Solar Panels?

[Road2Ruin]

Charging the battery is up to the user entirely. You can set it to charge during certain hours and up to a certain %. So if you think the following days is going to be sunny and in June, then maybe just charge the battery to 25% to cover the morning's needs. Then allow the battery to charge off solar during the day, if the house is empty or you are not using all the solar. However, it does require some planing to be optimal.

[markiii]

Should be easy enough, just work out your base day consumption in terms of battery per ent usage and a little for leeway then allow to charge to no more than that percentage at night, solar will do the rest

[eldar]

Quick question.. if you have a battery, where does it go? It seems the roof space is popular, but having seen a small battery explode quite violently for no apparent reason, it seems a little risky.

Paranoia or worrying about nothing?

[markiii]

A good question it's only a matter of time before house insurance starts increasing if you have a battery whose fire can't be extinguished in your house imho

[Gareth79]

Tesco said:

I
Thring is, looking at the Octopus website you have to have an EV (or have one on order) in order to be able to get these tariffs. I don't have an EV, nor do I intend to buy one any time soon (I'm not against one, its just purely financial reasons).

So long as it's not the Intelligent Octopus I'm pretty sure they don't ask for proof you have an EV, nor require you to declare that you have one, it just warns that they may require it in the future and move you off if you can't prove you have one.

[Arnold Cunningham]

Clearly, I will keep you all posted........

[eldar]

markiii said:

A good question it's only a matter of time before house insurance starts increasing if you have a battery whose fire can't be extinguished in your house imho

Indeed. The ecig that exploded was quite spectacular and difficult to extinguish, and I was standing next to it. Would have been nasty if it happened overnight.

The thought of a much larger battery igniting in an inaccessible largely wooden space has scope for trouble.

[TDK-C60]

Arnold Cunningham said:

Order placed. 21 x 400W panels, 9.5kwh Giv energy battery & 5 kwh hybrid inverter.
Hopefully should be able to produce about 50% of our electrical power in a year from solar with the other 50% coming from off peak charging.
Fingers crossed.

Well done - read about your struggles - when is it being installed?

I didn't have much luck so far - how did you find an installer that was not fully booked?

Or has Lizzies cap sparked some cancellations?

[TDK-C60]

Tesco said:

I'm seriously looking into solar with battery storage and am currently waiting for a quote to be finalised.
I notice that a few on this chat are talking about "off peak" battery charging and it's something that the sales guy I had round the other day spoke about. In particular the "Octopus" tariffs that offer a 4 hour period overnight at very low kWh rates.

Thring is, looking at the Octopus website you have to have an EV (or have one on order) in order to be able to get these tariffs. I don't have an EV, nor do I intend to buy one any time soon (I'm not against one, its just purely financial reasons).

Are their other suppliers that offer much cheaper off peak rates in that could be used to charge / top up domestic battery storage or is the statement on the Octopus site a bit wrong / misleading?

Bulb do something similar - 9.3p for 4 hours, then 33p during the day. The day rate seems better than Octopus, but assume not possible to feed back to grid. It's an EV rate, so same strings may apply - but if you are using it - i.e. charging a battery - you are "playing the eco game" so I'd be surprised if they really minded.

Curious to know if people getting quotes now are getting stuff fitted reasonably quickly.

[Arnold Cunningham]

TDK-C60 said:

Well done - read about your struggles - when is it being installed?

I didn't have much luck so far - how did you find an installer that was not fully booked?

Or has Lizzies cap sparked some cancellations?

In the last decade of doing work on our house (we really should get a move on), the only time I've ever had anyone available "today" was the guy doing the leadwork on our roof. So in every other case, we have to be patient. I'm OK with that - I would prefer to be patient to get the right guys doing a nice job for a fair price (I did have one guy try to quote me 9K to do the leadwork and pointing in a couple of chimneys once - I assumed he didn't want the work).

So in this case, I kept badgering the original lot I was recommended. He's saying about 6 weeks lead time for a GivEnery setup which looks quite nice.
I wonder if they will line all the screwheads up vertically like the guy who rewired our house and a couple of years back. Almost seems a shame to have to modify his wiring - he takes a lot of pride in the job. I did check - he's not done the solar course yet so can't do the install.

[AW10]

Road2Ruin said:

Charging the battery is up to the user entirely. You can set it to charge during certain hours and up to a certain %. So if you think the following days is going to be sunny and in June, then maybe just charge the battery to 25% to cover the morning's needs. Then allow the battery to charge off solar during the day, if the house is empty or you are not using all the solar. However, it does require some planing to be optimal.

I can’t help but think that game will get old after a while. The novelty will wear off.

[AW10]

Arnold Cunningham said:

Otherwise I'll be buying either an old milk float or an electric Peel P50.

A Citroen Ami!

[Arnold Cunningham]

Yes. I will investigate how much automation is possible.

[MaxFromage]

Arnold Cunningham said:

Order placed. 21 x 400W panels, 9.5kwh Giv energy battery & 5 kwh hybrid inverter.
Hopefully should be able to produce about 50% of our electrical power in a year from solar with the other 50% coming from off peak charging.
Fingers crossed.

I've already had this discussion with one person, not sure if it was you? However a 5 kW inverter is too small for a 8 kW array? What did the installer say about this? You generally need parity:

https://uk.renogy.com/blog/choosing-the-right-size...

'What size solar inverters do I need for my system?

Solar inverters come in a range of different sizes. Like solar panels, inverters are rated in watts. Because your solar inverter converts DC electricity coming from the panels, your solar inverter needs to have the capacity to handle all the power your array produces. As a general rule of thumb, you’ll want to match your solar panel wattage. So if you have a 3000 watt solar panel system, you’ll need at least a 3000 watt inverter. Need help deciding how much solar power you’ll need to meet your energy needs? Use the Renogy solar calculator to determine your needs.'

[Previous]

Bowks said:

Sanity check.

I've been quoted just under 10k for;

10 x 375w Eurener Zebra panels
Huawei inverter
One Huawei LUNA battery
The thing to send unused power to my storage tank inverter
Fitting and bits and bobs associated.

Is that reasonable? This would put us on electric for everything bar heating, except where the emersion didn't power the storage tank

Sounds good - I'm in the process of getting quotes, and looking at £11-£13 k for a 4-5kw system with 6-9kw battery (Various quotes)

[Arnold Cunningham]

Yes it was me and I forgot to reply, apologies. I will double check this, but I asked at the time.

What I recall he said when we were discussing it is that the inverter will limit charge rate based on it's capacity exactly as you say - but also that while the theoretical capacity of the array is 8KW, he said we're very unlikely to see anywhere near that - he reckoned because of the sub-optimal install (our roof is not ideal and we will be using 2 strings and a number of optimisers), we'll typically max out at about 4KW on a good day (since the 8KW is in basically lab conditions)- but more panels means a higher average.

We did discuss doubling up on inverters & batteries so that so that we could consume a full 8KW AND really hit any off peak charging nice & hard to put 19kwh of power in storage. BUT the step up in cost was large since that would have started to bring in seperate inverters and charges and be a bit excessive for how much power we consume on average (at least these days!) and all just seemed a bit much.

I've also then checked with my mate who has a 4KW array installed on his roof east facing and he reckons he's never seen more than 2KW off it - so it does seem to add up.

And finally, they are one of the GivEnergy platinum installers who also did our neighbours (who are very happy) - so I feel I have to take them at face value.

For interest sake, this is the proposed design:

[Dave726]

Am I right in saying if you have no intention to export to the grid, and acknowledge you won’t receive any SEG payments if you do, you don’t need an MCS accredited electrician to install your system? i.e. a qualified, but non-MCS electrician, could do a G99 level install within the rules?

[MaxFromage]

Arnold Cunningham said:

Yes it was me and I forgot to reply, apologies. I will double check this, but I asked at the time.

What I recall he said when we were discussing it is that the inverter will limit charge rate based on it's capacity exactly as you say - but also that while the theoretical capacity of the array is 8KW, he said we're very unlikely to see anywhere near that - he reckoned because of the sub-optimal install (our roof is not ideal and we will be using 2 strings and a number of optimisers), we'll typically max out at about 4KW on a good day (since the 8KW is in basically lab conditions)- but more panels means a higher average.

We did discuss doubling up on inverters & batteries so that so that we could consume a full 8KW AND really hit any off peak charging nice & hard to put 19kwh of power in storage. BUT the step up in cost was large since that would have started to bring in seperate inverters and charges and be a bit excessive for how much power we consume on average (at least these days!) and all just seemed a bit much.

I've also then checked with my mate who has a 4KW array installed on his roof east facing and he reckons he's never seen more than 2KW off it - so it does seem to add up.

And finally, they are one of the GivEnergy platinum installers who also did our neighbours (who are very happy) - so I feel I have to take them at face value.

For interest sake, this is the proposed design:

Fair enough. You can check your panels here for certainty:

https://re.jrc.ec.europa.eu/pvg_tools/en/

Edited by MaxFromage on Tuesday 13th September 21:06

[Arnold Cunningham]

Spent a lot of time on there. The only thing I can’t find on there is point in time KW, only average by month.

[Evanivitch]

eldar said:

markiii said:

A good question it's only a matter of time before house insurance starts increasing if you have a battery whose fire can't be extinguished in your house imho

Indeed. The ecig that exploded was quite spectacular and difficult to extinguish, and I was standing next to it. Would have been nasty if it happened overnight.

The thought of a much larger battery igniting in an inaccessible largely wooden space has scope for trouble.

The majority of home storage batteries are Lithium Iron Phosphate (LiFePO4, or LFP for short). They are far, far more thermally stable than the lithium battery chemistry more often found in portable electronic devices. LFP are increasingly common in cars, and largely used in electric busses. Just not the French ones...

Many batteries are sealed sufficiently for outdoor mounting, but many would recommend a small porch to limit direct driving rain and direct sun.

AW10 said:

Road2Ruin said:

Charging the battery is up to the user entirely. You can set it to charge during certain hours and up to a certain %. So if you think the following days is going to be sunny and in June, then maybe just charge the battery to 25% to cover the morning's needs. Then allow the battery to charge off solar during the day, if the house is empty or you are not using all the solar. However, it does require some planing to be optimal.

I can’t help but think that game will get old after a while. The novelty will wear off.

Entirely depends on the ecosystem that your battery is part of. Several brands can weather compensate, predict the amount of solar you'll get day before and suitability charge overnight on grid to meet your morning needs and allow solar charging.