[Closed] Moving solar panels from house to house

I would have thought disconnecting them was pretty trivial, something any sparkie can do. The panels, themselves, are low voltage, so very easy to disconnect DIY, it's the mains side of the inverter and the connection into the fuse board etc which would need a Sparkie (or competent DIY).

My neighbour has a shed full of solar panels (never installed) after an aborted professional(1) install attempt (which left her with a leaking roof and a pile of uninstalled panels). I keep meaning to buy them off her and install them on the workshop.

(1) They had all the tickets but utterly incompetent.

How old are the panels? They do slowly deteriorate, so after 10 years etc they'll be 10% (or something) down on capacity.

Mostly what footflaps said. We had a set of 16 panels for working in remote places. The panels themselves just have a 2-pin plug on them and are daisy-chained together, typically in a 4x4 configuration. The panels themselves are ~30V so unless you do something silly like licking the plugs you won't hurt yourself. So you and the new owners should be able to uninstall and re-install that side of things.

The MPPT and grid-tie inverter will likely need a proper electrician and notifying their electricity provider. Unless you (DO NOT DO THIS IT'S ILLEGAL AND STUPID AND DANGEROUS) just do what my colleague did and wire the inverter to a 13A plug (which is LIVE, HENCE DANGEROUS STUPID AND ILLEGAL) and plug it in. It works perfectly (apart from IT'S ILLEGAL AND STUPID AND DANGEROUS), his meter just spins backward on sunny days.

OK. The dis- and reassembly of it all sounds fine then.

As for recommissioning them - would an engineer insist on wiring them all up him/herself before connecting into a fusebox? Or would you get them all ready and present the engineer with your work for them to attach and go live with?

As for recommissioning them – would an engineer insist on wiring them all up him/herself before connecting into a fusebox? Or would you get them all ready and present the engineer with your work for them to attach and go live with?

Well I guess it depends on the individual. I would have thought wiring up the low voltage panel side of it would be less likely to cause a problem. I would have thought he/she would want to wire up the mains side. Obvs depends on the individual.

Certainly running all the mains cables yourself saves money, most of being a Sparkie is drilling holes / runnnig cables / making good. The actual wiring stuff up bit takes very little time. So as long as you agree in advance the cable types and where you're running them, that could save a chunk of money.

It would be pretty easy to remove an installation and refit it in a new location.

Probably notifiable work and you should be qualified / competent.

Something to think about if you do this is you aren't going to get a feed in tariff, and they are pretty rubbish anymore anyway.

So you need to be using all the solar generation (via a solic 200 diverter to immersion heater), unless as above you have an old style analogue meter that will run backwards. If you do have an old style meter, quids in you have the best kind of feed in tariff!

Something to bear in mind as above, the drop in efficiency over the time, and also look at how much a new set of 4kw panels cost - they will be much smaller and cheaper than your old ones as the tech is moving on so quickly - so it might not be worth the effort?

Your buyers might just be hoping you will forget about it.

8x of these https://www.bimblesolar.com/solar/large-panels/495w-ja-solar-panel is £1320

Maybe just offer them to your buyer for £700? They'd be mad not to.

Isolate from the load (house) first and I'd cover the panels to. Yes, each panel is low volts buy they're connected in a string (series).
If I remember correctly my inverter can run up to 20 panels in a single string, that's a lot of power if you unplug under load.

As above - I think that there are 2x ways to look at this:

1 - if you just want to disconnect and relocate and reconnect to a system without a feed in tariff its easily done by a good / experienced electrician. You would want some system to capture the surplus energy. Its a big job in terms of time and paying going rates for a sparky then its possibly not viable if you have mains access.

2 - If you do want a feed in tariff then massively more complex and again possibly not viable by the time you have paid all the fee's / rates for time of competent professionals.

If you can do most of it yourself then it becomes more viable.

I though feedin tarrifs had vanished?

I though feedin tarrifs had vanished?

Nope. The super-lucrative ones have, but we get a FiT on our panels, set up in March after we moved into the place.

thisisnotaspoon
Unless you (DO NOT DO THIS IT’S ILLEGAL AND STUPID AND DANGEROUS) just do what my colleague did and wire the inverter to a 13A plug (which is LIVE, HENCE DANGEROUS STUPID AND ILLEGAL) and plug it in. It works perfectly (apart from IT’S ILLEGAL AND STUPID AND DANGEROUS), his meter just spins backward on sunny days.

lol, that's amazing. Live plug. Genius.

lol, that’s amazing. Live plug. Genius.

He's an electrical wizz, but that was one of those ideas where you kinda look at it and think ........ nope. Because to the untrained eye you just had this big blue Victron box on a 13A plug looking completely normal, it wouldn't take much stupidity to unplug it.

In theory, because it's a grit-tied inverter it shouldn't output unless it's connected to the grid, but do you really want to test that theory?

I used to have a solar business, so I've installed quite a few.

If you're getting the FIT, you won't be able to move them and still get it.

If you're not getting the fit, electrically it's pretty straight forward, but you need special tools to do the DC cable connectors.

The hard part is fitting them to your new roof(and getting off the old). That would be 2 x scaffolding, and it would likely need all new rails and fitting for your new property - as they differ, for different roofs. If they were fitted properly where they are, then the tiles will have been ground down to fit over the brackets.

Really not viable whether you're receiving the FIT or not.

I get over £100 a month now, from my 2.8kw system, and that was set in stone for 25 years from when I installed it.

Good grief TINAS. Where is your nearest fire extinguisher?

That would be 2 x scaffolding, and it would likely need all new rails and fitting for your new property – as they differ, for different roofs. If they were fitted properly where they are, then the tiles will have been ground down to fit over the brackets.

Did you read the part where they are mounted on a rack at the bottom of the garden ? More so not all roof installs involve grinding out tiles these days. Things have moved on. Getting some fitted Monday and there will be no grinding down of tiles.

The ones thats puzzling me I'd have thought they were considered fixtures and fittings these days when you sell a house.

The panels themselves are ~30V so unless you do something silly like licking the plugs you won’t hurt yourself.

So two or more panels are quite dangerous, then...

The ones thats puzzling me I’d have thought they were considered fixtures and fittings these days when you sell a house.

Some of the schemes are long term leases, you don't own the panels and there's a whole load of paperwork when you sell as someone else has the right to have them on your roof!

Some of the schemes are long term leases, you don’t own the panels and there’s a whole load of paperwork when you sell as someone else has the right to have them on your roof!

Oh I realise that.... But Its a bit like saying ....do you want to buy the double glazing with the house as far as I can see when they ain't lease panels.

It's surely more sensible just to add them to the value of the house? "Our new buyers don't want a conservatory so we're looking to take it with us..."

If the buyers don't want them and you know someone who does, I'd be going "off you go then lads, sort it out between you."

@chipps leave them there and get a really long extension lead?

To answer the 'Why didn't they just buy the panels too?' question - it wasn't a normal house sale, but equally, at the time, they were on a lease and, as mentioned, weren't ours to sell. Ironically, with the money from the house sale, we've now been able to pay off the lease, but I think the new owners still aren't that keen on them - but we'll ask anyway before we get the spanners out.

Ah, I see the problem. It's the same one I had when I moved.

You've sold your house to ****ing quarterwits.

The panels themselves are ~30V so unless you do something silly like licking the plugs you won’t hurt yourself.

So two or more panels are quite dangerous, then…

Its amps that kill not volts.

Its amps that kill not volts.

True but not the whole story.

You need enough volts to transfer those amps.

That's why there has been no fatalities in the UK from a 110v CTE system.

So two or more panels are quite dangerous, then…

You're trying to be clever, but you're not.

You plug them together and they're in parallel, so it's always ~30V. You then plug the last wire into the MPPT.

You could in theory run more pannels on a single input to the MPPT but if one goes into shade it acts as a drain on the other pannels, hence most systems aim to maximize the use of the MPPT's inputs rather than the number of panels on each one.

You can run them in series with an MPPT (but not a simpler PWM controller), but that has the problem of voltage, most pannels have an open circuit voltage of ~37V, and most MPPT's have a max input voltage of 100V, so you could only ever wire them in pairs anyway.

*IANASolarInstaller, there may be series systems out there with higher voltages. (DONT) Lick the terminals at your own risk.

Its amps that kill not volts.

Without volts you don't have any amps...

It's also more complex than that as alternating current (AC) affects human nervous system worse than direct currect (DC), so e.g. the regs for Safety Extra Low Voltage (SELV) have a higher DC voltage limit than AC voltage.

You plug them together and they’re in parallel, so it’s always ~30V. You then plug the last wire into the MPPT.

Yep, the solar panel side will always be low voltage to stay within SELV as it's cheaper to meet those regs.

That’s why there has been no fatalities in the UK from a 110v CTE system.

The main safety element from the system doesn't come from the fact it's 110V vs 230V.

The real reason its safe is that it's isolated from the ground, so the 110 L and N cores can't make a circuit if you touch them to say scaffolding poles or even hold one in your mouth.

To kill someone, you need something like 30mA across the heart for a few seconds (depends on the individual of course). To achieve this you need to get current passing across someone's body (normally a lot more) and if it lines up correctly you might get enough across their heart to cause cardiac arrest.

With domestic mains, both L and N can complete the circuit via Earth. So if you stand with bare feet, on wet ground, your body will make a pretty good earth. Grab a 230v L or N with your hand and it's going to hurt at the very least, and might kill you.

Do the same with 110v CTE and absolutely nothing will happen. To get a shock from CTE you need to hold live in one hand and neutral in the other. Hence it's much harder to get a shock from cutting through a cable on site or from a faulty tool whose case has gone live on a building site as you can't complete a circuit by touching it.

NB even when holding L and N in different hands it won't necesasarilly kill you, I've done this (by accident) with 230v and the only reason I realised it was live was my right arm started shaking a bit (parkinson's like) at which point I realised I switched the wrong circuit off! I was pulling the cores apart on a ceiling rose at the time....

TINAS - You'll find grid connected installations (i.e. you domestic 3,6kW systems) are series connected panels, usually 2 strings of around 200V, 10 amps each. In round numbers 4kW on the DC side.
If that amount of power was parallel connected you'd be 130 amps @ 30V, which would need 35mm2 cables. Er, no!
As a power electronics engineer, I'll say dealing with 130A DC in the inverter would be hard work, a 10A 200V convertor is a walk in the park in comparison.

Are the panels grid connected in their original location, and receiving FIT? If so, rent the space from the new owners and keep the FIT. If not, it it intended to grid connect them in their new home; if so, a new inverter will be needed. If not, they will only be usable on a separate circuit.

I don't think any FIT is available if applying now. The deadline for getting installations commissioned that had been applied for previously was extended due to Covid.

Wasn't that date 31march 2016...... not sure why it would be extended for covid.

Now you get paid for physical export rather than assumed from a % of max generation at a market rate you select.

More so ....cost of install has more than halfed which compensates pretty well for not getting the high guaranteed FIT rate

Mate paid slightly over 10k for 2kw 9 years ago.....the cost is much less than half that now.

4.4kw all black Panels and a new inverter cost about £2k now with the same again ISH to fit (to a roof ) so you may find the hassle of moving old kit simply isn't worth it.