Go solar for the environment and your pocket’s sake

SOLAR energy is one of the cleanest sources of energy you will find and it’s free from the sun.

Local solar supplier, Orana Energy Systems Solahart Central West have full confidence in Solahart Industries’ ability to support them and their customers, being able to, for example, provide ongoing support to consumers right down to monitoring individual solar panels to ensure optimum efficiency for the life of the system!

From the outset, nothing is done by halves at Orana Energy Systems when it comes to assessing your home or business current energy use, and preparing it for solar installation.

“We’ll have a look at your meter box, whether it’s single or three phase; we’ll look at whether you have a tin or tile roof, whether it’s a terracotta tile or flat concrete tile. What roof space you actually have, what orientation the roof is,” Orana Energy Systems finance and marketing manager Suellyn Rees said.

“Preferably you want the roof facing north so that you can generate as much as possible during the winter. Sometimes, if people are at home during the day and most of their power’s used during the day, you’d want an east/west configuration and that can be a better scenario because you’ll produce more power over a longer period of the day.

“You can imagine the westerly sun in the summer time when it doesn’t go down until 8 o’clock so your system would be turning off a lot later,” she said.

Based on all the factors of assessment, your home or business is then put through the Solahart Estimator.

“The Solahart Estimator has been developed to estimate what your savings will be in the first year, the second year; right up to 15 years,” Suellyn said.

“It will tell you how long the quoted system will take to pay for itself and how much power you’ll be generating. Then, we give an on sight quote. At the moment we offer 48 months interest free and offer a $400 discount off your Solahart hot water system.

“Sometimes a combo of hot water and PV (photovoltaic) is the best scenario for you if you’ve got a few kids in the house using the hot water or you wash in hot water. Every household’s completely different so you really need to assess how that household uses power to assess it properly.”

Subsidies still do exist and Orana Energy Systems include that as a point of sale discount. They’re called small scale tech certificates (STC) and are calculated on the basis of their price on the day of install. The size of the system purchased and where you live determines how many STC’S are given.

“In Dubbo, in this postcode, which dictates a particular kind of UV (ultra violet) reading, you get 107 of those STCS for a 5KW system, so it’s about $2,500 to $3,000 off your system as a point of sale discount at current STC prices,” Suellyn said. These government rebates are being phased out and the discount will be reducing each year so now is a good time to look at your solar options.

“Our preferred solar roof system allows panels to operate separately rather than in a series so if one panel is affected by something, like bird poo or is in the shade, the rest of the panels aren’t affected.

“This solar system we monitor for free for the life of the system. It has an online portal where you can log on and see how much energy is being created or you can connect to the inverter via your smart phone.

“We check these systems every morning and if there’s an alert we can go and have a look and identify a particular panel and the optimiser attached, identify the problem and have it fixed quickly” said Suellyn.

Along with so many benefits the energy created is done cleanly which is good news for the environment.

“Sometimes people will generate more electricity than they need, so we can install a battery to store your excess power. Your PV system will shut down at the end of the day and your battery will take care of the peak time.”