My Photovoltaikanlage

[Alberto]

No problem at all, happy to share
Three years ago I was quoted 34k for approximately 28 panels and a 10kw battery.
A few weeks ago I was quoted just under 20k for 22 panels and a 10kw battery.
I think the earlier quote also included one of those charging points for the car (they used to be subsidised up to 100% in NRW)

I agree that 64 panels and a 30kw battery is large for a private household.

[Alberto]

I agree that 64 panels and a 30kw battery is large for a private household.

Did you shop around? I ask because this quotation seems surprisingly overpriced. No Akku though, they were ca 1.1-1.2 k€/kWh.
Our 2019 system was 13k€, ca 9.5kWp, and posh WR. And we should have been relatively more expensive, because smaller system, and (allegedly) PV prices dropped since. But it seems we weren't.

[dstanners]

Do you mean the current price is too high or the one from a few years ago?
In terms of the recent quite, we are getting another quote next week.

As for the previous one, we had almost identical quotes from three suppliers and our neighbours who were buying at that time paid similar sums.
It is of course possible that this is an "Eifel special price". It's a bit of a closed shop around here for anything broadly handwerker related (which is why I've ended up owning a cement mixer, digger, tractor and even taking on my personal nemesis of plastering)..

[Alberto]

Do you mean the current price is too high or the one from a few years ago?

I meant the one from the past, seems too high for me but maybe I'm wrong. I have not looked at PV prices in a while.
Good luck with the project in any case. And please keep us posted, if you don't mind, I always find PV interesting.
Cheers,

[dstanners]

Here's today's quote, and some further information about insurance for solar panels.
Cost 21,000 (inc. Vat as zero rated)
This includes:
18 modules (440wp fullblack)
FossEs battery 8,7kw
FosEss 8er WR
Rundumsorglospaket (scaffolding, fitting, fixtures, management module, labour, lightning protection usw).

It does not include a wall box, but does include emergency electricity in the event of a power cut.

Following @Robinson's question about insurance, I asked the electrician. His view was that the general installation should be covered by home insurance, but it is possible to get specific insurance to fix a hailstone damaged panel. However, he said that the actual cost of repairing/replacing a damaged panel was relatively low (he said, around 200 Euros), so that insurance may not be worthwhile for most homes with a typical roof shape. This might be different if you had a flat roof or large open area of panels - which may be applicable to @Robinson, guessing from the size of the intended installation?

[Alberto]

18 modules (440wp fullblack)

Interesting.
When we bought, panels were 300-315 Wp.

Is the quotation itemized? What's the cost of the battery?

[dstanners]

No itemised pricing. When I had the quotes a few years ago, everything was itemised. This time, both quotes so far have had "all in" prices (everything from scaffolding to screws).
On the one hand, that makes it easy for me to know the final cost, but equally, I can't see if there are some items with unduly high mark-ups (inverter, battery etc).

[Frantic]

Here's today's quote, and some further information about insurance for solar panels.
Cost 21,000 (inc. Vat as zero rated)
This includes:
18 modules (440wp fullblack)
FossEs battery 8,7kw
FosEss 8er WR
Rundumsorglospaket (scaffolding, fitting, fixtures, management module, labour, lightning protection usw).

It does not include a wall box, but does include emergency electricity in the event of a power cut.

Following @Robinson's question about insurance, I asked the electrician. His view was that the general installation should be covered by home insurance, but it is possible to get specific insurance to fix a hailstone damaged panel. However, he said that the actual cost of repairing/replacing a damaged panel was relatively low (he said, around 200 Euros), so that insurance may not be worthwhile for most homes with a typical roof shape. This might be different if you had a flat roof or large open area of panels - which may be applicable to @Robinson, guessing from the size of the intended installation?

I would say it is definitevely overpriced. Have you calculated how long it will take to pay off ?

[Fraufruit]

€200 X 64 panels?

[Robinson100]

€200 X 64 panels?

Exactly!
But also, the insurances that we have looked at so far include items such as electricity costs whilst panels are being replaced, etc

Actually, I have just been looking on Verivox, and I could get insurance for €56/year, which is not bad, IMO....

[Nixon]

Hausverwaltung would arrest me if I mount it, but it is tempting.

[dstanners]

I would say it is definitevely overpriced. Have you calculated how long it will take to pay off ?

I agree it's pretty expensive too, but a) I'm not getting significantly better quotes (please share supplier details if you have one) and b) we're looking to change one of the cars to electric.
Point b is the one which changes the balance according to my (rough) calculations. I think it pays itself back in just around 8/9 years PROVIDED the car runs off the PV for about 9 months in the year. The big advantage is that the car I'm looking to change to electric sits at home during the day on most days and is only used for short trips.

Even so, I accept it's a pretty poor investment in financial terms, but there's the additional non-monetary benefit of reducing my use of petrol/fossil fuels....I appreciate that comes with the risk that I may become even more irritatingly self-righteous.

[Frantic]

How many offers have you got till now ?
Prices can vary according to the Land where you live. That offers is overpriced even for Greater Munich Area.

[kiplette]

Presumably though, some of this type of stuff is going to be more expensive outside cities, where there is less competition, fewer customers and maybe crappier supply chains.

So mid-nowhere-in-the-Eifel is quite possibly more expensive than Munich or Hamburg or the other massive cities.

Or not, I am clueless and just throwing a thought out there.

Maybe someone has experience with a nationwide firm which ausgleiches this problem of locality and might give dstanners a better value quote?

[dstanners]

I think Kiplette may well be right and that the pricing may reflect an Eifel premium.
So far I've had three written quotes and a couple of estimates from online comparators. The formal quotes were all close.

However, based on Kiplette's thought that local firms may be more expensive, I contacted e.on. Their website provided a non-binding, indicative price of 11k for the panels and 3.5k for the battery, in both cases including fitting/scaffolding, which would be fantastic. However, they've put me through to their "local company" (Klarsolar in Heidelberg, which I guess is local to someone who lives there) who will make a formal offer. It'll be interesting to see whether/how much the price changes.

I'll let you know once I've heard back (I have also asked Vattenfall for a similar quote)..

[Alberto]

When we installed our PV, the company was somewhere else, their guys came from outside. So I don't entirely agree that your location matters. But maybe I'm wrong...
3.5keur for a battery is a third of what we were quoted a while back, and also less than I would have guessed today. Still overpriced for almost everybody, though.

Oh and "our guys" did not use any scaffolding. Well, I was shocked they didn't, goes in line with what I've seen during the construction of our house: in the construction business they don't hesitate to trade safety for saving...

[dstanners]

So, I've had two more offers.
Eon want just under 21k (so quite a bit more than their "non-binding indicative offer".
They have provided a detailed breakdown, which includes:
18 panels (450w) 1,3k Euros
7,7 battery 4k
Converter 1.3k
Cut off system (so that the PV generates and we can use electricity during power cuts) 1k
Wallbox 1.5k
Zaehlerschrank 1.8k
The rest (which actually is the vast majority) is all for various fittings, connections etc.

Vattenfall want 24k for the similar system.

Both are "going away to have a talk with the boss", to see if they can drop the price.

One interesting thing is that Eon have said that in their opinion at 7,7 kWh battery is possibly oversized, given a) our annual usage is so low (3000 pa), and b) I work from home during the day and can make most usage of electricity whilst it is being generated. Our electrician suggested 8kWh would be the right size.

Oh, and one annoying thing is that I can't for the life of me remember what Zaehlerschrank is in English at the moment...definitely not "counter cupboard". Bl00dy hell, has it really come to this?

[Eric7]

"Meter cupboard" or "meter cabinet".

[Alberto]

So, I've had two more offers.
Eon want just under 21k (so quite a bit more than their "non-binding indicative offer".
They have provided a detailed breakdown, which includes:
18 panels (450w) 1,3k Euros
7,7 battery 4k
Converter 1.3k
Cut off system (so that the PV generates and we can use electricity during power cuts) 1k
Wallbox 1.5k
Zaehlerschrank 1.8k
The rest (which actually is the vast majority) is all for various fittings, connections etc.

Vattenfall want 24k for the similar system.

Both are "going away to have a talk with the boss", to see if they can drop the price.

One interesting thing is that Eon have said that in their opinion at 7,7 kWh battery is possibly oversized, given a) our annual usage is so low (3000 pa), and b) I work from home during the day and can make most usage of electricity whilst it is being generated. Our electrician suggested 8kWh would be the right size.

Oh, and one annoying thing is that I can't for the life of me remember what Zaehlerschrank is in English at the moment...definitely not "counter cupboard". Bl00dy hell, has it really come to this?

My unsolicited comment:
Do not get the battery (which yes, it is very oversized: my numbers are not very different than yours and my kink in viewtopic.php?p=5268#p5268 in Fig.4 is at less than 3 kWh, but no vendor will ever tell you this, after all by selling you bigger they make more profit).
Before deciding if you want the 1k eur cut off system: how likely do you consider future daytime power cuts, how many you had in the last 20yr (I had zero) and how much problem did they cause?

[Eric7]

My unsolicited comment:
Do not get the battery (which yes, it is very oversized).
Before deciding if you want the 1k eur cut off system: how likely future daytime power cuts actually are, how many you had in the last 20yr (I had zero) and how much problem did they cause?

I don't know if it's just our house or where we live but we get multiple power cuts every year, always caused by lightning strikes.

I work at home and have a lot of computers running at the same time so having power cuts isn't ideal. To that end I set up a 2kW battery to keep my main workstations & server going for a couple of hours in an emergency. The battery takes about 40ms to kick in, which isn't fast enough to stop the computers turning off, so I've got a UPS (I think 2 or 3ms switch time) in between the battery and the computers.

I'd love a big solar panel setup but we live right next to a forest, which puts the south side of the roof in shade for most of the year so I m pretty sure it wouldn't be worth it. Our electricity consumption is at least 11-12,000kW (it has been as high as 18,000kW), with a lot being consumed by the computers overnight so a big battery would definitely be useful for us.

Is there any point in a north side (or east/west) setup?