 It's quite bright outside and I am hanging on for dear life as you can see to deliver you this video. So usually here at Hardware Sugar we talk about computer hardware but today we'll talk about solar power. Behind me you can see the tips or the borders of the solar panels I have on my own roof and these panels are basically maintenance free. Once they're on top of the roof you don't need to worry about them anymore. That's a 3 kilowatt system that you can see behind me. There are a whole bunch of other panels there that we can't get to. Basically once they're up there, once they're installed you don't need to worry about them. I had a good solar installer the details of which I would provide below. They were quite good, very professional and quite fast with the installation. You notice that there is a new construction behind me. There's a building going up. This new building will not cast a shadow so my energy production should still be good even if that building is taller than my own townhouse. The next step in the solar process which is the inverter. So I've clambered down from the roof and behind me is the next step in the solar setup. Aside from solar panels, you will need an inverter which is this thing because when the solar panels generate electricity, they generate it in a form called direct current or DC. Unfortunately or by design, everything else in your house all the appliances, your aircods, your TVs, your fridges, microwaves, everything runs on alternating current or AC. So energy from the solar panels is generated in DC and our inverter here converts that electricity into AC. And actually the solar panels are very sturdy. They will last at least 10, 20 years or so. Basically again, once they're up there, you don't need to worry about them. It's really this inverter thing that usually gives out from time to time and you need to be sure that you get a reputable provider and make sure you keep the warranty information and things like that because it's really the inverter which wears out or is the most likely part to break in your solar setup. And speaking of break, there's a breaker right here behind me so this green wire is where the electricity or where the breaker connects to the solar panels. So when the panels generate electricity, they go first year through this breaker which has its own or you can flip the switches to shut off power or shut off the feed from the solar panels and things like that. And you notice they're labeled AC and DC. And this particular inverter is by Zorver Solar. It's a Chinese company. It's pretty cool actually because you can go here and press this button, this main button and it'll show you how much electricity you're generating in real time as well as how much electricity you've generated for the day and it even doubles up as a Wi-Fi hotspot. So you can actually connect to this thing when it's on and it's being powered right now by solar energy and it will serve as a Wi-Fi repeater. Connect to your main Wi-Fi and then this is basically a signal booster to your main Wi-Fi. And it's also cool because once you connect it to the internet you can download all the data. It will show you how much energy you've made or you've generated per day and how much you've generated over the month and things like that. So it will send all of that information to a central server which you log onto and you can see all of your data there. So a lot of people who are interested in solar or the kind of people who are data fanatics they have their Excel files. To be honest, I don't know or I haven't researched a lot of the inverters. Maybe that's a standard feature in all of them. Server solar, this inverter was recommended by our solar installer and we also bought it from him. And so I didn't bother to research anymore about other brands and things like that. Here you'll notice the Wi-Fi antenna. And as with most inverters this server solar one will cut off when there is no external power that even if you're getting power from the grid from the Meralco energy grid from your local power wires when the Meralco grid turns off because of a brown out this thing automatically turns off as well even if there is sun outside and you are generating electricity. And the reason for that is for the safety of people who might be working on electric wires outside of your house because it's brown out they might expect that hey, there's no power running through these wires but since you are generating power thanks to your solar panels the wires outside your place are still live and to ensure that they are not live to ensure that there's no power being sent out by the system the inverter shuts off automatically. So those are the two main components of any solar setup are the solar panels and the inverter. So if you're going to consume all of the power that you generate from your solar panels then these are the only two things you need really the solar panels and the inverter. But most consumers will be generating more energy than they consume. So let's say during the daytime you generate 10 kilowatts of electricity and you only consume 5 that means you have 5 left extra and you can sell that extra 5 kilowatts to Meralco under a scheme they called net metering. Basically the energy that you produce will be sent from your house to the closest consumers so that means your neighbors. You'll actually be powering the energy needs of your neighbors and Meralco will pay you for the excess energy that you generate. But to avail of net metering aside from all of the paperwork that you'll do with Meralco you'll need one other thing which we will go down below to see. So the last thing you'll need to enable net metering is that Meralco will provide this digital meter above. It's different from the analog meters which you usually find in older setups. This is also something that Meralco will require of you the fuse box outside the house in a brown out Meralco doesn't trust to turn off the power being generated by your solar panels so they insist that you have a fuse box outside your house and it's actually a main switch that you can open and if somebody flips it that will shut off the power to my entire house and you'll notice it's not really that secure because that's the whole point of Meralco that anybody, any of their linemen can open the box and turn off the power. So I know that some people find this insecure and I do think it's a bit of a security risk but unfortunately that's what Meralco requires. This digital meter will record all of the energy that you export. So again back to our example you produce 10 kilowatts of power and you only use five you have an excess of five that you can sell back to Meralco and Meralco requires these digital meters to record how much power you are selling back to the grid and it's a good bet that when you see these digital meters a lot of them are there because the household or the residence or whatever the business is using solar panels. So if you're interested in solar power in the Philippines as a regular consumer that's basically the only three things that you need. The solar panels themselves the inverter and finally the digital electric meter which Meralco will provide you once you've signed a net metering agreement with them. Basically the net metering agreement is a lot of paperwork Meralco will come over, inspect your place you need to get a permit from City Hall but Meralco can do that for you and at least in Makati I assume other jurisdictions or other municipalities have some regulations on that as well but the net metering for me took a while it was around two to three months because there's a lot of paperwork Meralco will ask you to put that breaker that we saw earlier and once the breaker is there Meralco will inspect it and another thing that took time was the actual digital meter because Meralco did not have any stock to give me and you need to pass an application to the ERC, the energy regulatory body and you know there's a whole bunch of paperwork involved in Meralco's net metering and at the end of the day Meralco was like okay we're finally good where the net metering is finally activated but the problem was after a couple of months I noticed that there was no credit being reflected on my bill supposedly under net metering I was selling Meralco the excess energy that I generated but it wasn't appearing on my bill so I called them up and I'm like I thought I would get credit is it just happening in the background you're just not reflecting it on my bill and Meralco said that oh you know you're right we made a mistake and the net metering wasn't properly applied to your account and there was a clerical error but moving forward we will credit you the energy that you are generating and what was really frustrating for me was if I didn't catch that error and I didn't report it to them it would have gone on forever I would have been selling electricity to Meralco and Meralco wouldn't have been paying me and as a consumer it's a bit unfair that I'm expected to know these things I did not have any experience with net metering how was I supposed to know it was supposed to reflect on the bill how much energy you generated but Meralco's a big company and you're just one consumer so what are you going to do right but so do you know once net metering is activated it will appear on your bill how much energy you are generating and for last month this reading was taken November 2018 so this covers basically October 2018 my solar setup generated an excess because this is the energy because what I sell to Meralco is the excess of what I didn't use the total energy I sold was 153 kilowatts the rate is around 5 pesos and 25 cents per kilowatt so I got a total credit of around 806 pesos and so that's really where your concern on ROI comes into play usually the solar installers will tell you to expect that you can get a return on your investment after 10 years yes it does take some time to recoup or to recover the initial investment of paying for the hardware solar panels and the inverter and then the labor for the installation and things like that so usually it's around 10 years but if you use that energy for more productive purposes meaning you're just not selling it to Meralco but you're using it to make money because to be honest what I did with my energy was I was crypto mining so I was mining Ethereum and that's a whole different bag of worms and maybe I'll do a video on that but if you're using the energy for more productive means like I did for crypto mining then your rate of return will be faster or it will be quicker than the expected 10 years and to be honest it is a good feeling that you can turn on the aircon during a very hot day and you know that your power consumption is not contributing to the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere because you're not using the energy from the grid and if you're interested in data again the server solar inverter will send you all of that your daily consumption your average generation so you can actually tweak and play around with how much power you can generate on a given day and you can experiment if I run my aircon I was only able to export this much versus if I had kept the aircon off and so it's not for everybody again this is not something hardware sugar usually does and we do not sell solar panels but I get asked a lot about it and so I thought I would do a simple video on it. If you have any questions please leave them in the comments below I will also give the details of our solar installer because I had a really good experience with them they're nice guys and if you're considering your own setup I would wholeheartedly recommend them I do not get any commission I'm just a happy customer who is intern happy to recommend them to anyone