It's been over a month since I've posted here, which bugs me. A lot has been going on, including a problem with the PV array. It has been producing marvelously. In fact, in the first month of operation, we purchased 288 kWh from CL&P, and sold them 440 kWh, giving us a surplus of 152 kWh that will become a credit on next month's bill... We have a small problem though, and electricians and electrical engineers are working on solving it... Remember that nifty on demand electric hot water heater we got? Well, every single time it turns on, the inverter for the PV system goes into default mode and tries to reset itself. It seems to think there is a problem with the grid and is designed to turn itself off so as not to be damaged.
As you can imagine, this is probably not good for the inverter to be going through these cycles 20-30 times a day. And it doesn't do it just once. For the duration of time that the hot water is running, which means the water heater is turned on, the PV system is basically not doing anything. This is not cool. Not at all. That thing was WAY too expensive to be turning off several times a day just because we are using hot water. Especially when we made it clear we would be purchasing this type of water heater when the PV system was being specced out.
Long story short, Nicole has made a ton of phone calls to Solar Wrights and our electrician to try to get this straightened out. And we do not like being nudged to abandon the tankless water heater (which we just purchased about 7 months ago) as a solution.
So, we'll see what happens.