18 Solar Panel Set

You can install this complete high-power DIY 18 solar panel set yourself and put it together entirely to your own wishes. A complete set consists of solar panels, an inverter, complete mounting material and cabling. Once you have gone through all the steps, we know exactly what you need and you will see a price tailored specifically to your situation.

Step 1: Solar panels

Choose the 18 solar panels you want to use in your high-power DIY 18 solar panel set. You can choose between poly (dark blue with an aluminium frame) or mono (black) panels. The quality is the same, it is purely a matter of colour. For the exact specifications you can click on the datasheet, or view the panel in the webshop.

Step 2: Inverter

Choose the inverter you want. They are available in various price ranges.

Growatt is a Chinese inverter with a very good price-quality ratio. These inverters are very flexible, start up early and shut down late. This maximises your yield. One panel more or less is often no problem at all for these inverters. Growatt is also known for its quiet inverters thanks to natural cooling.

SMA inverters are produced in Germany and are somewhat more expensive, but a lot less forgiving. With SMA the connected peak wattage is very critical.

Solaredge is a popular inverter because of the way it deals with shade, but it is relatively expensive. These inverters only work if every panel is fitted with a SolarEdge optimizer.

It is important to check what kind of grid connection you have. Do you have a 1-phase connection? Then you can often fit a larger single-phase inverter on your spare circuit. Do you have a 3-phase connection? Then it is better to switch to a 3-phase inverter sooner. You always connect your inverter to a spare circuit to prevent fire hazards, as laid down in NEN 1010:2015.

Step 3 + 4: Optimizers / Monitoring

Do you have shade on your roof? Then it may well pay off to optimize the panels that catch that shade. Tigo Energy has a neat solution in which you only have to fit an optimizer to those panels. That saves considerably on the cost. You can easily add these optimizers to your set afterwards.

It is incredibly addictive to monitor how your DIY set is performing. This is of course possible via the display on the inverter, but how fantastic is it to keep an eye on the graphs 24 hours a day from your phone or computer!

Step 5 + 6 + 7: Roof type / Mounting method / Rows

To determine which mounting material is suitable for your roof, we ask you to tell us your roof type. You can then indicate which hook / clip / screw / support or mounting foot you need. The price you see is not for 1 hook, but for the complete mounting material using that hook. We also ask whether you want to place the panels in portrait or landscape. Portrait means that the short side of generally 1000mm is horizontal. In landscape you have the long side of generally 1650 mm horizontal. Landscape mounting is always slightly more expensive because you then need more rails. We always supply the mounting rails horizontally. Finally, we ask you to indicate the number of rows you want. By this we mean the number of horizontal rows. Based on this we can calculate how many end pieces you need in order to install your complete solar panel set yourself.

Step 8: Cabling

A complete high-power DIY 18 solar panel set cannot do without solar cable. This runs from the inverter to the nearest panel and from the furthest panel back to the inverter. Behind the panels there are short cables, so that panels lying next to each other can always be connected to one another. You therefore do not need any extra metres for that. If you tell us how many metres you need to connect your furthest panel, we will supply that length twice, or four times if you have chosen an inverter that can handle several strings. We crimp the MC4 connectors on in advance, so that you do not have to buy a special MC-4 crimping tool. Would you rather crimp the connectors on yourself? No problem, just let us know.

Under the new NEN 1010:2015 it is compulsory to earth the panels. You do this by connecting the nearest panel frame to the inverter by means of an earth cable. If you order an earth cable from us, we crimp mounting eyelets onto it in advance. That too saves you buying a crimping tool. Finally, you can connect the inverter to the meter cupboard using YMVK cable. The 3-core cable is suitable for a single-phase inverter. Have you selected a 3-phase inverter? Then choose the 5-core YMVK cable.

Step 9: Check your high-power DIY 18 solar panel set yourself and add it to the shopping basket

Once you have followed all the steps you can check your choices and place the complete DIY 18 solar panel set in your shopping basket yourself. Do you have a special set-up or other wishes? Please state this in the comments section when ordering. Then we know what we need to pack. We usually aim for delivery on the next Saturday, but sometimes that is not possible. In that case you will usually have your panels at home a week later and can mount them. Can’t work it out? Feel free to get in touch! Our remote advice does not stop after delivery.