Petecomp1 said:Oversized? You mean in terms of cost I suppose. I'd have put in twice the capacity if I could have afforded it, because I just like making my own electricity and the more the better! In-state components maximize the incentive so we used them. No shade on array; it is sited on a nice bare south facing slope. Using micro inverters because of a lengthy cable run from the array to the house. All specifications including sizing were provided by the contractor. One could spend much less for this but there are a lot of reasons we were unable to DIY this job.
Oversized as in all the production over 9,300 kWh you are not getting any more of the 54 cent per kWh production incentive, just savings on the utility bill since there is the $5,000 a year cap.
I'm wondering what the ROI difference between your all made in WA system and say a same sized system with all made in WA ~10kw connected to your production meter then a second array of say Enphase and SolarWorld/SunPower not connected to your meter. That way you would have gotten the $5,000 annually but not had to buy the much more expensive WA made components.
A friend has a similarly sized system and he decided on using Enphase microinverters and instate iTek panels which allowed him to just hit the $5,000 limit but use the superior Enphase microinverters.
Actually did they provide a quote for an all Enphase and SunPower/SolarWorld system? For the same amount of initial investment you could have gotten an even larger system and I'm wondering what the ROI would be.
Interesting that they wanted to do microinverters vs just mounting the central inverters to the ground mount as that seems very common.
Anyway, just thinking out loud as you are the first person I've talked to who has used in state components well over the $5,000 cap