testimonials

Thank you so very much for providing me with invaluable information regarding the status of my solar system. I have two sets of panels that were put on at different times. Not only can I get a clear picture of what each system is doing in relation to each other, but I am so thankful to see how each system is performing on everything from an instantaneous to a daily, weekly, monthly and yearly basis. I feel that I finally understand how my solar system works. Before, I would occasionally cycle through the inverter panel and get a sense that the system was on and how much it was producing. This is vastly more informative. I “take a peek” at my system pretty often, and can readily compare sunny and cloudy days. I also finally feel that I can identify when the system needs maintenance – without this I would have no way of knowing if my panels needed a cleaning, or if I had a loose connection or whatnot. It was just a massive piece of hardware that I was guessing was working, but had no way of knowing except for waiting for a monthly PG&E bill and guessing if that amount produced seemed right.

Thanks so much for giving me the informational tools I need for my solar system, Great job!

Nick - Berkeley

When Alex Winch set up the Beach Solar Laundromat in 2002, he had no idea how far the idea would take him. In 2004, he set up a utility company, Mondial Energy, to sell thermal energy from thermal panels owned on customers’ roofs.

“Getting the data from the sites was the challenge. State of the art at the time involved integrating hardware from two continents, and each site required several hours of installation, tweaking and configuration from us before we could see live data on the web."

Sunreports has made the installation process much simpler, and has enabled system analysis Winch couldn’t do before. “Right away, I saw that my storage tank temperatures were rarely going above 80 degrees F, and never above 105 degrees F. For the first time, I could see that I could add panels to my system without needing to increase storage volumes. This is a low-hanging fruit opportunity for me that I would never have known about without the Sunreports solution."

Alex is so impressed with Sunreports, he has invested in the company and is assisting with our Strategic Advisory Board. “It’s not quite like Victor Kiam buying the razor company ‘cause he liked the shave. Here, the whole company wasn’t for sale. But I was able to invest in a startup with a product and a team I believe in, and I’m delighted both with their achievements to date and with the probable trajectory for my investment."

Alex can be reached directly at a.winch@sympatico.ca, or +1-416-712-1488.

Recently, one of our demo units highlighted a very real issue at one of the sites in SF. The unit in question was installed at one of 3 Schuco demo sites monitoring solar thermal on small apartment buildings. One site was not performing as expected, despite having MORE panels than the other two.

Some investigation into the historic data collected by the SunReports Apollo1 unit showed some temp anomalies in the supply and return to the arrays, at night!

It turns out that when the boiler kicked on at 3am, it created enough pressure to reverse the flow through the array, providing a very effective cooling of the water in the tank! An installation of a one-way check valve solved the problem, and the system is performing as designed now.

Let’s evaluate this in a bit more detail: this is one of those installation issues that might never have been discovered without monitoring. An energy audit of the building pre-install and post-install might have highlighted a savings shortfall, but that gas savings shortfall could be attributed to tenant wastefulness, inefficient boilers, or old hot water heaters.

Without monitoring – and in this instance without having temp sensors at the appropriate places – this problem might NEVER have been resolved, costing the system owner thousands of dollars over the life of the installation.

Many thanks to Schuco USA for helping to specify the functionality of the Apollo1 unit, and for providing a demo site to demonstrate the effectiveness of monitoring.