building the Philippines finally went [Music] solar hello everyone hi guys uh today's video is about our solar update finally it's been uh a long time to get to this point a longtime viewers know that I've been skeptical about solar for a long time just because of the return on investment uh you guys also know that we've had five companies uh do site surveys and trying to get the best price and uh really wanted to be thorough and that's probably because I didn't know anything about solar at all so I was just getting an education it's a lot of money to lay out front uh and with that return on investment being so high and I think at the highest uh it was 15-year payback it was just too long so we kept uh working the price and trying to get it down and bringing up different companies and uh we have uh just under eight years our return on investment so uh I think we did a good job and uh this video is to kind of go over uh the specifics of the system that we chose so the big question is why did we invest in a so system for our house BR out that's uh an easy one to answer for us yes we just can't get used to having brownouts on a regular basis it's very frustrating um and it's something that we just can't ignore um and we figured it would make sense to uh have our own system solar system so we don't have to deal with the constant brownouts yes definitely they always come at the wrong time you know I'm getting ready to watch a great movie Wilma makes popcorn uh you know all excited sitting back get my recliner in the right position and electricity goes out you're sitting in the dark or the electricity goes out in the middle of the night yeah that's another one that's very frustrating um we don't use airon here at the house we have airons installed but we uh very rarely uh turn them on if at all um but we do have a fan in the bedroom for air circulation um so when the electric goes out the room gets hot gets hot very fast gets hot fast and you just start sweating and you know it's going to be a bad night uh just because you start sweating right away so the reason why we invested in the system was primarily because of brownouts so now it's only an added bonus that the system is going to cut our electric bill way down by how much we don't know we're going to assume by about 90% and let me explain we went with a 5,000 watt system that can expand up to 6,000 Max we have one battery it's a 10.2 kilowatt uh 200 amp hour battery and we have 10 panels on our roof each at 500 50 Watts so 5,500 Watts uh with uh obviously with the wires losing some uh electricity through resistance and the panels are never going to be at 100% efficiency you'll never get 5,500 Watts out of 5,500 watt panels you'll get less than that they said you'll get in a high fours uh and we've got as high as 5,000 we've seen 5,000 a couple times so uh direct sun no clouds midday we will get about 5,000 watts in our 5,000 watt system so we believe it's right size the battery itself is usually topped off by 10:00 in the morning yes 100% yeah it's at 100% at 10:00 and we have the battery set up where it handles the house first and then tops off the battery second because we want to lessen the Cycles the battery has 6,000 Cycles so about 78e life hopefully we get more than that but that's what uh the manufacturer says about 6,000 Cycles so we feel the system is Right sized for us um it actually produces more than we need uh because the batter is fully charged by 10:00 uh we feel there's no need to add panels or add a battery just because we just don't use a lot of electricity no we don't we've been averaging about 4,300 pesos of electricity that's about $78 per month so what is that going to go down to say $5 $10 a month uh that seems like just an added bonus so let me explain how we hook the system up our two hot water heaters uses a lot of wattage our multi-point for master bedroom that does both showers and the sink hot water and all three devices at the same time that burns 6,000 Watts by itself so that's hooked directly to Naro because we have a hybrid system uh at the same time our spare bathroom single point hot water heater for the shower that's 4,000 watts all by itself we have that hook to Naro so when we take showers every day we are using the grid so want to make sure we're uh everybody understands that to have a system large enough to handle the hot water heaters I would have to spend a lot more money and I didn't want to do that it would be almost double it would be almost double to be able to handle that because it's 5,000 watts to handle everything else um and I would need 10,000 Watts if we used the showers at the same time um or if we just use one shower at a time it would be 6,000 Watts I would have to double the system or double the cost didn't make sense to me uh and our airons are also hooked to the GR grid so we turn the airons on we're using the grid so we will always be using some electricity that's why we won't zero out and we'll find out we'll show you our next bill our next bill I think will be split 5050 but the next month uh we'll show you how much it came down from from 4,300 pesos to probably 500 pesos maybe 1,000 pesos so that's just a an added bonus yeah so we'll we'll see yeah we'll see how it it all plays out so uh today I'm going to go up on the roof I'm going to show you the system kind of go through how the wires uh you know navigate through our house I'm going to do my best to explain the inverter and how we did some of our settings show you the battery the automatic transfer switch uh kind of go over a little bit about the hybrid system um so at least it gives you guys a little idea of uh why we chose the system that we did um and then kind to show you how they hooked it up and how it all operates and all integrates um it does uh work under WiFi so when I show you the display panel that gives you all the pertinent information you need all that information is on your phone as well so anywhere you have Wi-Fi I could be anywhere I could be in the US as long as I have Wi-Fi and I can tap into the system and see how many watts my panels are producing at that moment how many watts It produced for the day um it tells you the house how many watts it's using and it will also tell you the state of your battery in percentage just like your cell phone battery uh one point I want to bring up that I don't think I've ever seen on any YouTube channel is you do have a minimum charge even if you're totally um not using any electricity from the grid uh the electric company charges a minimum buy of 20 watts have you guys ever heard that before I'm going to show that on the panel in the update today so I think that's just the cost of your uh electrical panel that's what I think your meter uh because that is digital and it probably takes 20 watts to operate that that's what I'm assuming so even if you buy this big elaborate system that totally handles your all your electrical needs and never switches over to the grid you're still going to get acrost just because you're going to be fed in 20 wats like I said I'll show it to you so I want to make sure you guys KN knew that as well so uh first up let's go up on the roof and get started with uh today's update all right so you can see there's definitely some clouds overhead and uh we're still producing more electricity uh than we're using right now in the house but here's where they position the panels we got four four and two so 10 total panels uh they are 550 Watts uh per panel all hooked in series uh so the grand total is 5,500 now that's obviously producing at 100% we all know with resistance and uh we know with the you know cloud days it's never going to produce 5,500 because you're going to lose a percentage through the wires uh through a resistance but this is the first time I've been up on the roof other than uh just seeing the photos from the guys but you can see uh you know one of the things we did for typhoons and I've mentioned it several times is we have these firewalls uh up higher than the metal roofing and that's all to block the wind we don't want the wind to hit the roof we'd rather have the wind hit the firewall so you can see there's firewalls uh the cement sticks up above so you can see how high it is there a couple of feet so that does to some degree block the morning sun uh for a while so we start producing about 7:00 in the morning I would imagine uh without these uh concrete barriers maybe an hour earlier I don't know I'm guessing but I guess as long as we're uh charging the batteries to 100% every day um it it doesn't matter and you can see how they tilted the batteries here in the back up a little bit so it faces uh this is East this is South so I call this Southeast so the panels are pitched up just a little bit uh to try to catch a little more uh a little more sun but these are panels and the best thing that we did and this is for any new construction out there do you remember the conduit I said that I had the electrician run um when the house was being built and then I said we were going to have a 1-in conduit go directly into the panel empty and then just come up and just be sitting here for future uh solar call it prep work that saved the guys a whole day because they only was here uh 10 hours they had this thing all hooked up because they didn't have to worry about finding a way to get to the panel which according to them is the hardest part so here's our conduit these are all the wires coming from the panels that go down to the inverter and it comes up basically up to the conduit and then straight down into the panel so uh if you guys have the opportunity with new construction have your electrician run an empty conduit from your main panel all the way up to about where you think you're going to have your uh solar your future solar and that'll go a long way of helping those guys not having to find a way uh to get the uh wires from the uh panels to your uh all your circuit breakers so that was a lifesaver glad that uh that we did that but you can see CR r10 panels very easy to uh add panels if I wanted to you can see I could put another one here I could put another one there I could add more back here now you got to be careful not to put more than what your inverter can handle um so I don't think we need to we're charging our batteries uh usually before lunch um they're at 100% so these 10 panels are doing just fine um with uh charging our battery now if we added a battery someday which again you know why would we need to because we're only using 40% of the battery at night in the morning um when we wake up the batteries are still the battery is still at 60% so again I don't think we need to change this system or add to it um it's doing exactly uh what we want they also wanted to make sure that these panels was up a little closer to the front of the house because of those trees right there because the sun does come up right over sore basically where that big tree is and it comes up and then sets right there over those coconut trees so we get shade uh starting back here like 3:00 in the afternoon and then like 4:00 we're here and then we start to get uh shade so definitely wanted to have them a little bit uh closer so there you go are 10 panels so everything that is uh available here on this display on the inverter is also available on your smartphone you can get the uh same information but I'm going to go ahead and just quickly explain uh how how this works so there's really four bits of information here so the first item is your panels itself so if you touch it it's touchcreen it shows you how many watts currently at the moment uh your panels is producing so see it says 1391 1386 so right now it's full clouds see out there it's uh cloudy uh it looks like the clouds may break up a little bit uh but basically it's a it's a cloudy day and we're producing 1,371 76 obviously it goes uh as the sun goes uh in and out so that's what's producing uh right now hit the back button now this is our home so right now in our house we're only using 362 Watts that's what we're using right now so we have I think three fans on uh we got some lights on in the house uh so we're only using 360 uh Watts 363 watts in the house so there's a surplus so the Surplus um is 1,22 1,23 Watts so that's what's being put into the battery even though it's cloudy out you can see uh basically the entire sky is a light clouds dark clouds uh but yet the sun is uh coming through a little bit so even on a rainy or cloudy day you're producing uh electricity so you can see here where it says power we're actually putting 1,124 watts into the battery and it shows it right here so the battery right now is at 90% now I've been running the pull pump all morning uh so that's why it's not at 100% so uh right now our battery um is at 90% full and that's with me using a lot of electricity uh this morning now here is uh from nuro and uh my understanding and I've never heard this on any uh other YouTube channels uh maybe maybe it's out there I just never seen it um I believe you have to buy at least around 20 watts and that's probably uh to run your meter so see where it says you're buying 19 Watts uh and again I think that's just uh using the meter because the meter is digital so there is always going to be a small Bill coming from your electric company if you have a hybrid system meaning that this is tied to the uh grid as well as your system itself so you can see it just averages right around uh 20 watts and I'm assuming that's to run um the meter out there so all this information is available you can see the battery just went up to 91% uh now if we're running at 1,796 and that's because we're in the little thinner clouds I'm assuming not as dark you can see some of the clouds are darker than other s so it's it's really live as a dark cloud goes over uh between uh your panels and the uh Sun it'll dip down I've seen it in pure rain where it was real dark it was running between 500 and 700 Watts so you're always getting something but if you don't use a lot of electricity like I've said many many times we're only using 364 watts in the house right now now obviously viously if we turn on you know everything in the house that'll go up uh the pool pump is about 12200 Watts by itself uh if you turn the microwave on that's going to you know jump it up about 7 800 watts each TV is like 300 watts so basically the 367 watts is our two refrigerators running for the most part I don't think we have any lights on I know we have three fans so basically three fans running and uh the two refrigerator freezers is running about 360 Watts so again not a lot of power so really like the way this uh Works um it goes up to 5,000 see where it says 5.0 and I've seen it get that high and on pure Sun midday you'll be rocking about 5,000 watts and then that's really the time to have your pool pump on you know all your uh you know if you want to make a pot of rice you know you you you best to time it when you're making or producing the most amount of electricity uh but again uh you know this is running all night long this will be at 100% has been every day and uh we get up in the morning and it's usually about 60% left with our normal usage so again this information right here all this information is available through WiFi on your uh cell phone as well can you hear the rain hitting the metal roof so that shows you that it's uh pretty cloudy outside and it's uh raining so coming down from the panels is the uh lines through the conduit and comes up into the inverter and that's where um it gets converted from uh DC to AC and then it comes out out of the inverter back up uh to where I showed you the conduit was uh Up on the Roof that goes down uh to the panel so uh the guys told me uh having that was great because you know they would have to have had conduit in here or Chi the concrete to hide the wires uh so if you're not retrofitted it's going to be a little bit harder uh to set up and that's why they say it takes 2 to 3 days case they had this done in 10 hours uh just because they didn't have to do all that work they just ran the wires uh from the inverter straight down that uh conduit and they were uh they were done with it so again coming from the panels down into the inverter and then out of the inverter back up to your panel so that's how it hooks up uh to your uh your house uh to to run all the uh appliances and then your battery storage is here so there's two ways of setting this up um and there's all the different settings here that you can mess with but the big setting is um do you want all the power from your system see we're creating 1,349 watts do you want 100% of that to go into your battery and then when you call on any electricity in the house it'll come from the battery to supply your outlet I heard that a lot of uh people have their system set up like that and that's how all the different uh site surveys we had every single one said that's the way they set it up we set this up a little different and I can show you what I mean by that I have the panels uh going directly to handle our load so we're making 1432 we're using 371 and then the balance 1,00 goes to the battery because I want to use this battery uh as little as possible because this gets 6,000 Cycles so what is that going to be uh 78 years and then this uh battery is going to more than likely have to be replaced I'm assuming can you get 10 years out of it I guess we'll uh we'll find out uh so I don't want to put all 1300 Watts for this example into the battery and then when I need 300 watts pull 300 watts out I want the inverter to take the 373 Watts right from here putting it right into the electrical panel and operating the house throughout the day and skip the battery and just put the excess remember I said on the earlier video that I was having this debate with the uh engineer so the sun must have just came out so see we got a little bit of sun not much but just a little bit of sun and we've already jumped up to 2,100 35 Watts using only 370 and now we're dumping uh 1803 which is the balance you can see the battery jumped up to 98% it was just 91% guys in real time maybe 10 15 minutes I was only up on the roof for a few minutes so you can see how quickly um you can charge this battery it does not take long and all typically uh this battery 10.24 kilowatt hours is uh usually charged by 10:00 a.m. very very early in the day so that's how we have it set up for our house the panels handle the load throughout the day directly and excess goes into the battery now this is where all the breakers are all the different Breakers needed and then the uh automatic transfer switches in there so what these lights are is green means that the electric company is operational so we have electric coming in uh to the system from the electric company but we're not using it in fact uh this has been on now for I think five or six days and we have not once switched from the system to Naro uh not once because uh it's making enough to fill the battery and like I said we wake up in the morning and uh we're still 60% capacity so once this dips um to 25% battery it'll start beeping to let you know that you're getting low and and it has a 20% cut off so when this battery goes from 100% down to 20% you can see right now it's at 98% when it gets to 20% it'll shut off and it will kick over immediately to Naro to keep your house going uh and the red light means that the uh solar system was working uh properly so you want both lights on now if the green light goes out that means there's a brown out uh and again there's no switch over because we haven't used Naro um we haven't needed to use it because this is handling everything uh so I think it's a good system I'm definitely sold on it I was concerned uh just because I didn't know enough about it uh but now that I've been a little bit educated and the fact that it charges so quickly and is handling the load of the house uh you know minus the heaters and the airons um very very pleased so I guess the next step is to see uh our first electric bill and uh you know see how low it goes cuz we've been averaging around 4,300 so there will be some electric bill because uh if we turn the airons on or uh when we take our hot showers in the morning just because uh you know the wattage is so high um so there always will be some Bill but I would assume that 90 to 95% of our bill uh will be gone because of uh this system all right so now for uh the most important part the cost the course uh we did our best guys we worked it hard like I said we had five companies come up um we uh went with who we felt most comfortable with but we also went with the lowest bid uh and everything was Apples to Apples it was the same uh type of uh name brand uh for each of the items it wasn't like you know it was different name brands for different components it was all Apples to Apples so uh the system that we got was 400,000 pesos or $7,200 uh USD uh so that's that's a lot of money that's a lot that's a lot of money for convenience of not having brown outs but for us it was worth it we went with just a big enough system to handle everything that we needed during a brown out and more uh just not our water heaters and our airons um because again we're trying to keep the cost down and this bid was $150,000 pesos cheaper yes than the next low is Bid so that had a lot to do with it as well um if they didn't come down to the 400,000 I probably never would have done it no uh we only did it just because uh you know the price was a little bit more reasonable and we got to just under eight years of return on investment so it's a lot of money um but it's the convenience of not having brown outs for the next 10 years um and obviously there will be a payoff because our electric bill will be cut by a lot so uh over the next couple of months I will do update videos of how the system continues to work and then we'll start layering in uh our old bills to our new bills and really dialing in on the savings per month and then we can back into that 400,000 to really show what the uh return is so I hope you like the video guys and don't be afraid of getting solar um like I was um I think it's the right thing to do not for everybody but I think it's the right thing to do for having that peace of mind that you will have electricity um at your beck and call when you need it
