Why do people offer 6.6kW solar systems?

Hi, my name’s Stuart from IQ Solar, and I want to talk about why people advertise 6.6 kW systems in Sydney, and if you’ve been looking at solar for any period of time, you will have been bombarded by ads for 6.6 kW systems. Why is that? Do they make sense? So that’s what we’re going to cover today.

The reason they exist is because we have some regulations from the two grid owners in Sydney. In Sydney, there are two grid owners: Ausgrid and Endeavor. If you look at this map, you’ll see the approximate boundaries of those two companies. If you are within the Endeavor part of the world, and you have a single-phase power supply to your house, you are only allowed to install up to a 5 kW inverter on that phase. And because with solar design guidelines, we can oversize the inverter, the maximum we can oversize it is actually just 6.66 kW, so that’s why everyone advertises those. The reason is that everyone can put on 6.6 kW if they’ve got the roof space.

Now, if you have a three-phase power supply within the Endeavor network, that is not a limitation, you can put that on, but you can also put on a much bigger system. You’re not constrained by that 5 kW limitation anymore. Within the Ausgrid part of Sydney, you can put on 10 kW per phase, so what that means is if you’ve only got a single-phase house, you can still put on a 10 kW inverter, they do exist, there are 10 kW single-phase inverters, and on that we can load up 13.3 kW of panels, which is a very large system. You may run out of roof space before we can fit that on.

So the 6.6 is not a constraint if you are within the Ausgrid part of Sydney, and if you have three-phase within Ausgrid, you can go much bigger again. So the reason why people offer the 6.6s is that it is the… It’s still a good size system, but everyone can fit it on, even people who are single-phase within the Endeavor part of the network, it doesn’t have to be a limitation for you if that’s not your situation.

So I’d much rather talk to you about what you’ve got. I can help show you whether you’re single or three-phase. If you look at this picture, for example, you’ll see that in your meter box, there’s one little black box at the top, that’s called a service fuse. Typically, if you have one of those, you are single-phase or on your meter, it’ll say “1 P,” one phase. This is a meter box with three service fuses, which means it is a three-phase supplied house, and the meter will typically say “3 P,” just on the meter there. Anyway, love to help you choose the right size system for your house. Give me a call, Stuart on IQ Solar 0424-225-097. Thanks.