Standby Generator and Solar Installation in Monmouth Junction, NJ | 46 Panels and Two Inverters

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46-panel 16.79 kW solar array in Monmouth Junction, NJ by Green Sun Energy Services.

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Monmouth Junction, NJ · Client since September 2018

Ashraf in Monmouth Junction has been a Green Sun Energy Services client since September of 2018. He signed for the solar array and the standby generator on the same day; the array was commissioned on 25 November and the generator eight days later.

16.79 kW, and why two inverters

Forty-six LG 365-watt panels, 16.79 kW in total, on Ecolibrium mounting with an optimizer on every panel and 264 feet of critter guard around the perimeter. Estimated first-year production is 20,775 kWh and the utility is PSE&G.

The array runs on two SolarEdge SE6000H inverters rather than one, and the reason is simply arithmetic: no single residential inverter in that family takes 16.79 kW. Pairing two is the ordinary answer, and it brings a second benefit that only shows up years later — an inverter is the component of a solar system most likely to need attention within the panels’ lifetime, and a house with two of them does not go to zero production while one is being dealt with.

A 16 kW generator eight days later

The machine is a Generac 16 kW, model 70371, rated 16 kW on natural gas and on propane alike, and this house runs on natural gas. It sits behind a 200-amp service-rated transfer switch mounted indoors in the basement beside the service panel.

The house is 3,500 square feet and its electrical calculation comes to 18,376 watts. Air conditioning is 4,000 of that and is managed while the generator runs, leaving 14,376 watts to carry — inside the machine’s rating, and clear of the 15 kW the code calculation sets as a minimum.

It is worth noticing that the array is larger than the generator: 16.79 kW of panels against a 16 kW machine. That is not an inconsistency. The array is sized against a year of consumption and the roof available to offset it; the generator is sized against the worst simultaneous demand the house can present. Those are different questions with different answers, and a house where they happen to land near each other is a coincidence rather than a design rule.

Built to be added to

A property with solar, a standby generator and rodent guard on the array is not three purchases. It is one piece of infrastructure assembled in stages, and the stages matter less than whether each one leaves room for the next.

That is the practical argument for having the same company hold all of it. The generator survey established what this house actually draws, appliance by appliance, before the array was designed. The array’s conduit and interconnection were planned knowing where the transfer switch would go. The guard went on with the panels rather than being retrofitted to a live array later, which is faster and less expensive because the crew and the roof access are already there.

Whatever gets added to a house like this next — a charger, a heat pump, storage — arrives at a service panel somebody already has a complete drawing of.