have that.
So it's same kind of monitoringas end phase to only really the

(20:56):
only difference is that it'srun off a string inverter, the
big unit that you see in the inthe picture here.
That will be on your wall in agarage or outside by where you
see us.
Wherever you put the equipment,you'll actually have that piece
of equipment there, versus nothaving that a piece of equipment
on the wall because it's up onthe module.

Speaker 1 (21:11):
Yeah, I always tell people when they're deciding
between string inverters andmicro inverters.
You know cause.
There are pros and cons to eachinverter is going to go down,
it's going to happen, right, youknow.
Hopefully it's during thewarranty period, but it's just a
matter of how many times do youwant that to happen?

Speaker 2 (21:27):
You know, string inverter.

Speaker 1 (21:28):
you're having one inverter, one or two inverters
on your, on your home.
It's going to break down.
It might just be one phone callbecause, hey, my inverters went
down and he had replaced.
Come out and fix it.
Micro inverters Now you have 40tiny inverters so you might
have to make multiple callsbecause, hey, I just noticed two
of them went down.
You know two of them are notreporting.
I need those fixed.

(21:48):
So a couple of months later, upa different two went down.
So I need to get those fixed.
So you know it's going tohappen just as a matter of when
you're right.

Speaker 2 (21:56):
I mean, and the warranty on a string inverter,
so those optimizers that go intothe panels, 25 years, that
string inverter that's on yourwall, typically 12 years, 12 and
a half years on average is whatthey warranty.
But you can buy an extendedwarranty to 25 years so you can
get the 20 same kind of warrantycovered you have with the micro
inverter.
Your call yeah.
Then there's the third product.
Now, this product is newer andit's older, makes sense, and

(22:23):
it's newer.

Speaker 1 (22:23):
Yeah, it is newer yeah.

Speaker 2 (22:25):
So we talk about Tesla.
So Tesla has a reallyinteresting string inverter that
is really starting to hit themarket today.
I'll let you talk about it morebecause you know, yeah, I do
know more, I knew more about it,and there's a lot of cool
things about this Number one itlooks, looks cool.
Everything Tesla makes justlooks cool.
Cybertruck came out today.
Yeah, I saw that.

Speaker 1 (22:45):
Except for the Cybertruck.

Speaker 2 (22:46):
And the Tesla makes looks cool.
Yeah, that is the ugliest truckever, but it's got a lot of
cool features.
Yeah, it looks cool, it reallydoes.
But this is the Tesla inverter,and so this will play into
batteries as well, and we'lltalk about that next.
But this inverter, it's a.
It's a string inverter.
It really is, but it's a highefficiency string inverter.
It actually is more efficientthan the end phase or the T go.

Speaker 1 (23:10):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (23:11):
Interesting, right yeah, it is liquid cooled.

Speaker 1 (23:16):
Interesting as well.

Speaker 2 (23:17):
That's really interesting?

Speaker 1 (23:19):
Yeah, because most of them are fan cooled.
They're all fan cooled.

Speaker 2 (23:21):
And they tend to get hot.
And when they get hot theystart to clip.
And what that means.
What's clipping and not theclippers from Los Angeles?
What clipping is is that all ofa sudden, your production will
basically it'll flat line.
It won't get better, get worse.
It kind of flat lines for alittle bit because it's got too
hot.
We call it derating, we call itclipping, whatever you want to

(23:42):
call it.
But that can happen with theother inverters because it gets
so hot.

Speaker 1 (23:46):
Yeah, we always had that conversation with customers
.
You know you might have a 10kilowatt system but then you
gotta look at well, what are myinverters gonna be doing?

Speaker 2 (23:54):
Right, so a really really good point, right?

Speaker 1 (23:56):
Just because it's 10 kilowatts on my panels doesn't
mean I'm gonna be getting 10kilowatts from the actual
inverters.

Speaker 2 (24:02):
So not only will it clip because of heat.
Now that you're your point,which is a really another good
point we should hit right hereis you get the customer or you
get the salesperson, and theysay I'm gonna sell you a 450
watt panel and I'm gonna put a Nphase microinverter on it.
That's great.
It's only gonna produce like a400 watt panel because those
inverters can't handle a panelat 450 watts.
So whether you pay for the 450watt or buy a 400 watt, you're

(24:23):
basically getting to get thesame production.
It's all smoke and mirrorsbecause there's a thing called
clipping Very important.
Put that in your littlenotebook.
It's called clipping with solar.
It's very important.
You can put the biggest panelin the world you want.
It's only gonna be as good asthe inverter and the inverter's
gonna only handle about 400 orso.
Let's get into the commercialstuff.
Commercial stuff is made tohandle 550 and those things

(24:45):
we're not talking commercial,we're talking your house.
If you go much more than a 400,you're basically paying just to
say you have a 400 plus butyou're really not getting the
benefit of it.
So back to the Tesla.
So it's liquid cooled.
So in the northeastern part ofthe country and the north part
of the country it'll help warmit up.
In our part of the country ithelps keep it cool.
Nice.

(25:05):
So that's a big deal.
I mean that means it's gonna bemore efficient, because it's
gonna run efficienttemperature-wise.
It has about a 97% efficiency atits peak.
That's pretty good.
And starting off the day itstarts off at about 93, it gets
to 97 and then goes down fromthere.
Versus all these other thingsthat we've talked about, it's
higher, it's better efficiency.
So it's a string inverter,though that's what it is.

(25:27):
It doesn't have optimizers.
You can't have optimizers withthis, so shading is no go.
So let's talk about shading,and this is an important
conversation and it's funny.
We just had Tesla in the officeyesterday and we were talking
through all this stuff.
93% of their customer base doesnot have shading issues.

(25:49):
Think about that 93% 93% andthink about their customer base.
Let's just talk Arizona,because that's all we're focused
on.
How many of you have a ton ofshading on your roof?
I know I don't.
I have trubs and bushes.
I'm gonna stick with 93, Icould go 95, but I'm gonna say
93% of you probably don't reallyhave impacts of shading.

(26:09):
So a microinverter, anoptimizer, does nothing for you.
You don't need it.
It's not, there's no shadingthat's gonna hurt your setup.
And if you do have a littleshading, what you can do with a
string inverter is let's saythere's an area of your roof
there's a little shading and wehave to put panels there.
So let's say we just put twopanels there on a string and

(26:31):
then we put the majority of themaway from the shade.
There's really no impact.
So it takes down to string oftwo.
You can adjust the design tooffset if there is some shading.
But the reality is in Arizona,especially 90 plus percent, 93
plus percent of you you don'thave a shading issue.

Speaker 1 (26:47):
So what we're trying to do is educate you as the home
buyer.
If a sales rep from anothercompany comes in and is pitching
you these inverters withoptimizers and all this stuff
and you look at your home andyou go hey, I was watching the
Harmon Solar podcast and theytold me that since I don't have
shading, I don't really need allthis stuff.
Can you get me cheaper andbetter inverters?

Speaker 2 (27:09):
Yeah, absolutely See what they say, and so I'm here
to tell you that, most of thetime, based on the stats, a
microinverter is overkill.
An optimizer is overkill Mostof the time, majority of the
time.
Again, your situation is yoursituation.
I don't know your situation,but I'm gonna tell you.
Take a look at your situation,understand, like Ben just said,

(27:30):
and know that you don't wannapay for overkill.
Because here's the cool thingthis is the cheapest inverter by
far.
The pricing that Tesla has comeout with this inverter is
rocking the industry.
Right now.
They don't know what to dobecause, number one, it's a
really good inverter.
It's highly efficient, it'sliquid cooled and it's really

(27:51):
cheap.
So people are starting to go.
What do we do?
Because Tesla has this way ofjust kind of doing that right
and they're doing it with this.
Now, the only negative that Ican tell you and they'll spin it
into a positive, but I can giveyou the negative is it only has
a 12 and a half year warranty.
You don't get a 25 yearwarranty and there's no option
to upgrade to a 25 year warrantybecause it's so cheap.

(28:14):
They're not offering anextended warranty.
They're like it's so cheap,Just buy a new one, just buy
another one, and you're stillgonna pay less than you would
have.
So that's their pitch highlyefficient, it's a Tesla product.
It's a real well made product.
It's liquid, cool, which is thecoolest thing in the world.

Speaker 1 (28:30):
Yeah, great for SRP customers.
Yeah, because in SRP, as wetalked about before, it's very,
very hard to show a savings justbecause of how SRP bills after
solar.
So you really really need tocut a lot of costs not quality,
but costs in SRP.
So this is a good option forthose customers.

Speaker 2 (28:49):
Yeah, so these are your three.
I mean, I'm showing you threeproducts, but these are your
three basic setups that you haveout there, right?
A string inverter, stringinverter with optimizers and a
micro inverter.
Those are your three.
Those are the three things.

Speaker 1 (29:00):
Those are only three.
Yeah, that's it, unless there'ssomething else out there?

Speaker 2 (29:05):
No, I don't think so.
So I mean, these are the thingsthat you should know of.
So understand when someonecomes and pitches you solar,
these are the options, that'show they work.
Know what's best for you, notwhat's best for them, because
that's all they sell, right,right.
So that's why, at Harman, wehave a full tool belt of
inverters.
We're gonna put whatever's bestfor you and know that if you
want a micro inverter, they'regreat products.

(29:25):
We love Enphase, love Tego,love Tesla.
We'll sell you any one of them,but I'm not gonna over.
I don't wanna oversell you whenI don't need to.
It just depends on what yourneeds and wants are.

Speaker 1 (29:34):
Right, everyone's gonna be different, just let us
know.

Speaker 2 (29:37):
So that's inverters.
The next piece kind of tiesinto the other's loan, but it's
an important one, right?
Because these are these sales?

Speaker 1 (29:46):
guys, it's the brains of your system.

Speaker 2 (29:49):
Basically this is how they train them and they try to
sell you a certain type ofequipment and they try to tell
you it's the best.

Speaker 1 (29:55):
I won't name the company that was with before
Harman.
I was there for about threemonths.
Then I read through all thenonsense.
They didn't do a good job oftraining me on the equipment.
They said this is what we sell,these are the panels, these are
the inverters Yep, go out.
And I was like, okay, I feellike I need more information on
this.
But that's not what they wereabout.

(30:16):
They're all about their bottomline and making money and really
don't care what their customersare like.
Then I found Harman and waslike it's actually a little bit
different in the industry.
Let's actually start caringabout people and doing it the
right way.

Speaker 2 (30:27):
Yeah, I agree.
Every time we've brought on anew person, they always say why
are you training me on theequipment?
No one ever has done thatbefore.
Because you need to understandthis If you.
How do you sell something?
You don't know what it?

Speaker 1 (30:35):
is which is scary.
Right, like you were sellingthis before Right that just goes
to show you.

Speaker 2 (30:41):
So you got to be careful.
Harman's World Podcasteducating you, empowering you,
that's what we do, all right, solet's talk batteries.
So we also sell multiplebatteries.
Yeah, and phase thatmicro-inverter.
They make a battery.
They make little.

Speaker 1 (30:55):
Three, whatever three K batteries that you can stack
Yep Yep Small, medium, large,basically.

Speaker 2 (31:00):
TGO makes a battery system, but we're pretty big on
the Tesla battery, thePowerwalls.
So this is the Powerwall.
The Powerwall, as far as I'mconcerned, and all the batteries
we've looked at, gives you themost benefit.
It's got the best technology.
Tesla is trying to create thisuniverse right.
Where, hey, you buy a Tesla car, Tesla car charger, Tesla solar

(31:24):
system, Tesla inverter, Teslabattery all on one app.
Yeah, you know that's wherethis world is going and Tesla's
kind of ahead of it right now.
They don't have solar panelsright now, but they are talking
about potentially starting tomake those again some day out in
Buffalo in their giga plant.
But right now, that's whattheir thought process is.
And I like that thought process,because that's where we're all

(31:45):
going.
Everyone's going to everyone'sfollowing.
But the battery is a veryinteresting thing and we will
you know what, one of these dayshere we'll do a podcast just on
the batteries, because I thinkwe can really dive in deep on
batteries.
That's going to be another longone, for sure.
Yeah, that's a long one, butit's a good one and we have to
bring in an engineer for that,so that'll be interesting
because you really need to havethat expertise to talk these

(32:05):
details of these batteries.
But the Tesla battery very coolproduct.
They have the Powerwall.
They came out with thePowerwall one, then they came
out with the Powerwall two, thenthey came out with the
Powerwall plus and now they'vegot the Powerwall three coming
out.
So Powerwall three is actuallycoming out in January of 24.

Speaker 1 (32:21):
Yeah, they kind of very discreetly pushed it out
there.

Speaker 2 (32:23):
They have.

Speaker 1 (32:24):
Not a whole lot of advertisement.
They're just kind of like hey,guess what, we got this.

Speaker 2 (32:27):
And you know what?
Herman Solar actually has gotavailability to him right now
through a pilot program forTesla.

Speaker 1 (32:32):
Are we allowed to say that no, we'll edit it.

Speaker 2 (32:36):
But yeah, so that's, and I'll explain the differences
.
But the Powerwall one was justtheir first gen check at it.

Speaker 1 (32:40):
Yeah, the Powerwall two, I'll be honest, when the
Powerwall one came out, it wasfine yeah it was, but it wasn't
great.

Speaker 2 (32:46):
No, it wasn't great, it was industry.

Speaker 1 (32:49):
Looking at the price point and what it does and or
what it did and everything I waslike eh, I get it.
It's the first, it's you knowgeneration one.
You never buy Gen one Right,that's just me.
I would never buy Gen one yeahbut then the Powerwall two came
out.
I was like, okay, it madeimprovements.
It made improvements.
It was a little bit better.
You know, pricing was great,pricing was good on it, so it
got better.
So I'm curious to see Powerwallthree, how that's gonna go.

(33:11):
So when?

Speaker 2 (33:11):
you went to Powerwall two, which we still sell.
The Powerwall two requiresother equipment to be on the
wall Powerwall battery.
You've got a gateway.
You've got all this stuff andall this equipment that you have
to put up there.
Great product.
You got to have the space toput it up.
Works really well with you,especially if you have an
existing solar system.

(33:31):
We'll sell you a Powerwall two,because that's what really goes
with an existing system, becauseit works off the inverters, off
your system.
But then they came out withwhat's called the Powerwall plus
, and that's what you see hereon the left side.
The Powerwall plus has aninverter as part of it.
So no longer are you looking atend phase or you're looking at
TGO everything's going throughthe inverter, off the battery.

(33:52):
It's a 7.6 inverter don't worryabout what that is, but it's an
inverter as part of the battery.
Well, it can see how it'sstacked.
It looks really nice, buteverything runs through there,
which is really kind of cool.
And then, instead of putting allthis extra equipment on the
wall, you don't need it you justhave this one band that goes
around your meter and itbasically backs up that entire

(34:13):
panel and on your entire panel,your electric panel, it'll do
backup.
For Now.
That can be deceiving because,again, we're Arizona.
If you put one battery back upyour entire panel and you turn
the AC on an hour later youdon't have battery.
So, we all know that.
So if your main purpose is everto back up your AC because of a

(34:35):
power outage, yeah, you needmore than one battery.

Speaker 1 (34:37):
That's probably the biggest misconception out there
in the whole industry.
They're great in coolerclimates or coastal climates
where the temperatures don'tvary extreme, but here in
Arizona our temperatures arepretty extreme.
Wintertime we'll get down to30s and summer in the 130s,
right and we have a great powergrid here.

Speaker 2 (34:54):
We don't have a lot of outages, probably not.
Maybe we do about in the eastside of town, it seems, because
of the storms and stuff, buttypically even there the
outskirts do have outages.
But in the Metro Phoenix area wedon't have a lot of outages, so
we have a really good grid.
Where this really benefits isin two places.
Number one, if you just want tohave a backup system in case
something happens.
Maybe you have an elderlyparent that needs an oxygen tank

(35:16):
that runs all the time, or youneed a fridge to run medicine.
Keep medicine cool, Whateverthat is you're diabetic and you
have to keep your penicillin andpenipsoin.
I know what you're talkingabout.

Speaker 1 (35:24):
Yeah, that stuff.
I had those conversations withcustomers who were like, oh no,
if the grid goes down for like aweek, I want to be able to back
up my entire house.

Speaker 2 (35:31):
I'm like maybe in the early spring that could be
possible for a few days here andthere, but in the summertime
grid goes down.

Speaker 1 (35:39):
It's, yep, it'd be tough.
Your batteries can be drained.
And now what?

Speaker 2 (35:43):
So where this battery does really play well is what
we call peak shaving.

Speaker 1 (35:48):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (35:49):
So what do we mean by that?
Well, we've talked about, we'vetalked to SRP and stuff.
So they're in the middle partof the day when the utilities
are charging the highest amountfor kilowatt hours, so where
they're all of a sudden it's 32cents from APS or SRP to buy
your power.
What you can do is have yourbattery set, a Tesla set, to
start feeding power off thebattery and offsetting that high

(36:12):
cost usage.
So you charge it in the morning.

Speaker 1 (36:17):
Yeah, it's best time to do it In the morning, when
you're not using a whole lot ofpower.
Maybe you're gone at work.
That power has to go somewhere.
It's going to go not to thegrid, but to the battery to
charge.

Speaker 2 (36:25):
It charges it and then at four o'clock, when you
need it, it kicks on and itstarts giving you that cheap
power instead of buying thatexpensive power from the utility
, and then you see the impact inyour bill Makes a lot of sense.
I think these are.
You could do the math.
I think these are 13.5 kilowatt.
They're 13.5 K batteries andyou can do the math and it comes

(36:45):
up with where I think this willgive you 480 kilowatts a month
or something like that.
I can't remember the exactnumber.
We did it yesterday, but it's agood amount of power that you
can use to offset peak times andthat's where you can save money
with the battery.
That's the real play for abattery.
If one of these will start anair conditioner again, it won't
last very long.

Speaker 1 (37:04):
It'll start.
It'll start the AC, which is abig deal when you think about it
because other battery companiesout there won't start.
Yeah, that's true.

Speaker 2 (37:11):
But my recommendation when doing a battery is you do
at least two.
You put two batteries into thesystem.
It's a little bit more that youcan handle with two batteries.
We've done three.
I just quoted four today.
It just depends on yoursituation and what you want to
do.

Speaker 1 (37:23):
That's the biggest thing yet, and in some cases,
not everyone needs a battery,which I know everyone in the
solar industry is like.
What did he just say?

Speaker 2 (37:31):
But the reality is they're getting cheaper.

Speaker 1 (37:34):
They've actually come down.

Speaker 2 (37:34):
They've come down about 25% in the last year and a
half.

Speaker 1 (37:37):
Yeah, they're getting better, they're getting cheaper
.
So, eventually you'll get tothat point where we're like,
okay, well, now it makes sensethat if you are getting solar,
then batteries would be kind ofa good thing to have, no matter
what.

Speaker 2 (37:47):
So, like I said, the Powerwall 2 has the inverter,
that 7.6 inverter.
The Powerwall 3 has an 11Kinverter, which means you can
now put even a bigger system onthat battery.
And that's when I start talkingto the inverter size.
That just tells me how manypanels I can actually put on a
roof.
I'm not gonna get into thatright now, but an 11K inverter
on a battery is pretty cool.

(38:07):
Put a nice size system and withthat collar and stuff, it
actually avoids you having toupgrade panels and things like
that upgrade service panels.
It helps you get around allthat.
So the Powerwall 2 and thePowerwall 3, or Powerwall Plus
and the Powerwall 3, very cool.
So we're not gonna get into moredetail.
We're gonna do a Powerwallpodcast where we will get into

(38:29):
the details.
So stay tuned for that.
But just understand how you usea battery.
So basically it's as a backuppower or if you're gonna peak
shave and you wanna save moneyduring peak times.
That's the purpose of a battery.
Okay, so now let's just go on acouple other parts.
We just talked about theelectrical panel.
So obviously this is part ofthe system as well.
So you have a solar panelproducing DC power in one

(38:51):
inverter that switches it to ACpower.

Speaker 1 (38:53):
And that power has to go somewhere.

Speaker 2 (38:55):
It's gotta go somewhere.
Where's it gonna go?
It's gonna go to your panel.
Your panel, ta-da, so it'sgonna go into your panel.
We usually typically have a 40or 60 amp breaker in your box
that we put in and it feeds inthere and it starts to be used
by you as you use power.

Speaker 1 (39:13):
And this is an important aspect of the audit.
If you watched our auditpodcast, this is one of the main
things that we look at.
Can your panel handle the solarsystem?
Is it too old?
Does it need to be upgraded?
Is there space available?
Things like that.
We need to know what we'redealing with here, so very
important to take a look at thatpanel when we go out there.

Speaker 2 (39:34):
Right, absolutely so.
If you have like a little 100amp panel or 150 amp panel or
you got no space in your 200 amp, I mean we probably have to
look at replacing it orupgrading it or we'll figure
that out.

Speaker 1 (39:44):
Or if you put a power wall plus in there or something
like that, maybe we can getaround it Again there's a lot of
caveats to all this, and it'snot uncommon for your sales rep
to go out there and say, hey, no, I'm gonna take a look at your
panel Right At the point of whenhe's at the appointment.
So it's okay, just let him goout there and take a look.

Speaker 2 (40:00):
Yeah, you want him to do that.
You want him to take a pictureof it because you want him to
look at you and say, hey, you'regonna probably need an upgrade.
I'm not 100% sure, but let'saccount for it now just in case
versus me coming back to yousaying, hey, I gotta put an
electrical panel upgrade.
And now you're talking.
You know what $2,800 orwhatever it is.

Speaker 1 (40:16):
I'd rather have everyone all the information out
there than the customer.
Before they sign, you know, sayhey, it's included in the price
, the electrical panel upgrade,things like that, because I
don't want you to sign and thenhave us come out there and go oh
yeah, by the way, now I need toget more money from you.
Because I didn't look at thepanel, so and I'm gonna throw
one thing in there.

Speaker 2 (40:36):
I'm just gonna do it at this point.
I just might as well do it Ifsomebody's done some electrical
work on your panel and theydidn't permit it or they didn't
do what they were supposed to do.
And for that case, maybe theythrew an EV charger in your
garage and they didn't permit it, or maybe they added another
room for you and they didn'tpermit it.
Be careful, because when we gosolar, we have to pull permits

(40:57):
for everything and they have tocome out and inspect it, and
when they see something that wasdone that's not permitted,
guess what happens?

Speaker 1 (41:05):
Because we go out there, we take a look at
everything and we just assumethat there's permits.
We assume that whoever did yourelectrical work is knowing what
they're doing.
So then when we go and applyfor permits, the permit officers
come back and go hey, what'sthis?
Who installed this?
Because we don't have anyrecord of this being in our
permit and that's gonna cost youmoney and that's gonna cost us.

Speaker 2 (41:25):
Because they'll never turn the solar system on until
that unpermitted structure orunpermitted thing is either
fixed or taken down or whateverthey require.

Speaker 1 (41:32):
So just know that going into it If you're going
solar and you live inunpermitted heaven don't go
solar or get it permitted beforegoing solar, which we can help
out with, but just let us knowfirst For a fee.

Speaker 2 (41:47):
Okay, and then we typically will install that
what's called an electricalsmart meter.
The smart meter basically anyexcess electricity that you
don't use, the solar electricitythat you don't use, it'll flow
back onto the utility grid.
This meter measures that, soit's basically taking all the

(42:07):
unused power.
Hey, you've produced too muchpower.
You need to go to the gridbecause we can't keep you here
and you don't have a battery,and so there's nowhere to put it
.
Go back to the grid.
It has to go through this meter, and so this meter will then
basically monitor all that foryou, and that's how you get into
the credits and differentthings that you use with the
utility.
You have to have this meter inplace, but it's part of the
system.

Speaker 1 (42:26):
Yeah, here's a little secret for you.
You know we talked about yourNFA's and TGO and Tesla.
You have those monitoring appswhere you can see how much
you're producing.
Your utility company also hasthat ability to see how much
you're producing.
So if you have solar, it's noton your bills, but you can
actually log on to your accountand you can see your actual
production.

(42:47):
And it should match yourmonitoring app.
So you know some people don'twant to use that monitoring app
because you know it's down orit's glitchy or whatever.
You can just log on to your APSor SRP account and you can see
how much your solar system isproducing as well.
You can't see it panel by panellike you can on the apps, but
you can see like oh it's.
You know, aps said I produced Xamount this month, so I know

(43:08):
it's working.

Speaker 2 (43:09):
Right, yeah, you know that more than anybody else of
people's bills you're looking at.

Speaker 1 (43:12):
That's right, that's right, that's what I do.
You're looking at my bill, bythe way.
All right, okay, I'm kidding.

Speaker 2 (43:16):
So okay, yeah, so that's why that meter's in place
, and then, like we justmentioned, then there, of course
, there's the grid.
I don't think you need toreally talk much about the grid.

Speaker 1 (43:25):
Well, I think it is kind of important to talk about
the grid.
You know a lot of people whenthey're a lot of people are
anti-solar.
What I know who's anti-solar?
It's weird, but whatever.

Speaker 2 (43:35):
Stop talking about my wife, go ahead.

Speaker 1 (43:38):
We have to understand .
Even the grid is solar Right.
You know APS and SRP.
Where do they get their powerfrom?
They get it from coal plants,natural gas, nuclear, solar,
wind, hydroelectric.
They have a lot of other waysof providing power to your home.
You know the excess power thatyou're sending back to the grid,
those commercial big parkingstructures those are all sending

(44:02):
power back to the grid.
Those are all feeding APS andSRP's grid.
That's how they get their power.
They get their power from a lotof different sources.
Right, you know?
That's why we talk about.
Our grid is pretty sustainable.
It's pretty reliable because wehave all those different
available outlets for grids orfor power, and our grid has
space on it, you know I think.

Speaker 2 (44:22):
When I think of grids , I always think of Hawaii.
When I first started in solar,Hawaii was solar heaven.
It was the best place to go tosell solar because energy was
like outrageous 50, 60 cent akilowatt hour.
I know people if you don'tunderstand what a kilowatt hour
is.
I mean in Arizona we probablypay on average in APS.
I want to say 15, 14.

Speaker 1 (44:44):
Yeah, APS 15 is 15,.
16 cents SRP 9 to 11 cents yeahso they were in the 50s.

Speaker 2 (44:49):
That's outrageous.
I mean absolutely outrageous.

Speaker 1 (44:52):
Imagine you're building three times as much.

Speaker 2 (44:53):
Yeah, and that's exactly what it was.
Power in Hawaii was horrendous.
So everybody was going solarand then problem happened.
There was no more room on thegrids, especially in Maui.
I remember Maui, there was noroom, the grid was full.
So they stopped.
They said no more solar.
All right, we're done.
Especially, what they said theyshut it down.
And now if you want to go solar, you have to have a battery and

(45:15):
you can only do a 50% offset.

Speaker 1 (45:17):
That's it, because you can't feed the grid.

Speaker 2 (45:18):
Right, because you can't feed the grid, you have to
keep it just between thebattery and your house using it.
That's it.

Speaker 1 (45:24):
Because a lot of conservation of energy.
That power has to go somewhere.
It's going to the grid.
Well, the grid has to gosomewhere with that power as
well.

Speaker 2 (45:31):
So I would say be thankful.
In Arizona we have a great gridand it's just a good situation
here.
One question I always get frompeople is hey, if the power goes
out on the grid, will my solarkeep working?
Well, I always say no and theysay well, that's stupid, why not
Think about this for a second?
So, if power goes out, guidedown the streets working on the

(45:51):
pole to try to fix it, Becausemaybe something hit the pole and
the power went down.
He's going to go up there andfix it.
You're back feeding energyunder the grid.

Speaker 1 (45:59):
Because you're not home.
Your power again has to gosomewhere.

Speaker 2 (46:02):
That guy turns into a toast.
A piece of toast Because youjust electrocuted him.
So it's a safety thing.
There has to be a breaker suchthat turns it off and doesn't
allow it to feed back to thegrid, and then your system turns
off.
Unless you have a battery, itgoes into backup mode and then
you have power in your house.
So it's a common question.
I get it a lot.
Just so you understand why thathappens.

(46:24):
All right, so we've had panelDC power.
Sun comes in, dc power goesinto the inverter, becomes AC
power right, goes into yourpanel, feeds all your breakers
and stuff.
If you have a battery and youhave overload, it'll go into the
battery.
Then if you have overload, itcomes back and goes through the
smart meter, measures it at thesmart meter, goes under the grid

(46:46):
.

Speaker 1 (46:46):
That's a lot of movement.

Speaker 2 (46:48):
That is a solar system.

Speaker 1 (46:50):
That's how it works.

Speaker 2 (46:50):
That is all the components of the solar system
and that is the basic of howsolar works.

Speaker 1 (46:55):
All right, that's it for today.
It's not the science.

Speaker 2 (46:58):
It's some of the technology, but that's the
makeup of what we would put inyour house.
I mean, obviously you're goingto have conduit and wiring and
rails and stanchions that gointo your roof, all the stuff we
talked about in episode threewith David Coleman the roofing
episode.
So you're going to have allthat stuff, but that is the
basic components that we have toput on every time.

Speaker 1 (47:16):
Right, and that's why it's very complex and, as we
mentioned many, many timesbefore, it's very catered to you
and your situation, because ofall those different moving parts
?

Speaker 2 (47:26):
Yeah, absolutely OK.
Any questions?
Ok, no Good, now we're going totalk about I call it, time to
shine, time to shine, time toshine.
So obviously, solar powers.
They don't generate power inthe evening.
I know it's kind of crazy.
We laugh.

Speaker 1 (47:44):
I won't name names, even though I know who you are.
I do get people who you knowwhat email me.
No, they don't Eh, or they'llcall in taxing.
No, they don't, yes, they again, I won't name names, daniel's
calling you again.

Speaker 2 (47:59):
Is that what you're saying?

Speaker 1 (48:00):
I won't name names, but maybe we'll flash their name
on the screen in the bottom.
Yeah, Dennis, daniel, hey, mysolar system's not working, it's
not producing power.
And then it's either one of twothings that I will say during
these specific cases.
Well, it's raining out, so youknow the clouds are blocking the

(48:21):
sun, so that's why it's notproducing power.
Or well, it's 10 o'clock atnight, so there's no sun, so
that's why you're not.
But the moon rays, I know.
And then when I start, you know,explain that they get that aha
and they're like oh, I feel, Ifeel silly moment.
I'm like, yeah, it's OK, youknow, but we laugh but it does
happen.
So you really have these guys.
I really had theseconversations with people who

(48:41):
say hey, my solar system's notworking and they're like well,
it's dark out, so I don't wantto tell you they're not moon
powered.
Ok, I thought you were kidding.

Speaker 2 (48:49):
No, no no, I've had it.

Speaker 1 (48:50):
I again.
I won't name names, but I'm notsure if I can go on.
I save every email and text.
Well, they need a guy.

Speaker 2 (48:58):
They need a guy.
So that's part of time to shine.
The other thing is and I wasnoticing this, you know, when I
was driving into the officetoday, I like looking at the sky
when I drive, which is probablynot really good, yeah, that's
not safe.
But if you're driving on the101, and you're, you know, let's
say, you're going eastbound onthe 101 right this time of year
and you look to your right,there's the sun.
Yeah, right, it's over to theright part of the sky, the

(49:20):
southern part of the sky, that'sright.
But when I'm going to work inAugust and September, I'm
driving.
The sun's in my face or it'sright above my head coming
through my sunroof, it's righton top of us.

Speaker 1 (49:32):
To add to that, and this is going to be sounding
kind of weird.

Speaker 2 (49:34):
OK.

Speaker 1 (49:35):
In the summertime, when I'm driving to work off and
I'm also headed east, sun'sright in my face I put a little
visor down to block it.
Right, this time of year Ican't put the visor down.
No, so you know what I actuallydo.
I raise my seat.
I raise my seat so that the topof my car.

Speaker 2 (49:50):
That's actually an ability.

Speaker 1 (49:51):
Yeah, the top of my car covers that side, because
the passenger side visor doesn'tblock it.
It's right in the gap of theyou know, the two visor.
So I raise my seat up a littlebit and then it's blocked.
So I'm driving to work.
You probably see like who'sthis weirdo sitting up perfectly
straight in his car, Likethat's because I'm blocking the
sun.

Speaker 2 (50:10):
We say all this because it's important, right?
The sun's path during thesummer versus during the winter
are very different, verydifferent, and that changes
production.
Yes, it just does so.
If it's in the summer and thepath of the sun is over our
heads, which typically is inArizona, and you have panels on
the northern part of your home,like, let's say, they're facing
north, you're going to getdecent production because the

(50:33):
sun goes overhand.
It's going to still hit thenorthern part, but in the winter
or the other nine months theother nine months when it's
actually in the southern sky andit's on the opposite side of
your house not so muchproduction going to happen.
So little things like that youwould never think about are very
important on when you put whereyou put solar on your home,
sure, sure.

Speaker 1 (50:53):
I've talked with a few customers and sales reps too
, when they're analyzing, youknow, solar production and what
their bills are going to be likeafter solar.
And I do remember one case itwas very recent, you know.
He was saying, oh, myproduction is going to be, you
know, 12,000 kilowatt hours ayear, so in December it's going
to be 1,000 kilowatt hours.
He just had it.
It was like 1,000 for eachmonth, like no, because of

(51:14):
seasons, it's a bell curve.
So you're not going to beproducing 1,000 in December,
you're going to be producingless than that, but then more in
the summer because of, you know, the Earth's access is tilted
and we have different seasons.
So I had to go into thatconversation with that.
But there are things you justdon't think about Right, right
Like.
I got his thinking.
I understand his thinking andunderstanding, but I was like no
, you know, you have to put allthe pieces of the puzzle

(51:35):
together because in thewintertime we're going to get
lower production and think aboutokay, so in the summer it stays
light till eight o'clock, yeah,maybe a little bit after eight.

Speaker 2 (51:46):
So if we have panels on the western part of your
house, the sun does set in thewest right and it's eight
o'clock at night.
You're getting production untilthat sun sets In the winter.
What time does it get dark?
Like six, six, five, 30.
So you now have lost two, twoand a half hours of production
that you had in the summer.
It's gone on.

(52:07):
That western side Impacts, itcreates that bell curve you're
talking about.
You're always going to have yourpeak production in certain
times of the year and you'regoing to see it drop as you get
to the later time of the yearand into their early part of the
year.
That's just how it works.

Speaker 1 (52:20):
There's science behind this.
Do you want to talk about thebest time to get solar?
Yes, absolutely.

Speaker 2 (52:24):
During this time.
Is that where the segue to end?
That's where it's going.

Speaker 1 (52:27):
Okay.
So yeah, the best time to getsolar.
I always tell people it's kindof like the stock market.
When people want to invest inthe stock market or trade in the
stock market, there's twoaspects, you know timing the
market or time in the market.
Same with solar.
You can try to time it, butthen time with solar is more
important.
So, yes, there's a best time toget solar, which is kind of

(52:52):
crazy.
A lot of people think like, oh,it's summertime, my bills are
$600.
I should probably look intogetting solar.
Well, by then it's too latebecause you're already at the
peak of summer.
Your bills are the highest.
If it gets installed, it's nowramping down.
Now is actually the time tostart looking at solar.
I know your bills aren't veryhigh and you're probably not
interested in it right now, butnow is actually a good time to

(53:12):
look at it because if you wantto time it just right, just like
in the stock market, you wantto time an entry.
Now is a good time because bythe time you get installed,
we're going to be start rampingthat solar production up to the
summer.
So, getting installed inJanuary, february, before the
solar production, before thestock market starts to go up.
You want to buy a little sohigh before then is a great time

(53:35):
.
But at the end of the day itreally doesn't matter the timing
of getting in, because it's alongevity thing too.
If you happen to get yoursystem turned on in the summer,
it's okay, it's not no big deal.
It'll take you a full year tosee that good savings, and you
go solar for the long-termsavings as well.
So you'll see that savings yearafter year after year.

Speaker 2 (53:54):
So by then.
It doesn't matter If yourmotivation was we just had the
hottest summer on history andI'm not going to pay those bills
again.
I want to protect myself nextsummer.
You need to do it right now, doit now.
As we sit in the December 1stday, you need to get it done.
You're almost going too far.
You need to get it done soonbecause you want it installed
before the summer hits so thatyou can start seeing a benefit
right away in the summer.

Speaker 1 (54:15):
Build those credits up, because we do get a lot of
those customers who will get.
You know they'll get solarturned on in July and they'll go
.
Hey, I know my bill did go down, but didn't go down as much as
I thought.
So when I take a look at it andgo, well, that's because you
didn't build up credits.
You build up in January,february, march and April and
those credits roll over thesummer.
But you got your system turnedon in July, you don't have any

(54:35):
credits to roll over.
So guess what?
You have to wait till next yearto see the better savings.

Speaker 2 (54:39):
Right and you're still going to see the savings.
You'll still see it.

Speaker 1 (54:41):
Yeah, it's an annual savings.
Yeah, annual savings.

Speaker 2 (54:45):
So that's real important.
It's an annual savings.
We're going to get into savingslater, yeah, but so time to
shine, right?
We talked about the solar, thesun's pass.
There's azimuth, so let's sayazimuth it's just basically
means north, south, east, west,what position your panels are
facing.
Those all produce at adifferent level, yeah, right, so
, like we always talk about justin general, it could be

(55:05):
different for utilities, but ingeneral, you're always going to
get more from a southern panel.
You're just going to get moreproduction.

Speaker 1 (55:10):
This is how it is.

Speaker 2 (55:11):
It's produced more than the south Because it's
facing south and even in thewinter, when the sun is in the
south, you're getting goodproduction out of that.
You have your east and yourwest.
Where you're going to get yourgood production?
From the east in the morning.
You're going to get your goodproduction, especially in the
summer, late in the afternoonsfrom the west.
In SRP we've talked about whereyou really want to be west
because it makes the most sensebecause of how their rates put
together.

Speaker 1 (55:29):
I can talk about that again.

Speaker 2 (55:31):
And then north is going to be okay in the summer
and not so great the rest of thetime.
So that's where azimuth played.
When we talk azimuth, that'swhat we're talking about?

Speaker 1 (55:38):
Yeah, and if you do have solar, you can look on your
monitoring app or your utility.
Look at it throughout the day,15 minute intervals or hour by
hour.
Get up early one day and lookat your solar production in the
morning and see how it ramps upand then drops down and then
compare it to how it was in thesummer.
It's not going to get as high,because we do get those
customers who say it's supposedit's working, but it's supposed

(56:01):
to produce this amount.
Right, like well, it'swintertime.
Going back in June and July itproduced a lot higher because
the sun was in a different spot.

Speaker 2 (56:10):
Right.

Speaker 1 (56:12):
Now it's lower on the horizon, so your production is
still there.
It's just not as high as whenthe summer it just goes back to
your bell curve, yep it's about9,000 kilowatt hours a year out
of the system, but it's a year Ayear.

Speaker 2 (56:22):
And you're going to get a majority of them in here
and then there.
It's just going to change permonth.
Based on all these things we'retalking about.
Tilt is another thing.
So when we talk tilt, whatdegree of tilt is the panel at?
That's important, that's a hugefactor.

Speaker 1 (56:35):
Did you talk?

Speaker 2 (56:35):
about tilt.

Speaker 1 (56:36):
We do have flat roofs here in Arizona.
We do have customers who saycan we just lay the panels flat
on the roof?
We could, yeah, we did talkabout that, but that's not
really beneficial because wewant to angle it towards the sun
.
Right, I understand that yourflat roof gets a lot of light.
We do talk a lot of customerswho go, oh, this side of my roof

(56:57):
gets a lot of light and thiswall gets a lot of light, things
like that.
But we know the south isprobably going to get the most
light and depending on shadingand all those other factors.
But the tilt of the panels wewant to tilt it towards the
sunlight.
Yeah, that's the most importantthing, makes a total sense.
I know, well, we say this injoke about it, but you know.

Speaker 2 (57:18):
And the average tilt in Arizona is 18 degrees.
That's on average.
I mean we'll typically see 18degrees in the Midwest and our
Oklahoma operation it's man.
There's some steep roofs there.

Speaker 1 (57:27):
We see some crazy tilts.

Speaker 2 (57:29):
But in Arizona it's about 18 degrees and if we're in
a flat roof we're typicallytilted between 10 to 15 degrees.
So we do that again, to tilttowards this light, so we can
get the production.

Speaker 1 (57:38):
Think about it.

Speaker 2 (57:39):
If you have them on the north and they're tilted
away from the sun, doesn't work.

Speaker 1 (57:44):
Exactly.

Speaker 2 (57:45):
We get people that say we'll just do a reverse tilt
, we'll put it on the north andwe'll tilt it back toward the
south, and we talked about thatin the last pocket.
It's why we won't do that.
But that's why you see peoplethat actually have those kites
up on the top of the roofbecause they're trying to tilt
toward the sun.

Speaker 1 (57:55):
We won't do crazy things.

Speaker 2 (57:57):
No, not anymore.
And then you already talkedabout shading, and shading is
obviously something we're goingto always be cognizant of.
If you have trees, if you haveshading, we're going to try to
place panels and placement.
We're going to place panelsaway from that shading to make
sure we get the most production,because again, we need light to
produce DC power, yep.
So that's time to shine.
That kind of gives you an ideaof where you know we talked

(58:18):
about in our I think it wasepisode six we really or maybe
episode five.

Speaker 1 (58:23):
One of the episodes.

Speaker 2 (58:24):
Yeah, so it was the solar proposed episode with
Daniel Reese.
I mean, we talked about panelplacement and going around
different things and stuff.
So if you want to deeper diveinto that, I would go into that
episode All right, and that meanthat's that's.
I think that's everything withtime to shine that we've gone
through a lot of goodinformation here between all the
components of the solar how wego from the DC power from the
sun panel.

(58:45):
The panel turns that into DCpower, goes into an inverter to
convert to AC power and kind ofwhere it goes from there.
We've gone through all that,talked a little bit about
positioning panel wise and youknow the path of the sun and all
the different things thatproduce.
So that was a lot ofinformation.
We're going to stop here.
This is this is going to bepart one of solar 101.
Next time well, next time we'regoing to do part two, which is

(59:07):
going to go more into thepurchase types, the savings, how
you, how you look at savings.
We're going to give you somereal examples of savings.
We have some customers thatwe're going to show you their
actual case scenarios, actualbills, actual bills before and
after really cool stuff thatwe're going to get into.
That'll be part two.
So if you enjoyed part one,part two is just going to get
better.
Looking forward to have youtune in and join us for that

(59:30):
Again.
Like subscribe the Harmon solarpodcast.
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(59:50):
Thanks again for your time andwe'll see you soon.
See you.