How To Buy Solar

1. Course Promotion Video: I'm Alex for Malik shulman dot com. And thanks for checking out a course on how to buy Solar. Three years I've been helping thousands of students cut through the technical jargon to understand and use technologies like solar to their advantage with really great results. With a science degree and photonics thousands of paying students from other successful courses in over 170 countries, you can be certain that this course has also been created with the same great attention to detail and is worth your time and money. Now it's no secret that buying solo will help lower your power bills. The biggest problem with getting solar, though, is that buying it isn't a very straightforward process. No matter what the solar and stole is my, you should just be able to call up the solar installer and get it done. But every year, thousands get ripped off, have poor quality solar systems installed will have things go wrong, things that could have been avoided saving the multiple thousands of dollars if they had only known what to look out for. You might think you can tell which ones up good in stores by their reviews, but it's been proven that companies can fake these. You might use the same installed that your friend down the road use because they didn't have any problems. But it's been proven that one in six installations are substandard or worse on safe. Any of your friends, not an expert. How would I know? Or you might just, you know, guess pick the prettiest website whatever, but you'll be gambling with thousands of dollars and potentially having your house burnt down by cheap rooftop solar systems. At the end of this course, you know exactly how solar works, but also all the important points that you need to know when buying and just getting it installed. In general, too, you'll be able to distinguish between good and bad solar installers. You know how solar generates money as well as how it saves you money. You'll also get critical insights into the solar installation process as well as what nasty tricks to look out for, especially when coming into the contracting phase. All buying sold as a quick overview. This course includes a full rundown of how solar works so you can spot those dodgy tricks a mile away. How to choose the right system size brands and features for your specific house. How to find and assess of good solar and stole a in your local area. A step by step explanation of how your solar installation should go on the actual day of install and finally will cover how to calculate and fleeing. Maximize your solar systems profit once it's actually installed. I designed this course for both the solar novice and those that have a fair idea about the technology as well. By the end of it, you'll be able to get your solar system installed and be 100% confident that it will not only last you decades the big, good quality solar system to and being stored at a fair price as well. This course will also give you a clear step by step process to follow so that you don't fall into those traps that others have in the past. So don't buy your new solar system without taking discourse first 2. Section 1 - Welcome: solar energy is amazing enough of it hits Earth in one hour to meet all of humanity's power needs for an entire year. Since 1977 the cost to make a solar cell has come down by 99.7% is now cheaper than or other fuel and Angie sources and can last 40 plus years. On top of all that, solar panels themselves are increasing how much power that can produce by the 7% every year , meaning that the power for each of the same size solar panels doubles every 10 years. My name's Alex, and I'm really glad that you wanted to get so up for your house and, you know, join the rest of the world in this huge shift. Her in your books in this course will be going through everything you need to know in order to be really, really confident when buying your solar system. First, though, will have to go through some sort of solar basics to make sure that even the people who have absolutely no idea Concil sort of keep up. This will be covered quickly in section two. Then we'll get straight into the whole buying process and everything you need to know him. Watch out for in Section three now often have lots of students getting annoyed or upset the courses air tubes of basic or slow for them to try and cater for everyone. So if you're unsure about solar and how it works of Russia covered As I said, Section two, if you prefer to skip all that, you can just go straight to section three. So hopefully this helps Kate of the sort of both of the crowds. Now, back in 2000 and nine, we actually bought our 1.5 kilowatt solar system for our house. I remember thinking at the time that it all had to be some type of scam or something, as it just sounded too good to be true. You know, you can't just by some Penhall thing, and they magically save you money and like Forever s enjoying what is what's the catch know , where am I missing? What am I missing? It's actually this suspicion. The cost has quite a lot of money, though, as the strain government was running an absolutely insane subsidy program at the time. Basically, the grant paid for the entire solar system flat at zero cost that, frankly, sandals a scam, as you can imagine. You know, no one gives out stuff for free. So I looked over the calculations, Did my due diligence researched, took my time to make sure that everything was above board generally pretty cautious. Said this all sanded too good to be true. Especially seeing as we would be getting our entire system for free. You know, eventually, after confirming that it wasn't a huge scam, we filled out the forms, submitted their paperwork, put it in that day. We submitted it. The the government prematurely canceled the whole program. Absolutely can't whole thing. I was madly ringing around to save we'd met the deadline and submission had gotten in, but it didn't. Can we missed out? We still ended up getting a solar system and a smaller subsidy from the government that that system wasn't entirely free, like a would have been. Now, I'm telling all this to say that I understand what you might be feeling or thinking right now. You know, if you've never had a solar system on your roof, it can all seem a bit strange. You know, you might be wondering what the catch is or hesitant to commit the like. Thousands of dollars that usually costs Teoh. Buy a good quality solar system and have it installed. You might also not have any access to government incentives or subsidies, either, and I mean, fair enough. It's a lot of money, for sure, but that's what this course is for to give you knowledge and a proper understanding of how this technology works and how to use it to your advantage and make your life better with it . Now you won't be able to understand or buy anything, though, unless you know the basics, which is what we're gonna be covering quickly in the next section. Two. Many people try and jump straight into getting quotes without actually knowing what they're doing, and it can cost them quite a lot of money. So really, thank you again for doing something to help the pointer on. I'll talk to you in the next section on solar basics 3. Section 2 - 1 - Solar 101 How Solar Actually Works: Okay, so welcome to this first section on how solar actually works. In this first part, I'm going to be covering just the basic structures off solar panels on history. A bit of its future as well. I'm sure a lot of you already have a general idea of how they work about If you don't, don't worry, we won't be going into anything that's super complex or boring or anything like that. I'm actually a fully qualified scientist in my major was actually on photonics, which is all about light interacting with matter. This includes things like five optics, lasers and, of course, salt down. So I could go right down into every detail about how the photons come in from the sun and interact with the solar panels to produce electricity. You know, I could cover all the different types of solar configurations, like off grid solar oral, how shading and Bruce angles and all that sort of self affect your solo production. But I actually want you to stay awake during this course, so I'm not gonna go into any of that. Instead, I specifically made this course to help people new to solar. And while I'll be going into a fair bit of detail on it. There are some more niche things, you know, like off grid solar that I won't be covering. You do need to know at least the basics, though, so let's dive straight into this and have a look at this fantastic diagram of a civil penalty now at a very high level of solar panel is actually made up of many individual solar cells. As you can see here, these solar cells are wide up together to make the panel, which for residential users is usually around 1/2 meters long and one made a while. That's about five feet long and just over three feet wide. For those of you in America, each of these panels are linked together and finally forming the entire solar system, which is what most refer to when they say solar. A solar cell is where the magic happens as it converts the energy of sunlight into electricity. It does this by what's called the photovoltaic effect, but as I said, I don't want to bore you to death so we won't get any more technical than just saying that now the solo sell itself has had an immense amount of R and D put into it over many, many decades. There's a huge array of different designs, different manufacturing techniques, different materials companies and scientists have been absolutely pouring billions of dollars into it, especially since around 1990 the result has been an absolutely huge cost reduction, as we heard before. Whether it's by making the solar cells more efficient themselves a converting sunlight into electricity or using multi junction techniques, you can see the amazing results on our technology forecast to here. If we take a look back at the last decade or so, going from 2012 up to 2019 we can see that you're decent. Brand residential solar panel has almost doubled in terms of what power it can generate in 2012 a single solar panel. You know, the 1.5 meter by one made a wide one could generate about 250 watts, fast forward to 2019 and that same sized same process Penhall could generate around 400 watts. That's a growth rate of around 7%. Every single use now. In the future, we should see this growth rate accelerate as more and more money is just absolutely poured into solar around the world and all the research. But even if it just stays at 7% that means will see it double roughly every 10 years. You should be out to buy roughly 500 What panels in about 2022 2023 600 watt panels by 2025 800 plus what panels by 2030. That's just insane. An 800. What panel? Now if you wanna have a play with this technology forecast of spread shoot, it's free. Available online at our website. There's a huge industry already built up for solar now, as it makes a great deal of financial sense for people in many, many countries around the world. As each year goes, bought those financial numbers just get better and better. This is why many worldwide agencies are actually predicting that solar will become the dominant power source off the entire world. Even the huge oil company BP fits this like they literally said in their reports. But what do I mean when I say I saw the paint on generates you 400 watts? Is that like 400 watt hours. We'll cover this as well as all the other what hours and different ways of saying that in the next part. 4. Section 2 - 2 - Solar 101 What Do kW, kWh, MWh’s And Kilowatt Hour All Mean: Now we're going to go through and hopefully clear up for everyone. What? Or the killer? What type terms mean for those who are bit confused and there enough. Now the very first thing to understand is that there is continuous pale and there is a total energy used. These two things have different units for them. Just like when we talk about 20 kilometers as a distance or 20 kilometers hour as its speed that you would actually go now. Continuous power is measured in what? So you can have one? What one killer? What 1 may call, what one giggle. What? You know, it goes up. Note how there's no per hour or H after these units is continuous. Power is a continuous thing. It doesn't end after an hour. It just keeps going and going as long as it of ice is turned on. When you have something that uses up 100 watts of power or produces it, it does this continuously throughout the time it is on. For example, if you measure the power off that inefficient heater over in the corner, that might say 1000. What's or one killer? What simple. Now where things can get a confusing for many people is what happens when we want to define this continuous power use over time. If you have that same one kilowatt heater on for one hour, how much total energy has it used? One kilowatt of power used for one. Ella is one killer. What? Allah off energy. Let's kill what our figure out is what you'll see on your power bill, as this is the total amount of energy used over the billing period. Now, with solar systems, we can see that a solar systems don't store any energy. They only produce it. They're measured in just what Kilowatt or even sometimes make a what? This is why you see ads for a five kilowatt system or a 10 kilowatt system. The solar arrays at a certain sun radiance produced a constant power output of five or 10 kilowatts. Often, though, with the marketing and other info that companies produce for solar system, they also include kilowatt hour amounts. You know what gives this is because if you have a solar array producing five kilowatts of continuous powerful one hour, you end up with five kilowatt hours of total energy produced over that entire time period. As you can see, we're once again talking about total energy produced here. So we add on that patch to the kilowatt hours as a side note, that s that sometimes added to the end of kilowatt hours, or kilowatt isn't strictly speaking, meant to be there. People just tend to added on five killer one hour and five kilowatt hours actually mean the same thing Now, obviously, solar arrays don't produce a constant amount of pell output over the entire day. Yeah, sun goes up and then it comes back. Damn. You get different amounts of power being produced. A different talk, however, to give prospective owners a sort of estimate of how much total energy that these systems might produce. They give figures like 30 kilowatt hours a day average. This helps people compare it to their electricity bill, which also tells you how much energy you've used in that time period in kill. What else? So in summary, continuous solar Palin output five Kimmel walked total solar energy output over the entire day. 30 kilowatt hours. Hopefully, this is cleared up most of the terminology confusion for most people out there. Ultimately, there's really only two terms you could kill. What? You kilowatt hours, sir, Now that we've gone through all that, we can finally focus on a quick bit of extra in for that you'll need before purchasing a solar system that's knowing what the main components are and what they do. 5. Section 2 - 3 - Solar 101 The Components Of A Good Solar System: Okay, so now you're up to speed on how power is measured and how that power is generated by solar system. Now let's look at the main component of, Ah, modern day solar system and generally what they do. This includes the solar panel, the mounting equipment, the inverter brains and the fuse box connections and wired. We've already talked about the solar panels. So next we have the mounting equipment, which is what's used to securely attach the panels to your actual roof. This equipment can be super basic and just be a bracket or other devices that props the panel up on an angle so they face the sun. You know the best possible angle and generate the most power income for you. But it can even get Mawr complex with ones that track the sun each day, or even skirting that covers up the underlying mounting frames themselves. And just generally, you know, makes things look pretty. Are they say the more complex you go, the more it will cost and thus reduce your return on investment. The most residential homes, though it's pretty sufficient enough to just mount the panel is directly to the roof or at an absolute most sort of prop them up on an angle using a bracket. If your roof is flat as a general of thumb, you want to go with simple solution that meets your needs with this compartment. Next up, we have Thean Verte, which usually also contains the sort of brains of the entire solar system to. Usually they have the little screens on the WiFi connectivity and accompany APS on your phones. You can check on how much power you've used, how much power generated exported, all that sort of stuff. Their main function is to convert the D, C or direct current power that is produced by the solar panels into a sea or alternating current power, which is what your house and the grid itself generally uses. They usually quite bulky units and are installed outside on walls. You know you should also try and position them out of direct sunlight is, although most can handle sunlight and rain, it's better to have them protected from the elements. A dis general, long term durability. The size of the inverter will also depend on how big your solar system is on dwell. Traditionally, they used to match almost sort of oneto one. Nowadays, it's common to see the power output of the solar system be slightly higher than what the inverter can actually handle. So, for example, you might have, AH, 6.5 kilowatt solar system kicked it upto a five kilowatt inverter. This might seem so at first as you're paying for more solar panels than what you can actually handle. But where you actually get that money back is in winter or on cloudy days. In general, when there's cloud cover that reduces the solar power generation by half say you end up producing more power, thanks to the larger number of panels. This technique is referred to as over provisioning and has become particularly populate here in Australia, as solar panel costs have absolutely plummeted in recent years in terms of cost. Choosing the size of your inverter is something your in store should do for you based on the system size, so you don't want to get too worried about all that information and how it's just something good to know. Finally, we have the quite simple fuse box connections of Warren. This is exactly what the name suggests and is just made up of all the wiring that goes from the panels to the inverter and then Internet out of your fuse box of all that sort of stuff . This component also includes the isolation boxes and switches so Electrician's can turn on or off the solar arrays if they need to do work etcetera again, It's not something you have to worry about. Your installer should take care of it all, but it's good to to sort of know that it's part of every system. It also means you can't just place the panels and inverter any way you want to actually put it. You know they should be relatively close to your fuse box is. Otherwise, you'll spend an absolute fortune on wiring and have ugly cable was going everywhere all of your house. Another final note on all of this is to do with what brands that you should actually be choosing. As this is particularly important when it comes to actual solar buying. We'll cover this specifically as well as much more in the next section on buying solo. But for Neil, you should hopefully be much more informed off. Water Sewer system is how it works, how it's measured, what some of the most important component off the solar system and all that sort of information. 6. Section 3 - 1 - How Much Will You Save With Solar: So now that everyone is up to speed on solar systems and you know how they work, let's get into the main information you will need to actually buy one in the real world in this section will be going through everything from how big your solar system should be. Two brands You should be looking at finding a good solar installer and much more. In this first part, we're going to look at the different ways that you can actually buy a solar system and then exactly how much it will save you. So knowing how much it will save you each year is important because it helps to determine your payback period. And so they give you a bit of confidence in knowing that you'll get your money back. Solar is usually a decent investment costing thousands of dollars, so most want to be sure of the maths behind it'll before they actually go, you know, throwing their hard earned money added and fair enough, understand, so to stop. There are actually three main ways you can go about buying solo, and this affects how much you will actually save with it as well. There is simply paying for the whole system yourself with cash, using some type of finance to purchase the system or getting in via various payment plans or no interest deals, depending on what country you're in. One of these might be more popular than another. For example, here in Australia, many just simply go out and buy the solar system out right. As grants and competitive offers make this quite possible. Urban America, though it's more common to buy, solve systems on financing terms like what is offered right now through Tesla's solar's. Obviously, with each of these options comes pros and cons. For example, using your own money is just simpler and that there's no loans or any of that stuff to deal with. But on the other hand, you can't use that money for other opportunities that might make or save you money like, say, paying off your homeland, getting finances, food, the solar system through special deals, solar businesses or just putting it on your mortgage isn't too hard, but you'll have to pay interest on that loan, which further reduces. You know what your savings would actually date when it comes to the payment plans or subscriptions. These are usually the most expensive ones being made up of both. You know, the financing costs, interest costs and other thieves that you know they might hide in there and all that sort of stuff. Another critical thing you'll have to remember to when trying to calculate how much you'll save with solar is the maintenance costs, the soul. It there really is no ongoing maintenance, which is fantastic. Day to day panels can get, you know, dusty or dirty, but usually kept sufficiently cleaned by rainfall unless you live near like the sea or other places that can incur excessive buildups of salt or Dustin, all that sort of stuff. However, one thing that you will have to maintain, so to speak is your solar inverter. Even great quality inverters generally only last about 10 plus years and thus will need to be replaced at your own cost, as the warranty will likely have expired by them. While this isn't a thing for you to like, worry about day to day, do just keep it in mind when calculating your costs, as inverters aren't cheap. That being said, most people will have this always system paying itself off far quicker than that 10 plus year time frame. So now that we've gone through some of the ways, you can buy solar on their other things to consider when calculating costs, we can get to the main calculations on how exactly it saves you money when it comes to calculating how much you will save with. So there's quite a few variables that affect the results. This makes things a bit technical, but don't worry will run through. It'll step by step. For now, we're going to start with a simple standard five kilowatt solar system and just give a quick example of how to calculate your predicted savings. To do that, we're going to need to define some imports. So our solar system, size has said, is five kilowatt hour. Daytime power usage for the house is 10 kilowatt hours now feeding terror. For if I t as some people court is 12 cents per kilowatt, L and our usual power costs during the day is 40 cents per kilo, one out. Now These values are most certainly different from what you have in your local area, and that's because I'm from Australia and Australia has stupidly high power prices these specific values are important. What's important is the process that were about to go through. So insert your own numbers and follow along. If things are going too fast, feel free to pause the video or even rewind it and go through it all again until you get it'll under your belt and fully understood. To begin with, you need to find out how much power your system will generate on an average day. There are a lot of online calculators that will estimate this for you, as it depends on your location, the orientation of the panels that shading many other things for this simple example. Then let's to say our system is in Sydney in Australia, and it's north facing this means that should generate about 20 kilowatt hours a day. Remember, this is an average over the whole year. In summer, it will produce a lot more winter. It will produce less as we've defined. Our daytime power uses about 10 kilowatt hours. This will mean that the solar system will save us from having to purchase those Tinky Lord hours of full price power from the power provider. This should save us about $10.40 which is $4 a day. On top of that, will still be producing even more power, exporting that to the grid and making 12 cents per kilowatt. L adding this on homemade. It'll make us another 10 times 12 sends or a dollar 20 a day, adding these two fingers together you get $5.20 a day. This is a savings times that figure by a whole year, and we get our magic number off 1898. So, as you can see in this example, will be saving almost two grand every year. So long is that power consumption habit remains the same, and the feed in tariff also stays around that 12 cent mark. This is why so many people around the world are just jumping on the software bandwagon. Who doesn't want to save $2000 a year every year for decades? This is a big idea that I wish everyone you solar can earn you thousands of dollars every year. Of course, though you need to be careful. I know what you're doing when purchasing the actual solar system is otherwise, a lot of things can go wrong. So let's get started on one of the most important questions in the next six, which is how big should your solar system be? 7. Section 3 - 2 - Choosing Your System Size: when it comes to buying your solar system, One of the biggest questions is sites. Sometimes this will be essentially decided for you if you don't have that big of a roof. But for those of you lucky enough to have essentially a limited roof space, it can be a bit of a tricky question. How big should you go? You know, obviously, with the largest system comes more produced energy, but that doesn't always mean more Satan. This is because it's obviously going to cost you more to purchase the larger system in the first place. To begin with, I'd like to cover a bit of an unknown secret in the industry, which is commonly referred to as over sizing. This is what we spoke about before the practice of buying more solar panels them what your solar inverter can actually handle. Typically in Australia, for example, you'll see many installers over sizing systems by about 30 33% or so. So if you've got a five kilowatt inverter, you'll by 6.5 kilowatts of panels to put up with it. The reason this is so common is that panels really put out as much power as what they're rated fourth. While they may put out 350 watts under each ideal circumstances, as the version states, more often than not, the sun isn't at its optimal angle. Maybe there's some shade from a tree causing an issue, or it's just cloudy or dusty. As a result, that 350 watt panel not only put out 250 wards so by over sizing their system, it's still uses your inverter to its maximum efficiency of five kilowatt, even though all of your panels might not be operating at that maximum efficiency. This is also particularly helpful in places that have limits on how big an inverter you're allowed to hook up to the actual greed itself. At the end of the day, choosing your system size will depend on your reasons for wanting the solar system. If you want to save the planet, good for you and don't care about payback period or upfront costs, then you can just go. Is Bigas you want? If money is still a precious resource for youth, and things get a bit more complicated, mostly depends on where you live, as this will determine what type of grants, if any, you actually have access to here in Australia. We have multiple things to help with the cost of both. Buying the actual solar as well as operating it, such as the government run sold a rebate scheme as well as the feed in tariff rates that power providers have to pay in some states, as this course is for the worldwide audience there. I currently go through every single location and every grand or program available out there . But even if I did, that information would very quickly get out of date and just be wrong. So instead, you want to jump online and simply type in your country, plus solar grants into Google, you'll get your standard adds that the first results ignore them. But after, look for anything with a dot gov or similar in the URL, as they should be the best resources for you to sort of get an idea of what's happening. Once you found out what type of grants or tariffs you personally might be eligible for, you can then start to do a few of the calculations that we did in the last part of this section, figuring out how much you'll save for a few different system sizes will really help you get an idea of what size should suit your house best. Typically, I'd recommend doing the calculations for at least three killer walked and a five kilowatt system just to see the differences. You have the system size so you'll be Alba to find out how much power it'll produce on average daily and thus calculate your savings each year. Once you know your yearly savings for each system, you'll be much more informed when it comes to finding out the up front cost off the actual system itself. For example, if you know that a three kilowatt system will save you $500 a year, then you'll quickly no paying $5000. That system might not make the best financial sense, as it means a 10 year payback period. Hopefully, your country has good solar processing and grant systems, but unfortunately not old do the places like Australia, which do you can essentially just by as much Solar is, you can fit on your roof and for the most part, be fun with it. But this isn't true for a lot of other places, overseas. As you can see, the system size question, your country grants or rebates and how much will save, on average, all kind of merged together to help determine whether or not solar is a good purchase for you. In terms of financial sense, it's not a simple yes or no thing, unfortunately, as it depends on just so many very personal things, like your location through space energy use patterns and just all this sort of information . And while I've gone through the reasons and the calculations already on how to figure this all out, there's even Mawr nuances that only the professionals will be out will pick up on upon doing a physical house inspection as such, who you choose to install your solar is super important and is also the first point will be covering in the next buck. So I'll talk to you then 8. Section 3 - 3 - Choosing Your Solar Installer: Now we're getting into the rial mate of Sola and had a choose your in store the components , brands, hardware and salt very time. First, I'd like to talk a little bit about buying cheap soap. Now this is something that will usually end up costing you more money and more headache in the long run for multiple reasons, so you really want to avoid it. This is because, usually, to give you the cheapest price, these cheap solar companies will skimp on their hardware or the installation you'll get so panels or inverters, but they'll die after a couple of years. Or there'll be a botched installation that looks ugly or underperforms is dangerous or all of these all together at once. This is another important point, so please don't forget it. Buying the cheapest system just because it's the cheapest is likely a bad plan. So while you don't need to go out and buy the most expensive option, just keep in mind that if accord is substantially cheaper than everyone else's, there's likely a pretty countries in for that. And you probably want to avoid it. We'll be covering what safe and reliable panels and inverter brand look like later on, but this is just a strong note not to fall for those companies that you know have marketing Bs all over the place. If they're talking about super technical jargon, you've never heard off secret proprietary systems that magically make things amazing or just have nonsense. Payback period calculations compared to what you've come up with or what others are saying . Stay far, far away. Part of going through all the information we've already covered is to hopefully give you enough understanding about solar so that you don't get tricked by these sorts of just horrible companies out there. Another important note to be aware of upfront is whether you want to go with a big or small in store. There's again pros and cons with both in that a big installer will probably have slightly lower prices but less sort of personal service. Small and stores are usually more local and might go that sort of extra mile if you have a particularly complex build. Whichever company you do end up choosing, though, just make sure that they're going to still be around in five detainees talk. The best way to predict this is to ensure they have already been around for five plus years at a bare minimum. Companies that have been around and operating for five plus years, generally more likely to be installing good products have the management to ensure that they turncoat bankrupt. When you're talking about the long term, this will mean that if you do need to make a warranty claiming to five or 10 years time, they should actually still be around and will actually be Alberto, Honor it for you. But which in store should use this? So many, And they all claim to be the best. Probably. What do you do? Well, just like with most other major purchases, like buying a car, you want to get multiple quotes to ensure that you're not getting ripped off or sold some poor quality cheap system, as we discussed before this again is another super important thing that you want to remember. So again, I'm gonna put it up on the screen, make sure you get multiple quotes. It'll also hopefully weed out the ones that are quoting stupidly high process or one set of just designing systems that make absolutely no sense, even if two of them are pretty close in process. You can play them off against each other and hopefully get the same system for cheaper. If you know any good at negotiating again is this course is taken on a global scale. I can't recommend any specific local in stores. Unfortunately, in stores change over time to. So to start with, at least you're going to want to do our local search for solar installers on something like Google. Your country might also have, like a government website that lists out along the solar and stores, so that could be a helpful resource as well. From here, there's going to be some obvious ones that will fit your requirements mawr than others. So perhaps you're wanting, you know, just a very simple installation of that five kilowatts system on a single story home. Bonet should at least have an idea of the size off system your after and whether you'll be needing arm or custom or, you know, complicated in store or just a generic simple one. This will allow you to get a good idea of many of the different in stores that are out there in your general area, but it doesn't really tell you if they're any good or no to determine whether or not they're actually any good is, unfortunately, a bit of a hard task. So depending on how much time you want to spend on this, you can do many different things to sort of investigate the company just in a general sense . So you can search for the installers name and sort of reviews on Google to see what other people have been experiencing when they get installs, you can read that website, see what deals they have on our five. They mention any and sort of see how they generally operate. Some companies will tell you what brands of panels and inverters they use as well. This war is to help you to understand just how relatively expensive they are. You know, maybe the cheaper many will note how they're credited with various qualifications. While this isn't a bad thing per se, just make sure you're not solely relying on those types of things as these qualifications don't absolutely guarantee 100% the your in store will be perfect. Overall, this stage should spare first level filtering process your quickly reviewing the companies that websites that operation reviews all that sort of stuff just to make sure it's at least up to scratch off what a respectable company should be from heat, you can contact them to stop getting a court is. This will really be the thing that tells you if they're good company on the first level of filtering is just to make sure you're wasting your time. It will also give you an idea of how each of the companies deal with their customers, you wanting to have professional and knowledgeable service that on time and hopefully mirrors the types of information that we cover here. Also, as a small note, I wouldn't recommend going with any company that uses overly aggressive marketing tactics, as these ones usually spend more on the marketing than they do on providing quality installers or quality products. Things I door to door salesman or businesses that hand you over and over again probably aren't the best a good interest. Ola shouldn't pressure you to sign their contract ever. Once you've found and generally filtered out 2 to 4 different companies, you can request quote from them and see what types of deals they offer you. It's At this stage, you'll likely find that there will be a few different prices that come back even for the same system, but with different quality components, different brands. And so maybe you'll get two quotes for a five kilowatt system, one with moderate quality panels and inverters, and one Widmore premium quality components. Which one should you choose? More importantly, all those quality components, actually good, Or are they just lying to you and charging more? Let's have a look at this in our next part off the section. 9. Section 3 - 4 - Choosing Your Solar Hardware: obviously, what hard way you end up buying is a big, important part of the whole process. Just like with cars, there's all sorts of different companies and tops of price points you can get. So choosing the right hardware can sometimes be difficult, cause actually make for quite a good analogy to so lot as this heaps of different brands and different price points. Specifically, it's also a good comparison because, just like with cause, you can get cheap cause that a good as well as an expensive car that's no great just because you spend a lot of money doesn't guarantee your quality or a good fit for your use case. Similarly, spending a small man also doesn't necessarily mean you're getting a crap. Product in this part will be covering the two main components. You'll be buying your panels. End your inverter for the solar panels. There are generally two different types. There are poly, crystalline or mono crystalline as mentioned at the start. I could go riding toe all the nitty gritty detail of how these two types of different, but I don't want to bore everyone to death or make this course super long and dense. So to summarize, it doesn't really matter which type you buy, so long as there of a brand that will last you 25 years or more. As talked about with the car brand analogy, you can get budget cheap panels, moderately priced panels and premium top of the line panels. What makes them differently crossed? Well, you can have a good quality built panel that's just using older, less efficient technology in them. This gives you your more budget talk prices, but still lost 25 years. At the other end, you might look at something like some power panels, which have super high efficiencies and a premium. They look really good. And if you really care about how your house visually looks or if you can only fit, say, 10 panels on your roof, they might be a good fit for you. Budget doesn't mean bad, and expensive doesn't mean a rip off does price points for everyone, and they can all be very valid, depending on your preference and your specific needs. So to start out on the cheapo sort of budget side of things with solar panels, you have good quality brands like Jinkosolar, Santic, Trina Soul, J. Solo Canada Solo or Long solo moving up to the sort of medium tier brains we have. Other ones, like solar edge Power Wave Q cells Beyond I and Solar. What, Finally, in the absolute top tier premium bracket, there's brands like some Power and LG. These are often some of the most powerful, long lasting and pretty looking panels at that. If you really care about how your solar installation looks or don't have much of room on your roof but still want the most powerful systems that you can get, take a look at these two brands when shopping around and getting quotes. It's good to know all of the brands at least somewhat well, as what can sometimes happen is that an in store will have discounts or specials on those premium tier equipments and give you a lower price. You may get to courts for the same five kilowatts system at the same price, but with one having the much higher quality panels in it. Keep in mind, though, that these in stores might be providing a poor quality install in order to make up for the difference in price. So either way, The other part of the system you want to know about is, of course, the inventor. Inverters also come in sort of two main types, which is string or micro string. Inverters are big and bulky things you know, often installed under a guard rueful, bolted to the side of a house. They do the power conversion for all of the panels attached together in a string, and they usually cheaper and more common. The Marco inverters, on the other hand, are tiny and a touch to the back of each of the individual panels. In your system. The benefit of having micro inverters is that they helped to optimize the individual panel and thus produce MAWR energy over the lifetime of the entire system. The downside, of course, is that they usually much more expensive or a premium option. Whichever talked you get, they both performed the same task, which is to convert the D C power from your solar panels into a sea power for your house or the grid to use the stated before to even good inverters, Ken and do fail after about 10 plus years or so. As such, it's advisable to get a more premium tier brand one. Even if you're looking for an overall budget system, the last thing you want is to cheap out on the inverter and have it fail after you know, two or three years, meaning you have to spend thousands again buying a replacement. Invert that being said, just like with so panels, there's budget and premium brands with invaders. While all of the following suggestions are good quality brand with quality products, the more premium ones will have even more resilience and sort of quality built into them past also have just more general features, like WiFi monitoring or other bits and pieces. So on the budget side, we have companies like Good Week a Baby Solis or Hawaii moving further towards sort of the premium side of things. We have solar edge in Phase s Emma and for Nia's. So hopefully now you're a lot more knowledgeable on all the aspects of solar panel and inverted brands. For when you start to, you know, receive those quotes back from installers. These quotes will also help to show witch in store was are professional and know what they're doing and which ones you should probably avoid. A good professional quote should include quite a few things. Obviously, it should include what you're buying. So the number and brand of panels, the inverter labor. But it should also include more sort of subtle things, like the racking system that they're going to use the monitoring system, if any, as well as whether the system will have any ongoing subscription fees, often for the monitoring. It should also include any extra cross they're going to be charging you now. These are quite normal. But these extra costs you know, they could be for things like having double storey roofs needing different types of racking equipment due to special roofing times, having your race split over two separate parts of your worth rather than dull in the one group in even things like having to upgrade your switchboard if that's required, you want to know these things upfront, not get surprised with them or on the day of the in store. The quote should also tell you everything you need to know about your equipment warranty. While it should tell you about the warranties off the panels and inverter, it should mostly inform you about the warranties off the installation itself. This includes things like what happens if the isolators they install failed or if the plugs or cables become disconnected after you. It will also cover the racking system. The panels are installed or installation. Warranty is a very important part of your warranty and should be at least five years or more. The installation company itself also shouldn't be placing the warranty responsibilities on subcontractors if they use them to do the installs. Most good quotes will also include a nice, pretty diagram showing you how they're going to position the panels on which part of the roof This will give you a good visual idea. Off way or panels will be going, and hair your house will look after everything is done. Many people are quite particular on whether they can see the physical panels or not. So this could be very important if the installer kind of has a different plan toe, where you're wanting to install the panels and you don't communicate. Finally, it's also good to see a bunch of calculations on what you can expect your specific system to produce each day each month, or you. This should include things like how much energy. The system will produce on just an average day. How much income that should roughly generate each year for you and us. How much are likely to save over the many years of earning the system? You might even get a breakdown of what your power bills will look like now versus after you install that system. One thing to look for specifically in this part of the court is what their assumptions are when calculating all these facts and figures. Obviously, the better they can make these numbers look, the more encouraged you're going to be to go with their quote over someone else's. So do be careful. They're not making some stupid assumption like that. You'll be consuming 100% of all the solar output that you produce because you won't be so. Be very careful of those sorts of tricks. Finally, you can compare the courts to each other, weed out the ones that I'm professional enough for, include poor warranties or tricky sales tactics, and hopefully find one that gives a fair price for good quality brings. If not, you may need to sort of go back and contact some of the other companies for even more quotes. Also, to be aware off some specific tricks that companies can use. And these are things like insisting you pay them a yearly inspection or maintenance fee. This is complete crap and isn't required. It also, please don't fall for it. Another common yet critical thing installers try, is writing into the court that they can swap out your quoted equipment for brands of other equivalent types. They might claim this is only the case of that having stocking issues or something like that. But the decisions will always be with you, not them. They should not be able to do this without your express permission as otherwise, it's a simple way for them to just bait and switch their customers, You know, show you expensive, good quality brands in your quote, but then install poor quality crap stuff on your actual worth. Because of stalking reasons, the in store should also stand firm behind the system they're installing. This means there shouldn't be any get out of jail free type parts in there, saying things like they don't take responsibility if the system doesn't perform exactly as they're saying it will. While all this sort of stuff might sound obvious should be surprised at what companies put in their actual terms and conditions, mostly because people just don't usually read them. And while this last one isn't specifically trick companies use, you will also want to just be aware of what happens when things go wrong. For example, what happens if the installers rock up on the day to install and find your entire switchboard needs upgrading? What happens if there's a problem connecting your newly installed system up to the grid? And the power distributor demands things be changed or fixed or improve before I can actually connect? Who pays for those charges? What happens if there's really long delays for any reason at all? What happens if they do a second, more detailed design and court after you put your deposit? Damn. Can you easily get your deposit back or will you be stopped? Combined with all the other information you've learned, discussing Ridean stores themselves about You know, these various points that we've covered and comparing the multiple quotes that you've received, you should be a in a great position to actually make the final decision and choose your install off your brands system type the quote in the size. What comes next after you agree on one of your courts is the actual installation process itself, which is what we're going to be covering in the next part. 10. Section 3 - 5 - The Solar Installation Process: sir, you've got your 2 to 4 quarts back discussed the system requirements and other features you might want with your in store. You've made sure that they're all above board and backing up in writing a good, long lasting system. And finally choose your actual set up. You pay a deposit to the installer and they begin the whole process off Solar installation for what is that process? Exactly, And how long is it all gonna take? Well, to begin with, your installer should be able to give you the most accurate time friend. As you know, they'll know best. But usually installations from start to finish should only take a couple of weeks. Assured me everything goes smoothly. Of course, throughout these 1 to 2 weeks, you'll have a few different things happen. It's quite likely that the in store has already done a site visit in order to quote your system. So that should already be done if they've used satellite imagery and computer systems to evaluate your roof on quoted you that way, though, they may still want to physically come out and do an inspection on side. It's also likely that I'll do a second more detailed quote to which should help them to give you a really specific timeframe on how everything will go down after that. An important part that might take a while is for them to actually get the solar panels and inverter for your specific build in. Usually big in stores have a lot of stock on hand, so it's not a big problem. But there may be shortages of some think like that particular inverter, or perhaps a really big demand to them or that one, so you might have to wait some time. The installers also might be super busy or short staff or both, and can't fit in your installation for a while. But birth, their availability and their stock levels should already be told to you well in advance. And even before you commit to giving your deposit. So do ask if your heart assuming the installer has the equipment and can fit your installation quickly in the next stage, is for them to actually do the installation. So he had out come to your house, deliver all the panels, the racking the inverter and then install it onto your roof and connect everything up to your switchboard. The entire installation should usually take around about a day. But if you've got a particularly big build, or maybe a complex bill Day may need to come back for a second day. Once in store, it's likely that your system won't be turned on. This is because in most countries a separate electrical inspector from the power company will need to attend, then just sort of check of everything that's being done to make sure it's been installed correctly safely according to their code and all that sort of stuff. They also need to make sure your meter is measuring both incoming and outgoing Pell. This might just be a change, your current leader or you might need an entirely new one. Do keep in mind ordered that this electrician's isn't from the solar in store there from the power network, so they will likely charge you a separate fee for their services, which is fun, and I should hurt make sense. This electrician's might be there the next day or wait coughter in Stow. It will depend on the power companies availability, but it's only until after they've given it the old clear injected that you're allowed to actually turn it on and have it start generating power for you. Once your system has being turned on, you should be able to start monitoring it. Seeing how much parrots generating day today and most importantly, have it stopped making you money? Obviously, you should fully understand how solar systems make you passive income, and you probably already have a general idea of this. But in the next section, we're going to go into a lot more details around it, as it can also affect the types of system. You end up buying symptoms so I'll talk to you then. 11. Section 5 - 1 - Benefits Of Home Batteries: When it comes to solo, most people kind of understand its benefits. You know, for a moderate upfront cost, you can generate your own electricity for free for ticket. However, as home battery energy storage systems still a bit new, most aren't as sure on what, exactly their benefits off. I mean, obviously, batteries store electricity so you can use it later on. But how exactly does that make you money, you know, and are there any other benefits to start with? Let's focus a bit on the main ways that battery storage systems are useful, and that's having full control over what type of how you use and win, as we've covered previously. For many people in Australia and in many other countries as well, power used during the middle of the day is far more expensive than power used. Not even if you don't have any solar panels installed. A battery can still save you money by charging up on cheap grid power during the night, so you can avoid purchasing high cost electricity during the day. For example, if you charge off LG Camera Zoo 10 battery with the full usable capacity of 8.8 kilowatt hours of power during the night when your power costs, say, 10 cents, you spend about 88 cents. If you then use those 8.8 kilowatt hours of power during the daytime, when power costs se 35 cents. That saved you about $2.20 years. You can see do that all year long, and you've saved about 800 bucks. Given that the O. J battery has a 10 year warranty, you should be able to make that savings roughly for about 10 years. So a potential of about $8000 in savings, which isn't to that to be clear again. This can be done even if you don't have solar panels installed as being charged up with grid power during the not is fine Turnley. That LG battery costs about 7.5 grand Australian so basically pays for itself if you use it this way every day for 10 years. Also, to be clear, this is an absolute best case scenario. It's not very likely that you'll use the entire 8.8 kilowatt hours every day, year after year, but it's just an example to show you what's possible with batteries that being said, the 10 year warranty guarantees that the battery will still be at least 60% after those 10 years. This means you still have a usable capacity of about five or so killer, one hours to use. Maybe it lasts another five years after that, meaning you'll save even more even if you don't have the benefit of cheap grid power, not times the other way can also make money is by storing that solar power for use later on in the day when power is more expensive. This means if you have a very low feeding tire of, of, say, 10 cents per kilowatt hour, you can instead store that power in your battery and then use it at night when power is still high at 35 cents. Once again, this saves you 25 cents per kilowatt hour, meaning that it should essentially pay for itself over 10 plus years. That being said, 10 years is quite a long time, and you know who knows what will happen to power prices or anything else over that 10 years . Saving money by doing this arbitrage of the power process isn't the only benefit of battery storage systems. Either. One of the other main bonuses is that your area has a blackout in it. It can continue to keep your house running. While this feature isn't available in all battery systems, it's getting more common, especially in the newer models. Like the Tesla. Power to this 14 kilowatt hour battery can isolate your home from the grid when it detects a power adage and keep all your appliances running nice and smoothly. While our home doesn't really have any problems with blackouts, I do know that many cities around the world can have them frequently. And if you're add in the country, or anything like that can be even worse even here in Australia, this is because if a blackout does actually hit, it's likely to take the power company half far longer to get out to some remote location area and fix it as such. Having your home run on solar plus battery could save you a lot of trouble while you wait for maybe a week for the power company to get out to your area and turn the power back on. It could also be a fantastic feature for those living in places that get hit by storms frequently. For example, you might be OK with a battery system taking 10 years to pay for itself. If you know it means you have reliable power the next time a big hurricane hits your area, just do. Keep in mind that not all battery systems provide this feature, So if it is important to you, make sure you ask your own stores specifically about it before you purchase anything moving on to some other, more minor benefits of her and battery storage. We have things like, you know, helping to reduce your reliance on electricity from the grid. If you live in a country like Australia that still gets, unfortunately, a high percentage of its power from dirty fossil fuels, you might want to reduce that as much as possible. Even if it doesn't make complete financial sense for you to just go out and buy a battery, you still might do it, you know, just to reduce the amount of carbon you're contributing to the world. Another good benefit of batteries is to insulate you from future electricity price rises if you mostly self consumed your own soul tower. Even at night times When you get home from work, then power prices don't really matter much to you, even if they double in price or something crazy. In the end, there's a number of really legitimate benefits and financial reasons to get a home battery storage system. If you're interested in them, you probably also have a whole bunch of questions about them as well. So in our next part we're going to try and address some of these sort of main questions, so I'll talk to you then. 12. Section 5 - 2 - Batteries 101 How Batteries Actually Work: all right. Welcome to better. He's 101 Before we do get started there, I just like to say that we're only going to be talking in this section about lithium ion batteries as they are becoming the main choice for home battery storage systems. So we're just gonna be focusing solely on them while lead acid batteries do still exist. These are what we're used before. Lithium ion reduced in price enough to make them basically a viable use product for home use. Also only be focusing on off the show for all in one systems, as they are most commonly called out there. These off the shelf systems are things like the Tesla power water, which are essentially and all in one package system rather than you purchasing individual battery cells and putting it together. They can also sometimes come with the battery inverter included inside the system as well. But what is, Ah harm battery energy storage system? Exactly. In short, it's a giant battery that's installed in your property. Duh. It's connected up to your house's electrical network and, as we discussed, can do a number of different things, depending on how it's configured like what we've covered in the last part of this bonus section. Home battery energy systems have really taken off in the lost sort of few years, especially here in Australia. While they were always around even, you know, 10 years ago, the huge drop in price per kilowatt hour has just kicked things into a completely different deal. Add to this test log with the game changing power war and then their power war to products . And things have just never bean this exciting. While it's most common to have, you know, just a solar panel system installed alongside of battery, this isn't an absolute requirement. Home batteries can store energy from any source. You could have it hooked upto a small wind turbine or even connected just directly to the group. Whatever way you build your system, they offer a number of valuable benefits from personal power back up to helping the grid not get overloaded during the day. Next up, how to home battery systems actually work. So for this question, while you can set up a home battery storage system in many different configurations, let's take a closer look at one of the absolute main ones. This is where the house has solar panels on the roof and a battery, usually in the garage or outside somewhere. The two systems are hooked up together with inverters and other smarts that manage the flow of electricity between toe help. Make the needs off the home owner, whatever those needs may be. Usually, though, these needs are as follows. So the first is it. During the day, send the power produced by the solar panels to the house for use. If there is any excess power than that goes to charge up the actual battery system itself to during the not use up the stored battery energy to power the house. If the battery runs out of power, then it switches to the grid power to use for the house. Pretty simple batteries can and do get a lot more complicated. One of the other main facts we need to cover is it. A battery storage system can connect to a house in two different ways. There is D C direct current couple or a C ultimatum current couple. So a day C couple battery storage system is integrated. Wrought into your solar system, they generally have a single inverter that converts the DC electricity to A C to supply your house or feed back into the group. On the other hand, and a C coupled system is separate to your solar system, it connects directly to your house buyer its own dedicated bi directional battery inverter . This uses a C electricity from either the grid or your so a system to charge the battery and then discharge it directly to your house. There are once again different pros and cons to both of these set ups, but as this isn't an entire battery course, it's a bit too much to cover, so we'll just move on from here. All right, So what is actually inside a home battery energy storage system? Digging further into the specifics about batteries? Let's have a deeper look inside one of the most popular models, which is, of course, the Tesla Power Walk to Do you also know that there are many other home battery systems out there, such as LG Kim's residue, the in phase batteries or even Samsung, which produced really good batteries to These, come in different sizes with different warranties, different pros, cons and, of course, price points. If you'd like to see a huge array of these different batteries compared to each other, you can check out a battery storage comparison table. However, looking back inside of the Power War two, we can see that it's mainly made up off course your batteries. That's not all, though, as there can be many other components, such as the D. C, A, C and video. There's thermal controls and even connection ports. Or, you know, WiFi chips so the battery can communicate with other control systems and tell it how much energy it has left. Well, other things like how much it's using and, you know, just general stepped as a power, or too has its own inverter. It is an A C coupled battery system. This pictured example is also a three phase compatible has a 14 kilowatt hour capacity and a seven kilowatt peak and five kilowatt continuous apple capacity. It is a wall or floor mounted liquid thermal control unit weighing around 120 Kjaer's, which isn't pretty impressive when compared to much heavy a traditional deep cycle batteries. As you can see, there are loads of specs, additional things to know, and all that sort of stuff. It's certainly not just ah, battery. Obviously, each home battery system is different as well, with most of them not actually including a battery inverter inside them. That being said, the test the Powell to is quite a bit bigger than some others, which preferred a house at a smaller size batteries, such as 6.5 kilowatt hour or even 1.2 kilowatt hour. For the in face systems. These smaller 1.2 kilowatt hour batteries are much larger and cost less, which can be great unless you want a big battery. Different people want different things, though, so it's no surprise that there's many different battery tops out there, many different price points. Next up, we're going to look mawr into their sites, both physically and about how much energy they can actually store. So I'll talk to you 13. Section 5 - 3 - Home Battery System Sizes And Costs: All right, so now we're up to four. How physically big battery story systems. This answer will obviously depend on which better you end up. Buying along with how many of them you buy is a very quick example. The super popular Tesla power or two comes in at about 115 by 75 15 centimeters. This is how physically big one of them will be. However, there's two things you should know. The first is that you may end up actually getting more than one. If you need a really big kilowatt hour size battery around. The second is that you also need other pieces of equipment to just generally make it work. The second point is quite important, as many don't realize, that a battery needs a D. C T a C inverter as well as a gateway box. Usually, too. Tessa Powell to is actually one of the better cases as it includes its own inverted inside . It plus is quite compact and self contained in its own right. However, even with one of the most compact units, you'll still need the Gateway box, which controls how and when it gets charged or discharge kind of like a mini brain. As you can see in this picture from a fully charged video, you have extra electrical leads, big switches, fuse boxes and so on. At a bare minimum. The bigger box on the far left is the D. C. Dacey inverter for the solar system, which is also common to have extras well. So while you might go on their website and see a physical dimension of X by Y by Z or whatever it might be, do be aware that you'll likely need a bit more room not just for the other bits, but also for appropriate spacing around those components for both heat dissipation and just general safety. Well, it's not gonna take up acres of real estate or anything like that. It's not something you can just kind of jam into a corner. So to make sure that you have a good sort of open area for it, you also need a solid wall to attach the battery and generally other components to. This isn't a huge concern for most of her, as a garage or carport wall caters to this quite well. If you want information on how physically big other battery systems are, you can again check out our awesome Home Battery Energy storage comparison page, which details all the most popular systems that sizes and a bunch more information, all rights and arrogating to how big in kilowatt hours are battery storage systems. Now that we know how physically big these systems are, we can get to the more important point of how much energy that actually store energy storage capacity is measured in kilowatt hours, likely discussed in the previous sections before. If you have 10 kilowatt hours off energy, this means you can provide one kilowatts of continuous power for 10 hours. Or you could provide five kilowatt off continuous power for two hours. One very important point to note here is that all battery storage systems have a peek and a continuous power writing. This means that if your house is running solely off your battery and has a big hater or induction cook talk that draws a huge amount of power while it's starting up, that power drawer must be under the peak power rating. Obviously, once the heater or whatever it is has started up and he's continuously drawing power. This also needs to be under the steady or continuous power rating that the batteries give. So while your battery might have 14 kilowatt hours off energy stored in it, like what the Powell to construe or you will still only be, I would ever provide five kilowatt of continuous power so that 14 kilowatt hours were lost just under three hours, getting back to our question that we can easily look up the storage sizes of many different popular battery systems. Some, like the Tesla Power Walk, to have 14 kilowatt hours of storage in them. Other popular ones, like the in phase battery up. It's more of 1.2. This is because they're designed to b'more sort of modular system and cheaper. That way you can buy one of them, or you can buy 10 of them, depending on your specific needs, and chain them together. Her battery storage systems can also come in 6.5 kilowatt hour sizes, like the LG Kim or five kilowatt, the summon batteries. So you have lots of choices whatever type of set up you want, which is great. The competitive market means lots of choices, lower prices, everything really good for consumers all right, so now we're getting into how much to battery storage systems cost. It's a pretty important question, I think, for most people. And five years ago it was incredibly expensive to buy lithium ion batteries for your home, with most of the market focusing on the cheaper and older lead acid battery technology instead, Now there, everything has shifted towards lithium ion batteries. And there's multiple huge companies like Tesla on LG and Samsung, all trying to get into your home with their products. While the process of battery storage systems is falling rapidly, the cost to install a household system is still significant. As of 2020 the fully installed costs of a system is likely to be around 1 to $2000 Australian per kilowatt hour. That number is predicted to come down significantly over the next few years, though, as production scowls up. A manufacturing costs decline now, so systems seem to be about five years ahead of batteries. But the market for batteries is much bigger than solo, so you know it's expected for them to reducing costs even quicker than what soldiers did. While solar only has the energy industry, batteries have the energy industry, the technology industry and also the transport industry, which is huge. They used everywhere, and so with increased volume comes decreased costs. So finally, I would like to cover battery systems, their longevity and just the general warranty. I mean, depending on your manufacturer and battery type, you're obviously going to get vastly different results here. Generally, the product warranties seem to be settling in around about the 10 years in length. It's important to note, though, that manufacturers also guarantee that that will not only last that long, but still have at least a certain level of charge still available after that time. For example, the warranty on some LG cameras you batteries is to have at least 60% charge left after that. 10 years of warranty. So while a battery storage system will often last longer than its warranty, its ability to store energy will gradually reduce overtime with use, just like with any other battery out there. 10 years is still quite a long time, though, and far outweighs the warranties you're likely to get for other, more general home appliances, like maybe a dishwasher or fridge or something like that. Fitim or do you remember that? You know, after 10 years of battery research and development, not to mention, you know, the manufacturing improvements, it's highly likely that you want to buy a much bigger, better and probably far cheaper replacement battery. After that, 10 years is passed. It costs per kilowatt hour, keep declining at their current right, which is about the 15 to 20% per year. You can probably expect those costs to be around 15 to 25 US day per kilowatt hour in about 10 years time. It's likely that trend will accelerate to given the exponentially increasing manufacturing capacity that we're seeing both in the home storage and also in the evening markets. Especially this means a current 14 kilowatt hour. Tesla Powell to the costs roughly $11,700 Australian would be reduced to 12 to $1900 Australian. That's not the only thing in the future of home battery storage. Either will be covering that in the next part, though, so 14. Section 5 - 4 - Future Outlook For Home Batteries: so there's many more questions that I'm sure you need answers to before you go out and purchase a battery system from looking at the physical size of the system toe, you know, finding a safe place to install it, even knowing whether or not it will be able to store the power your solar system will actually generate. As I said, it would take an entire other course to properly discover it. Or for now, the batteries, like Solo, have an excellent outlook for the future. But what should you expect? You know over the next set of 3 to 5 years in home battery storage systems, well to begin with, their process will drop significantly as mentioned before it's expected. That will cross under the $100 USD per kilowatt hour mark in around 2023. But reports have already come out saying that some are reaching that now in 2020 while the above graph is in USD and more targeted at the role lithium ion battery costs as opposed to like a final installed home battery storage system product, it does give a good idea towards what we can sort of expect if costs are around 1000 plus a strain per kilowatt hour mark now for a fully installed home battery storage system. We can use that to help predict how quickly this price should sort of drop. Roughly speaking, perhaps in 2023 you'll be able to buy affording kilowatt hour power war to for about 6000 Australian fully installed or around half the cost. This huge prostrate is due to a number of converging issues, but the main one is just the simple fact that there are now three multi trillion dollar industries, just all investing in getting this one technology cheaper. I t phones, laptops, Internet of things, electron ICS, etcetera, that automotive Evie's home in grid scale energy thes three huge industries are all combining and just competing to get the price lower and lower the number of recharge cycles higher, the charge rate quicker, that safety better. And it's created this unstoppable march towards just a better and better batteries for everyone in every situation. Lithium ion battery costs have plummeted around 40% every year over the past 15 years, with billions in R and D as well as manufacturing now ramping up to the giggle what our and soon terror, what our scale from multiple companies. Things just keep getting better and better when it comes to batteries. There's also being direct confirmation from Elon Musk himself that Tesla is now aiming for 2000 gigawatt hour per year production rates for batteries. The other thing that you know is likely to change quite a bit are the other services and abilities that surround the home battery storage market itself. These changes are already widely taking place here in Australia, so I would expect them to roll out around the rest of the world to as batteries get more and more commonplace. For example, if you have a 14 kilowatt hour battery hooked up to your house and to the grid, it's possible for you to export power to the grid at very specific times, usually around hard demand. These high demand times can actually cost power generators huge amounts of money, and so they're more than willing to pay consumers a small amount if it means they can, you know, remotely trigger your battery to export energy to the grid and help shore up the actual Pell ballots. This can even work in reverse as well, where the power company has excess power and can actually pay battery owners to use power when they otherwise might not be such a night when the greed demand is just generally to love. All these cases, as well as some others are quickly developing into, you know what could end up being an added income stream for those that own hard battery storage systems and a willing to have their power distributor's, you know, trigger at certain predicted times or spots there. Battery storage systems. Whether these various new income streams get more widespread, we'll have to wait and see. At any rate, the home batteries have a very bright future, so make sure to keep it on them over the next sort of 2 to 5 years. Another, this fully ends the bonus section and the whole entire course. Thanks again for taking this course. And don't forget to check out our other courses that we have and hopefully labour of you. If you liked it