Need electrician help near DFW, TX --> Found

[blueforce]

It says 10 year warranty at 80% depth of discharge

https://eg4electronics.com/warranty <-- No mention of 80% DoD.
Calee from Signature Solar also confirmed that going beyond 80% does not void the warranty.

From what I've learned LiPO is less susceptible to the micro-cracking of extreme charge/discharge than other lithium technologies. But I'm not a battery chemist so don't quote me on this.

 

[blueforce]

For pool heating a rooftop solar heater filled with antifreeze and using a heat exchanger. The regular filtered water passes through the heat exchanger before going back to the pool. There is a second pump that just circulates antifreeze through a rooftop solar heater (basically tubing in a flat enclosure).

Similar to the ones that just do water to the roof as part of the filter loop, but for cold climates. And there is usually a 100k btu flame heater the filter water passes though.

My plumbing is for a swimming pool. I don't have any solar water heater panels.

 

[blueforce]

Found a solar installer and will be installing a 5.28kw ground mount alongside the EG4 gear. Payback, assuming all goes right, should be around 4.2 years.

I've found that after reaching out to 14 companies, 3 will respond, 2 will be willing to do the job, and 1 will follow through. I shouldn't be surprised since one guy in a google review said "I should be used to Texas companies ghosting you by now."

 

[robbob2112]

Never thought about those last options. I'll have to look into those.

I have no idea. I would assume so. The last thing I want to do is void my home insurance because I have an unauthorized battery install. Permits for my city aren't very helpful here. There is a PV permit which requires information about attached batteries but I'm not installing PV. Then there is the generic electrical work permit. I spoke to the city inspector and all he said was that it had to be up to code to pass inspection and the permit must be pulled by an electrician.

You can ask the insurance a hypothetical question, but home insurance isn't affected by diy install permitted or not. The only corner case that might matter is if the battery causes the fire.

Do it to code and document it and that isn't an issue

One note for the rest: Texas has this odd thing where home owners can choose their power company they want to buy from. They pay transmission fees but the power itself they can choose who from. At least that is how it was 10 years ago.

 

[1201]

Found a solar installer and will be installing a 5.28kw ground mount alongside the EG4 gear. Payback, assuming all goes right, should be around 4.2 years.

I've found that after reaching out to 14 companies, 3 will respond, 2 will be willing to do the job, and 1 will follow through. I shouldn't be surprised since one guy in a google review said "I should be used to Texas companies ghosting you by now."

That's very nice. The pv will shorten the payback period quite a bit. Leave space for more pv as you might get addicted. I started out wanting 3kw ended up with 18kw.

How much are they quoting for the work?

 

[blueforce]

One note for the rest: Texas has this odd thing where home owners can choose their power company they want to buy from. They pay transmission fees but the power itself they can choose who from. At least that is how it was 10 years ago.

That's still true. A plethora of Retail Electric Providers competing drives down the prices and almost makes it not worth the effort to go solar.

And power delivery is very reliable as well. When I first moved to TX two years ago we had outages every time it would rain hard for a few minutes at a time. In early 2023 we had a bad storm with tornadoes touching down all around the DFW and we lost power for 8 hours or so, some even longer. Since then Oncor made system improvements and we haven't had a single outage. I can't speak for those who are more rural but I'm 20 minutes west of Fort Worth.

 

[blueforce]

How much are they quoting for the work?

The company I'm going with is charging $2.20 / watt and is using bifacial panels.

Keeping in mind that I already have the inverter, batteries, and all cabling for that setup I had one company quote me $3.77 / watt for a 4.8kw system with cheap standard panels. The guy couldn't understand how anyone could possibly do it any cheaper than what he was offering. I will say though, they have a very nice website that's probably not cheap to maintain.

 

[EZPZ]

It’s like that here in rural TX as well where I am at. Only real outage was the storm of ‘21 and then had no power for 11 days.