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Solar Panels UK - is it worth it?
- Thread starter jdwuk
- Start date
wow 44kwh is very nice.
topped the car to 100% as Tesla recommend it apparantly, and had an hour at the end to swap cars and get some in the e-golf but not much. About 20kwh total between the two. Some export where I missed the timing because the telsa was fussing on the last 1% but no big deal
33.6kwh total generated, peaking at around 4kw
cyan is the total generation, purple the south 2.6kwp array and blue the 3.9kwp north (think its clipped by a big tree, hadn’t anticipated the sun rising so far north this time of year..)
topped the car to 100% as Tesla recommend it apparantly, and had an hour at the end to swap cars and get some in the e-golf but not much. About 20kwh total between the two. Some export where I missed the timing because the telsa was fussing on the last 1% but no big deal
33.6kwh total generated, peaking at around 4kw
cyan is the total generation, purple the south 2.6kwp array and blue the 3.9kwp north (think its clipped by a big tree, hadn’t anticipated the sun rising so far north this time of year..)
is that spiky battery line the two inverters arguing? whats your array size? 8kw peak is massive
Pete UK
Member
Yes and no - the spiky blue line is the average battery % of all 4 batteries. The value seems to be spiky on the chart but I never see it change that much or jump around in the app or cloud, it’s pretty constant. Must be a sampling/ reporting thing (or something else!). When generation is good there isn’t much inverter arguing (except when one battery pair’s average %age is near full, then it may discharge while the other inverter is charging. Or if generation is marginal.
Once it’s sun down then the low one always seems to want to discharge into the almost full one. So in the morning one set is full or almost full where it’s cross charged all night and the other pair is like 25% (average) or so and either charging or discharging at sun up.
This low side pair, has a split on the battery % as well, when low. sometimes one is 30% and the other one is about 6%. I think they likely need re-calibrating. The other pair seems ok-ish now (within a couple of % usually). I’m not messing or intervening with it, as I’ve got on the GE EMS beta testing and they are monitoring the data (inverter firmware; using their API to do the balancing as opposed to the hardware EMS (which apparently will respond much faster)). So letting it run for a few days, as is. It’s early days and it’s not perfect (it’s beta). There are some circumstances when it doesn’t operate. I’m not sure how comparable this is to the home assistant version.
I’ve got 27x 420w panels; 11.34kW array.
2x Gen 3 hybrid inverters
4x 9.5 batteries.
5 South
8 North
8 East (2nd story)
6 East (1st story)
I think the 8.15kW peak was a bit of a temporary, short lived fluke in absolute perfect timing and conditions. Probably never see that again or if so, not very often. It was around about 6kW peak for 2.5 hours though today, which was a first and again in what I suspect were absolutely ideal conditions. Only had the system a week so still early days. All down hill from here I guess !
Very pleased with the system generation. Especially the low light generation. That is just amazing. Way better than expected. Although TBH, I had no idea what to expect, despite spending hours going nuts on calculations and thinking I know what I’m expecting.
Pete UK
Member
Chimpy McChimp
Member
Finally got notification that my DNO application is all approved and a provisional date for install of mid August. Need to get my head round all of this again and hoping I see some benefit from the set up before the days get too short (original estimated install date was going to be closer to October). We are a high usage house and our fixed deal ends next year so anything to try and cut reliance on the grid and save money is appealing.
Pink Duck
Active Member
Wasn’t too surprised to find out today that my DNO (UK Power Networks) having received request for Export MPAN doesn’t actually respond to energy provider (Octopus) to let them know when it’s ready. So energy provider’s Smart Team have to manually perform look-up requests over 1–4 weeks, often 2 it seems. While DNO is happy to immediately email me the import MPAN and energy provider info, it certainly isn’t keen to make the Export MPAN known. Presumably all that free juice (300 kWh so far) from new export-capable installs tempting them into inaction.
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phil4
Member
I think you're seeing one of the many signs the power companies don't like or want solar, from G99 to things like this... they'd rather we kept on sucking down their power. I'll go get my tinfoil hat.
Pink Duck
Active Member
Their SmartConnect online system was quite rapid in approving the G99 A1.1 within three working days. Having fun imagining how archaic the handling of export MPANs must be, in the archive centre, on the parchment, using the finest inks, transcribed by dedicated, life-long monks. Probably reluctant to sacrifice yet another goat.
Yup, J&S. Moved from a very old hi-spec to an aquaair. Probably not the best 5k I've ever spent, but the heating was broken in the place when we moved in 8 years ago, and there were fewer options on the market.
RedMod3
Member
There is everything to like about whole-house aircon. In summer like now, running it to keep cool is free, we paid 20p for electricity in June. In winter it runs cheaply off the Powerwalls and is very responsive, and you get the added advantage of being able to get rid of all storage heaters or water radiators.
Why not just use a titanium immersion heater for hot water as we do? In summer hot water is free from solar and in winter the tank is heated via off-peak IO?
WannabeOwner
Well-Known Member
So the staged plan (having installed Solar and 9.5kwh of storage in april)
- See how the solar does in winter, and how much excess we have with the A2A ASHPs we have (Office, bedroom)
- Think about installing whole (most of) house AC in March or so, sits alongside the existing heating system.
- Leave the existing warm air system in for the next winter, see how we get on*. Think about "Gaps" such as hallways, bathrooms and potentially the guest room (Depending on the cost to get that done), possibly Infrared
- Ponder if we need more storage (Likely won't pay itself back tbh, 9.5kWh is plenty for april-october)
- Decommission boiler, replacing with ASHP storage tank a year or two after that. (Looking at a Vaillant Arostor, which has meaningful local control inc PV. Mixergy's "cloud" is fancier, but I don't like "Cloud based" for a 10 year investment. Might also go for a Sunamp)
We don't currently have wet radiators (Except the office, where we also have an ASHP), wife is very keen not to introduce them, can't say I disagree. Unlikely we'll recover the space from the air ducts
*Sunk Cost, can co-exist with AC, only cost is standing charges for gas
PITA
Model 3 Performance
Unlese you use a lot of hot water it is hard to do better then a simple E7 hot water tank.
One option is to use a duct AC unit to feed into your existing hot air duct system rather then putting separate AC units to cover every space.
Well, technically a heatpump.will.use ~4 x less of that E7 power
Need to be careful introducing cold air where it's not expected? Could cause condensation where it's not wanted? No expert tho, just a thought.
