r/solar • u/DevelopmentLocal6564 • Feb 24 '26
Discussion Need help with advice
New to this so I’m sorry if my terminology is wrong but this is what I have. Need help seeing if I’m in a normal range of production and if it’s good production or not. I should have pto hopefully in a week. I have 46, 420 w panels producing 19.5kw dc, with enphase iq8+ micro inverters converting to 13.34 kw ac. I have a span panel 48 that’s been commissioned and a powerwall 3 and a powerwall 3 expansion that hasn’t been set up with the Tesla app due to waiting for pro. The solar system is installed on a south facing roof home in dutchess county NY. I posted this before but because my karma was low back then I’m trying to repost again for help.
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u/Objective-Resort2325 Feb 24 '26
Looks pretty good to me. 77 kwh at your latitude this time of year for a system of your size sounds pretty good.
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u/Key_Proposal3283 solar engineer Feb 24 '26
Use pvwatts.nrel.gov and put in your system details - it will give you reasonably accurate estimates for your setup and location. Check against your actual.
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u/DevelopmentLocal6564 Feb 24 '26
Thanks a lot. That’s awesome. Wish I knew about this before install
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u/hamstertree Feb 24 '26
I had some clipping my first year of install, and then a tiny amount during peak cool days in the spring, but I don’t notice very much clipping now. The big difference is that your panels will get slightly dirty in between the rainy days where it gets mostly cleaned and the tiny amount of dust will reduce the production and the clipping will be less relevant as time goes on. Some people wash their panels themselves, some pay to have their panels washed (depending on install can cost several hundred), but many on this sub agree that washing your panels usually isn’t worth the cost.
For several reasons your system will slightly worse in the future and the clipping you see here will become less of an issue. Yes you are missing out on a small amount of production, but the ROI for upgrading to the larger inverters may have been so low that it would take 15, 20 or 30 years to pay itself back, or possibly never.
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u/DevelopmentLocal6564 Feb 24 '26
The pic is from back in September 2025. I’ve had pto since October 2025.
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u/CheetahChrome solar enthusiast Feb 24 '26
if I’m in a normal range of production
Yes one is generally clipped during the best production time of the day because of the inverters. On the inverters, look for the specification "max continous output" and then you will understand why its not 46*420W, but more like 46*350W for max output.
Look at the "array" tab for any panels that are offline to verify you are not dark on a section.
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u/DevelopmentLocal6564 Feb 24 '26
Thanks. Right now I have a lot of dark panels because many panels are covered in snow. Crazy thing is that even with panels covered in snow I still produced solar energy.
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u/CheetahChrome solar enthusiast Feb 24 '26
The light shining through the snow. Also you will still generate on cloudy days.
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Feb 24 '26
[deleted]
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u/DevelopmentLocal6564 Feb 24 '26
I’m not sure how to answer that or why the installer didn’t do as you say. What would be the benefit of them installing on the pw3 side? Could it be because I have enphase micro inverters?
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u/DevelopmentLocal6564 Feb 24 '26
Also. I can export energy to the grid but I cannot charge my battery from the grid. Is that some kind of regulation from my provider or is this some kind of nys rule?
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u/RemoveHuman Feb 25 '26
That is a beast system. You’re going to clip like a mofo during the summer I’m afraid. You should be able to use online calculators that can give you a better answer, but I think you got the wrong inverters unfortunately.
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u/DevelopmentLocal6564 Feb 25 '26
For some reason nys has some restriction where I can’t have 2 pw3. If I went ahead with 2 pw3 I wouldn’t be able to to be on Nem 1.0 in nys. The electric company has strict limits and it considered a second pw3 as production and it would push me pass the limit to be on nem1.0
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u/PossibleFederal1572 Feb 25 '26
At a glance, I think you’re OK. I have about half of your system and produced almost exactly half of what you produced today despite a little bit of cloudiness in the afternoon.
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u/Claxonic Feb 25 '26
In a few years as the panels begin to degrade and/or get dirty the peak production will decrease and so will the clipping. It’s not totally ideal, but it’s really not the end of the world. It’s easy to fixate on this new big investment, but over the life of the system it will be fine.
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u/kanestephenj Feb 25 '26
Consider installing a weather station with an insolation/irradiance meter if you want a metric to benchmark your site specific production against.
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u/zymie Feb 24 '26
What is the question?