Home solar with battery storage

Stolly

Stolly

Stolly

Soldato
Joined
11 Mar 2004
Posts
5,000
Thinking of doing this. Anyone got any advice ? Companies to use or avoid, rough costs for an average 3 story town house ?

We have a south facing roof which is good.

I'm also thinking of getting an electric car at the end of the year, i'm making the assumption that charging the battery in the day and then using that to charge the car in the evening is a doable a thing !
 
I would not say its pointless but it will depend on what you want to achieve. Solar panels are somewhat cheaper than they used to be. A friend of mine recently brought a Tesla. He has solar panels but doesn't have battery storage. He also doesn't use the car for work as he lives local to his place of work and bikes to work most of the time. The car sits on the drive way and the charger for the car is intelligent enough to know that any of the energy that is not being used in the house is dumped into the car. He basically now has free travel apart from the wear and tare on the car with it being a Tesla he can always use a supercharger when travelling longer distances. The panels save him a little bit on his energy and he gets a small rebate from the energy he is supposed to be exporting but that just goes in the car so its extra free money. I wouldn't be sure the initial level of investment would give you a saving in the long run unless you know you are going to be in the property for some time but it might be worth considering if you have some spare cash and want to help the environment. I suppose the cost of energy is only going to increase as well.
 
Slade2 said:
I would not say its pointless but it will depend on what you want to achieve. Solar panels are somewhat cheaper than they used to be. A friend of mine recently brought a Tesla. He has solar panels but doesn't have battery storage. He also doesn't use the car for work as he lives local to his place of work and bikes to work most of the time. The car sits on the drive way and the charger for the car is intelligent enough to know that any of the energy that is not being used in the house is dumped into the car. He basically now has free travel apart from the wear and tare on the car with it being a Tesla he can always use a supercharger when travelling longer distances. The panels save him a little bit on his energy and he gets a small rebate from the energy he is supposed to be exporting but that just goes in the car so its extra free money. I wouldn't be sure the initial level of investment would give you a saving in the long run unless you know you are going to be in the property for some time but it might be worth considering if you have some spare cash and want to help the environment. I suppose the cost of energy is only going to increase as well.
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it is pointless. it would be cheaper to pay for the electric.

the payback period is 20+ years now.

so if you plan on living in the same home for 30 years then yeah it might be worth it. if you are planning to move within 20 years then pointless.
 
Depends what you want to achieve - you aren't going to save money these days from it really or not any time soon.

You will need a fairly decent solar setup to meaningfully charge an electric car but If we have a decent summer then for a few months you certainly can do that - however days like we just had today for instance a 300 watt panel is probably averaging more like 18 watt through the day rather than 200-300 watt as is possible during the summer which is barely enough to do more than run some lights.
 
Stolly said:
Thinking of doing this. Anyone got any advice ? Companies to use or avoid, rough costs for an average 3 story town house ?

We have a south facing roof which is good.

I'm also thinking of getting an electric car at the end of the year, i'm making the assumption that charging the battery in the day and then using that to charge the car in the evening is a doable a thing !
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The battery storage systems are a waste of money at least all the ones I have looked at are from a money point of view. The numbers the companies give you are unrealistically inflated. Once you work out the numbers more accurately to what you will realistically get they never pay themselves back. Unless you live in an area with lots of long powercuts there is no point to battery backs.

Solor panels can be amazing but I haven’t done the math on new installs. Be careful as like the battery packs the number's the companies give are unrealistic.
 
Considering how my floodlights can't even charge at this time of the year, no chance. Maybe when I retire in sunny south Italy. :D
 
Stolly said:
Thinking of doing this. Anyone got any advice ? Companies to use or avoid, rough costs for an average 3 story town house ?

We have a south facing roof which is good.

I'm also thinking of getting an electric car at the end of the year, i'm making the assumption that charging the battery in the day and then using that to charge the car in the evening is a doable a thing !
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I have both solar panels and a battery. Brought the house with the panels and added a Powervault 8kw battery on the 1st of october.

https://www.powervault.co.uk/

You would need a pretty big battery to be able to charge a car overnight you'd be better off on an Octopus Go tariff and charge it at 5p per kwh.

A good place for research would be the money saving forum, plenty of knowledgeable guy's on their with different setups. https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.php?t=5568536&page=72#topofpage

A few people have a Pylon setup which is much cheaper but requires a bit of setting up and can be upgraded over time by just adding more battery packs.

https://solarsuppliesuk.co.uk/product/pylon-2-4kwh-solar-pv-storage-battery/
 
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413x said:
This!

The payback and potential problems are not worth it.
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Take a look at the money saving forum thread. Some people actually have them and think a little bit differently.

Our 2 Pylontechs (4.8kwh) with Lux ac controller should payback in around 7-8 years, maybe quicker if leccy prices rise.
This is including savings made from grid charging overnight in the winter on the Octopus Go tariff.
We only had ours installed a few weeks ago but like Nick, that's assuming savings of around £300-£350 a year.
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I have a 4kw system, it makes in a year around 6-700 a year, looked at getting a battery pack but at current prices is not worth it, I think the gov as stopped the subsidy for them now so I wouldn't get one now.
 
Doobedoo said:
I have both solar panels and a battery. Brought the house with the panels and added a Powervault 8kw battery on the 1st of october.

https://www.powervault.co.uk/

You would need a pretty big battery to be able to charge a car overnight you'd be better off on an Octopus Go tariff and charge it at 5p per kwh.

A good place for research would be the money saving forum, plenty of knowledgeable guy's on their with different setups. https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.php?t=5568536&page=72#topofpage

A few people have a Pylon setup which is much cheaper but requires a bit of setting up and can be upgraded over time by just adding more battery packs.

https://solarsuppliesuk.co.uk/product/pylon-2-4kwh-solar-pv-storage-battery/
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thats a really interesting thread. For me at least its as much about reducing my Co2 emissions as "saving money".....i suppose i need to so some sums. Perhaps the battery doesn't make sense yet, but the panels may.
 
Rroff said:
Do you have a whole day worth at this time of year?
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Yeah I’ll post up a few more examples later including the 2nd of October where we had a decent solar day and ran the house all day using nothing but solar.

During Winter solar power is much more limited but that can be substituted with cheap off peak power, in our case that’s 7p off peak compared to 18p peak.
 
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