7kwh Solar,10Kwh LG backup, cost, 1yr review, financing, troubleshooting, Tungsten Electric

Introduction to My Solar Array

hello this is forest several tennessee couple of videos i want to do a few videos here about my solar array that i put in on the house finally uh this time last year christmas eve we had a bad snow froze shut everything down i decided to get solar because the power was out for two days uh it is january 2nd 2022 or january 4th i'm sorry this started on the second 2022 and uh i have no power it's been out since 5am yesterday it's been raining for a week we had really warm weather and then overnight it froze and we had about six inches of snow so i want to do a little video here's what it looks like outside this is a day after the snow um just top my truck there everything was buried it was actually a pretty good snow on that note my house has no power for again for two days uh i'm gonna cover all that in a different video but let me just talk about what i got first of all the panels whatever else um i paid 33 000 for this system it has not been up and running actually since i bought it the way it's supposed to be the guys who are working with me are great they have tried to help me it's just been an insane process due to cobit not being able to get the battery replacement and whatever else that said i've been a little disappointed in the system overall the ones who originally sold me this system you know i guess they were marketers for this company they've kind of disappeared they said they don't talk to them anymore but they wrote me up a quote here and just uh so it was a 5 kilowatt system lg 10 kilowatt backup battery solar edge inverter and a since smart meter is something they offered with it i don't have that anyway so i don't care about that that's really not even necessary because you have the solar edge app that tells you enough you don't need any more information but this i think is what i actually ended up getting uh 22 trina solar paddles because i i upsized from the five kilowatt system to i think 6.5 oh gosh i forget things fast but anyway so same inverter because i didn't need to go up on that so and uh anyways that's the address and whatever else so this is their power rating so what they're going to say 6.9 yes it's almost 7 kilowatts so um in their little estimated usage and stuff and with the backup battery all that would have been great

System Specifications

I said i paid 33 000 i did bargain a little bit they went down on the price a little bit or whatever so just the basic paperwork this stuff they write up for you um on this one i kind of want to talk about the financing a little bit tax credit i'm supposed to get somewhere around 9 000 something dollars back for a tax credit but um i've been paying on this quickly and i knew that was going to need to be done um i've already paid over two thousand dollars in interest and i've paid a greater than half of it off they give you one refinance option you know with their uh with their boutique financing as they call you as they call it this is the original array they they suggested on my roof obviously it was never going to go like that so uh i have a square module this way with like half the panels i have three panels in the middle and then on this side i have another square set up i mean without going up there and showing you actually had to get up on the roof and and scrape them off the other day so because this snow was not gonna melt them off they're producing right now but they're grid tied and when it's grid tied it doesn't work when the power is out that's supposed to be the backup battery that's its job uh this thing's been gone for a year they finally put it back on the wall about a year later they finally replaced it uh and non-post have this backup panel that works but uh as of now it's showing overload and it's still not working so i've been without power for again since 5 00 am yesterday i've been without power completely it's very frustrating i cannot even explain all the systems things that are happening but he said it's overloading right now that's what they're showing they're on the phone with it the guys are always responsive they answer the phone calls and they try to help me but it doesn't make any difference when nothing in the house works so it's freezing my fish haven't died yet amazingly i've lost all my original fish the last couple of years with the same situation so all these african cichlids seem to be doing okay but they will die if it stays off any longer

Financing and Operational Challenges

so i want to talk about that boutique financing a little bit so it's service finance company i'd have to show you on the phone i'm actually using but uh i have 5.99 interest rate and uh i kind of was aware of it but i didn't really get the full information on that but there's a per diem interest rate of 2.99 percent i'll try to show you this from the ladder here i've kind of have it hooked up this was my configuration to get to the roof yesterday about died but hey we got up there i don't have any of my ladders here they're all at some other at another house right now but uh so yeah it's frozen to the house so the uh per diem interest rate of 2.99 is a daily interest which i was not 100 aware of so every day they go and charge you that no matter what so even though i've paid 16 000 off on the system already my goal is to pay this thing off it definitely make more sense just to save some cash up possibly do this stuff yourself if you had an option so but here's my setup here's the array as you see there's a few in the middle and on the other side it's a good looking system honestly uh i just have not been able to get it to work the way it should work so um i wanted to get up a little higher and show you this but i have some video of the solar system on another phone but anyways so they're charging me three dollars a day basically no matter what the 165 dollar payment which is what my what my payment actually is 165 um none of that goes towards the towards the loan not even a penny of it they say all of that goes directly because they charge you total interest also on the full 33 thousand the six percent they charge you on the 33 000 the full amount of time until they refinance this so anyways they really are jacking up the interest they're killing you on that interest so even though i've hit it super hard in less than a year i've paid over 2 000 something dollars in interest so if you drag that out you're never going to make money on this system i mean you know he'll never pay there's no way you're going to save money on electric or anything else so that's just that inside information i'm sure you know that you've heard it everybody says it so pay the off but uh aside from that uh what i was gonna say electricity wise during the summer it's killing it it really is it's killing it the seven kilowatts is enough to uh to fill up this battery in just a little bit of time on you know nice sunny days it fills up the battery no time charge my car everything else a lot of energy is just exporting off to the back to the grid you're just giving it away but i mean to pay for the the uh the buy back program doesn't make any sense there's there's money involved and it only work it's only good for a little bit of time because a lot of times you're not going to be over producing that much so i wouldn't suggest trying to get set up with the the buyback program i would just suggest a bigger battery in fact i'm going to get a bigger battery because this one even though i like it it doesn't run the house all night it doesn't do a lot of good for backup if it's going to be using anything during the day it doesn't do any doesn't do anything for backup i have a severe weather guard part on it that you can turn on so that charges off grid just in case of an outage like this and that way you can use it just for just for the main items you need and not for everything in the house like it tends to do because at most of the time it just uses all the energy in it for whatever so you're not wasting that power but anyways that's just a little bit of information on that part of it so um the idea is great the execution has not been so great yet but um there is a this can come off right here this is a heavy battery this thing is super heavy so they hang it on this drywall on a couple of boards but it's it's fastened into the wall on four big bolts but um it's super heavy uh it looks clean right here we've uh set it up like this i mean they uh they came in and kind of decided how they're gonna do it you know with the inverter that's the brain or whatever uh the shutdown system i've had to reset it a few times uh you have to open this this little box here there's a couple of flips on the side of it here to open this thing um i don't know the process you'd look it up but you know you flip that off flip this off flip this off go outside there's two two shutoff mains here on both sides of this pole there see the one with the label right here on this side that's for the panels there's one on the back side that's a little circular switch that you turn off the uh the battery with so both them are protective circuits or whatever anyways and then you can turn it back on and that's the reset process in reverse order and that's the reset process for this system

Troubleshooting and Reset Procedures

so anyhow so just look that up figure out how to to reset it properly a couple things i've noticed about it another thing that happened as a safety feature which they said doesn't happen all the time but it did happen i had some guests all my stuff shut down they didn't have well or anything else everything on this backup panel that was supposed to be backed up was not working because of a safety feature i guess again but i had to reset the inverter here even though my power came back on it shut everything on this backup panel off you know my the power to the house went out and then uh the power came back on it wasn't working i had to do a reset again because these two items here this one and this one lost communication with each other you'll see a no communication status on this thing or whatever so i had to go back and uh reset this there's a little toggle switch right here in the middle there's a they're all a little different but there's a red switch under this one so again just the machines are all a little bit different but the reset's about the same so i wish i'd known that because my well you know the water yeah all the main items the living room everything that was on this backup panel shut off so i had to reset it so a lot of times that's just the problem it's just a reset but i mean these are not things i would expect to have to do every time so anyways hopefully this gives you a little insight into it good luck

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: What was the initial cost of the solar system?

A: The system initially cost $33,000, though the speaker mentioned bargaining to lower the price slightly.

Q: What specific backup battery model was installed?

A: The system included an LG 10 kilowatt backup battery, which is the LG RESU 10H model.

Q: What issues did the speaker encounter with the financing?

A: The speaker was disappointed with the financing, which included a 5.99% interest rate and an additional 2.99% per diem (daily) interest. This resulted in over $2,000 in interest paid in less than a year, with initial payments not reducing the principal balance.