There are nearly 2 million Australian households with solar panels installed on their roofs. Many of these households would like to add more solar and/or batteries to their systems, but the best path to accomplishing this is unclear, as there are a number of technical approaches that they could potentially take. If you’re in this situation, it may be difficult for you to sort through various sales pitches and conflicting pieces of information/advice to determine exactly what your options are for you.
We get questions about this sort of thing all the time, and depending on the customer’s circumstances, the answers are different. Through these conversations, however, we’ve managed to hone in on the three main variables that influence the options available to a given customer. Namely:
- a) the age of the existing system;
- b) the size of the existing system; and
- c) the goals of the household (i.e. whether they want to add more solar, add batteries, or add both).
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Expanding an existing solar system: Decision-making helper tool
This is a complicated topic, so we decided to put together a tool to assist you in knowing your range of options – and being better-positioned to make a decision.
By selecting different options in the tool below, the results (‘Your options’) will change accordingly, providing guidelines appropriate to the most common situations. While everyone’s circumstances are unique, we hope that this tool will help you to narrow down your choices to a manageable number of approaches (2-4).
Got feedback on this tool? Shoot us an email at communications@solarchoice.net.au.
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Since 2008 our knowledge and sophisticated software has allowed over 160,000 Australian households and businesses to make a well-informed choice on their solar & battery installer.
He is now the communications manager for energy technology startup SwitchDin, but remains an occasional contributor to the Solar Choice blog.
James lives in Newcastle in a house with a weird solar system.
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Hi James, we have a 20 panel system made by Tindo in South Aus. Each panel has a micro inverter which was great when the system was new as we were able to monitor each panel with software called “enecsys.” This is not working now and Tindo don’t seem to have anything in place to replace the enecsys system. Reading the article explaining options for adding panels and or batteries didn’t seem to cover my situation. I want to get back to being able to monitor the system initially and then add a battery storage system and perhaps more panels. Any ideas would be appreciated. Thanks, David
Hi David,
We came across this retrofit monitoring solution for Enecsys systems a while back. Perhaps it will be of some use to you?
Thanks for this new tool – it clearly outlined 3 options for me to pursue. :-)
Although, on first reading the title “Expanding an existing solar system”, I had thought that maybe your target audience was, oh, some galactic Empire or other …!
What could possibly need upgrading on a 2011 1.9kW system to add an additional array and new dual tracking inverter?
Hi Dave,
The details are a bit technical (and I’m not overly familiar with them), but from what installers have told us, it involves changes to wiring and (less importantly) signage. You might be better off leaving the existing system as it is and adding on a brand new, separate solar system alongside it. I recommend speaking with some installers and getting some quotes to get a clearer idea of what your best options are. Good luck.