Solar Panels?

[Dave726]

Arnold Cunningham said:

I think it might, but I'll still get it all installed anyway.

Me too. Subsidies won’t last forever and it’s going to take a long time to solve these energy problems properly.

[TDK-C60]

AW10 said:

Can’t help but wonder if today’s announcement will usher in the “bust” of a number of solar installers. If electricity is effectively fixed at 30p/kWh for 2 years the demand for installs is likely to drop?

Hopefully it will moderate the panic buying. All the suppliers I asked had stopped their waiting lists. One was booked to Dec 23, another had 450 people in a queue.

Will give time for Givenergy & co to ramp up production perhaps. This frenzy could drive some some interesting advances and economies of scale in the pipeline too.

[cayman-black]

Dave726 said:

C Lee Farquar said:

Is it that embarrassing to want some solar panels? Surely they must be socially acceptable by now?

More that I didn’t want to out myself as a flash b@stard with a swimming pool and socially unacceptable 27,000 kWh usage.

Also the embarrassment of getting myself into a situation where my fixed price combined annual energy quote was £48k a couple of weeks ago…

lol, now I know who you are, hows the Bugatti ?

[Uncle boshy]

OutInTheShed said:

g40steve said:

OutInTheShed said:

To pay back in 5.5 years, that means what? in simple terms? about a grand decrease in electricity bill per year.
A lot of people are not paying a grand in the first place.


Seriously?

Absolutely.

Don’t forget pay back also includes sale of spare capacity. Octopus paid me £90 last month for excess I generated

[Arnold Cunningham]

Based on my calcs, I was looking at 17 months payback. Now I’ll obviously be looking at a longer payback, but this is still fine. I think it’s a good thing to do.

[MaxFromage]

AW10 said:

Can’t help but wonder if today’s announcement will usher in the “bust” of a number of solar installers. If electricity is effectively fixed at 30p/kWh for 2 years the demand for installs is likely to drop?

It will change the figures for residential, but commercial installs will still pay back between 2 and 5 years depending on the size/energy use.

[TDK-C60]

OutInTheShed said:

PBCD said:

TDK-C60 said:

Can you explain how the house uses the inverter power and not the grid? In terms of selecting battery over grid this is something that has to be programmed? Is this the case with PV too - a case of programming the inverter to push out a certain amount? I'm being dim - if the inverter is pushing out 240V AC and the henley is also taking 240V AC from the grid - how is the consumer unit only taking the inverter power and nothing from the grid?

I'd like to know this too!

The inverter pushes out a current. The volts don't change much, because the grid is low impedance.
Let's say the grid is 0.1 ohm. You draw 10A from it, the voltage at your meter drops by a volt.
The inverter pushes 10A towards the grid, the voltage at your meter rises by a volt.
The currents balance. Whatever your home loads are drawing will come from your inverter first, if the inverter is producing a surplus, it goes to the grid.
If there is a shortfall it comes from the grid.

The inverter takes power from the panels, say they are producing 4kW. It converts that to slightly over grid voltage, the current flows to drag the voltage down until it balances. If the grid or loads tries to take more, the voltage drops because the power is constrained. If less current is drawn, the volts rise until current flows out into the grid.

It's actually quite hard for someone who's done circuit theory for 40 years to understand why other people don't get this.
I'm not a natural teacher, sorry! :-)
(might have been cleaer before a couple of glasses of plonk).

Many thanks, makes sense - a bit like when charging a car battery with an alternator putting 14v into it, or a split relay for leisure battery.

I guess this might explain why a system capable of running off grid can be a bit more complicated - and the simplest system is connected to the grid.

And energy suppliers rightly want to make sure anything that can put stuff in to their grid is "done properly".


If my roof is never shaded, do you really need to put micro inverters on every panel? I suppose they protect against a single defective panel, but do they otherwise improve performance if the sun/panel is broadly the same?

[Thebaggers]

Arnold Cunningham said:

Annoyingly, my "recommended" solar panel company have gone awol after coming round to quote last week.
They did a nice job on our neighbours, but have gone totally awol on me.

Can anyone recommend another company they've had a good experience of that would service farnborough, hants please. Lots of ads for cheap installs around, but I value quality on the job, so a personal experience you've had would be appreciated.

Will message you my installers details. Great price and reliable, helpful team.

[markiii]

Gareth79 said:

TDK-C60 said:

interesting links - if you try and fill a basket on the midsummer one a fair bit (including mundane stiff like clamps) is unavailable.

How have Enphase shut down the DIY market? They aren’t the only inverter?

Quite, there's a huge choice of kit. Getting stock can be tricky and prices are going up but it does seem to be flowing in.

TDK-C60 said:

There seem to be 550W panels on ebay and inverters - are these junk?

Feels like a bit of a minefield.

Avoid eBay or Amazon for solar stuff, that IS a minefield, just use one of the reputably companies like Midsummer, ITS, Trade Sparky, Bimble etc.

TDK-C60 said:

If you don’t sell back to the grid, can a solar battery install be quite simple for an average electrician? Is retrospective MCS possible?

Most regular electricians don't get involved with solar/battery stuff, you will need a specialist. Retrospective MCS is impossible under the terms of the scheme, since it's an end-to-end certificate from the suppliers, design, contracts, installation and warranties etc. BUT there are plenty of reports of shady companies in the scheme so probably anything is possible!

TDK-C60 said:

Is there a good explanation as to how this actually fits to your meter/consumer unit?

For a grid-tie system (whether battery or solar or a "hybrid" unit) basically it is fitted in parallel to the incoming supply after the meter. The most common method is to fit a henley block on the meter tails (which go between the meter and consumer unit) and then run tails to a second consumer unit where the inverter is then wired to. The power generated then flows "back out" the tails and into the consumer unit, or the grid. Your home will use the solar/battery power in preference to the grid merely because that's how electricity works! (An occasionally seen bodge is to wire an inverter into a MCB in the existing consumer unit, but that has all sorts of problems)

Edited by Gareth79 on Wednesday 7th September 21:10

What kind of problems?

[PBCD]

OutInTheShed said:

The inverter pushes out a current. The volts don't change much, because the grid is low impedance.
Let's say the grid is 0.1 ohm. You draw 10A from it, the voltage at your meter drops by a volt.
The inverter pushes 10A towards the grid, the voltage at your meter rises by a volt.
The currents balance. Whatever your home loads are drawing will come from your inverter first, if the inverter is producing a surplus, it goes to the grid.
If there is a shortfall it comes from the grid.

Thanks for that!

[C Lee Farquar]

Dave726 said:

More that I didn’t want to out myself as a flash b@stard with a swimming pool and socially unacceptable 27,000 kWh usage.

Also the embarrassment of getting myself into a situation where my fixed price combined annual energy quote was £48k a couple of weeks ago…

Ah I see. The same for many small businesses, what was a small relatively minor overhead becomes the same as paying an extra person's salary. It's certainly a wake up call.

[V-spec]

We recently had panels fitted - 23 of them with 8.6kwh max capacity and a 15kw battery (Huawei 3 x 5kw).

My experience after 6 weeks (this is in Belgium by the way)

- we had to get the Earth/ground for the house improved before the system could be approved, which added delays and means we are still not getting paid for feed-in. It needed to be less than 30ohms, it was >300. Our normal electrician couldn’t do it so we had to get a specialist company in who drilled a hole 6m down. Annoyed because I could have got that sorted during the 3 months we waited to get the panels installed, rather than after.

- in august we were producing >50kw per day, now it’s already below 30. I’m curious what we will see in the winter

- now it’s getting dark in the evenings we are using about 50% of the battery each night.

- so far, the battery has always been charged back to 100% before 12:00 each day

- in the first week my phone battery wouldn’t even last a day because I was checking the solar panel app so much!

- our logic for installing was based on payback but we also added in the feel-good factor, which I have to say is definitely there for me!

- I do worry a bit about the battery health - it is always charging to 100% and I guess in winter it will go to 0%, which I know is not good for batteries (in general) to fully charge and discharge. There doesn’t seem to be a way to change this.

[markiii]

I'd assume the battery managment wont let it fully discharge

[dmsims]

markiii said:

I'd assume the battery managment wont let it fully discharge

Indeed - instead of worrying the OP could even RTFM

[V-spec]

dmsims said:

Indeed - instead of worrying the OP could even RTFM

True, I’m being lazy because I only got manuals in Dutch which I can’t read, but probably can find in English on the internet.

In the first few days the battery would only charge to 5kw (they didn’t connect it properly) and then we saw it drop to 0% a few times.

[OutInTheShed]

Uncle boshy said:

Don’t forget pay back also includes sale of spare capacity. Octopus paid me £90 last month for excess I generated

Wasn't forgetting that at all, but £80 in one month suggests either a big set of panels, or the historical Feed In Tariff.

A 3.6kW system in Cornwall generated a total of 563 kWh last month.

I think Octopus currently pays about 5p for exports? That's under £17 for the month if you don't use any yourself?

Or was the payment last month for a year's export or something?

The trouble with people saying a single figure like 'I got 80 quid last month' is that optimists (and salesweasels?) will cherry pick random data like ' I get lots of export money', 'I heat all my hot water', 'I save a lot of grid tariff' 'my East facing panels work well in the morning'....
Some people end thinking they can have their cake and eat it multiple times.

That's why I think it's important to have a fairly good picture of how you will generate x-amount, save y-amount off your import bill and export z-amount through a typical year.

So people might find some context for your £80 figure helpful.
Sorry if that sounds over-critical of someone who has at least volunteered a nugget of data, it's all good but more would be better!

[nunpuncher]

AW10 said:

Can’t help but wonder if today’s announcement will usher in the “bust” of a number of solar installers. If electricity is effectively fixed at 30p/kWh for 2 years the demand for installs is likely to drop?

I could imagine they'll see a bit of a drop in numbers but can't imagine it will be drastic. I'll keep on with my plans but with no sense of urgency. So if I'm a typical customer then we may see these companies being a bit more competitive.

In terms of payback I've not fully crunched the numbers for our house but I'm under no illusion that this is going to save a fortune any time soon. It's more about future proofing both in terms of future cost volatility and me just not liking feeling like my family is caught up in being held to ransom by that Putin.

[Uncle boshy]

OutInTheShed said:

Uncle boshy said:

Don’t forget pay back also includes sale of spare capacity. Octopus paid me £90 last month for excess I generated

Wasn't forgetting that at all, but £80 in one month suggests either a big set of panels, or the historical Feed In Tariff.

A 3.6kW system in Cornwall generated a total of 563 kWh last month.

I think Octopus currently pays about 5p for exports? That's under £17 for the month if you don't use any yourself?

Or was the payment last month for a year's export or something?

The trouble with people saying a single figure like 'I got 80 quid last month' is that optimists (and salesweasels?) will cherry pick random data like ' I get lots of export money', 'I heat all my hot water', 'I save a lot of grid tariff' 'my East facing panels work well in the morning'....
Some people end thinking they can have their cake and eat it multiple times.

That's why I think it's important to have a fairly good picture of how you will generate x-amount, save y-amount off your import bill and export z-amount through a typical year.

So people might find some context for your £80 figure helpful.
Sorry if that sounds over-critical of someone who has at least volunteered a nugget of data, it's all good but more would be better!

I’ve got a 5kW system, and using octopus agile outgoing. During august that paid me an average of 36p per kWh.

That tariff doesn’t suit everyone since it restricts what incoming tariff you have, eg can’t have GO and agile outgoing, so can’t use cheap overnight to top up a battery or EV, but works for me as I don’t currently have either.

It’s also variable so not guaranteed, but today as an example they are paying between 25p and 30p in my main generating hours.

My incoming tariff is 30p per kWh plus standing charge

[Condi]

Uncle boshy said:

I’ve got a 5kW system, and using octopus agile outgoing.

Very frustratingly they require you to be an Octopus customer as well on the buy side. I'd sign up with them on the Agile outgoing but it's not worth breaking my current supply fix with a different provider.

[sammyb349]

So with that, does that essentially mean you cannot export in the current climate, as Octopus doesn't take new customers in the current environment