Home solar with battery storage

Don't use Project Solar! Horrendously bad company in every way.

I have panels for saving money and reducing co2.
I would like batteries, but cost too much currently.
 
@Doobedoo thanks for the insight and links, when we put the new roof and extension on we were unable to get sufficient panels on the house, but have planning for a large workshop/gym/storage that will face the correct way and have room for a good few panels and I planned on doing what you currently do, I'm maybe 2 years off completing this part of the build so had my fingers crossed technology and prices will improve in that time frame.
 
JRJ said:
@Doobedoo thanks for the insight and links, when we put the new roof and extension on we were unable to get sufficient panels on the house, but have planning for a large workshop/gym/storage that will face the correct way and have room for a good few panels and I planned on doing what you currently do, I'm maybe 2 years off completing this part of the build so had my fingers crossed technology and prices will improve in that time frame.
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I wouldn’t expect prices to improve much over the next couple of years. Yes they are still overpriced as is all new technology to begin with, but demand for lithium batteries is set to increase massively which in turn means we should see a reduction in prices. The problem is ev’s will hoover up most of the supply.

Over time we will see a reduction but possibly not until supply outweighs demand. Who knows when that will be.

If price is an issue then Pylontech would be your best bet.
 
Stolly said:
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.
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neither makes sense.

the first question is do you plan on living in your current home for at least 30 years? are you okay with blowing several thousands of pounds to save £200 a year? meaning you get your money back in 25 years time?

alternatively why not just invest the money instead?
 
Always with costs first everything else later.

Does everything everyone does always make financial sense? People go out and spend £40k on a car, and it losses half the value in 3-4 years. So I hardly think spending a few thousand on a battery is a bad investment, at least it will eventually pay for itself, unlike the deprecation you take from a car.

Not to mention the fact some people actually want to make a difference to the planet while they can, every bit of energy you can produce, store, and use locally means less infrastructure needed to support yet another household.

Lead by example, not with your wallet. What good is it going to be having a great investment portfolio if you live in a polluted mess of a world, spend all that saved money on air filters, and pollution reduction and sun cream, and flood defences etc?

If everyone is/was so selfish (and most are) we might as well just get it over with and start WW3.
 
The irony is that I have factored in with the cost of the battery that I will use my fit payments to pay for it.
So the reality is this battery will cost me nothing and actually people like psycho sunny will contribute unknowingly anyway.

The other side of it is we live on an estate with no gas supply, so I need electricity to also heat my home and water. Any savings has a bigger impact. It also means I am probably the only person in my area with a battery, so that can only be a plus if I ever come to sell.

Im not an environmental eco warrior but I am conscious of my/our impact and would like to do as much as I can, where I can. I’d love an ev but cant currently justify one.
 
We have panels that came with the new house, and don't intend on getting a battery as we use the day generation as my MiL lives with us.

In terms of the batteries paying themselves off over 20/25 years.... will they last that long in ther first place? My laptop and phone batteries don't fair too well after just a few years.
 
10 year guaranteed with 70% of original capacity. People on the money saving forum are talking about them lasting much longer.

I’m not sure if anyone has had one for that long, yet.
 
If you're wanting home storage, Lead Acid traction batteries (forklift or golf cart batteries) are by far the best cost/performance, 1/4 of the price of Lithium Ion batteries
 
balls said:
If you're wanting home storage, Lead Acid traction batteries (forklift or golf cart batteries) are by far the best cost/performance, 1/4 of the price of Lithium Ion batteries
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Agreed, but a lot bulkier and heaver. And they need maintenance too.

If you are willing to take the risk.....!

For example, though there are many others

(For lead acid to have long life, you do not want to cycle more than about 10-15% of total AH capacity, so you need to specify at least 5 times what you actually think you want/need)

Of course, If you can snag yourself some ex submarine batteries then you are laughing! :cool:
 
Journey said:
Always with costs first everything else later.

Does everything everyone does always make financial sense? People go out and spend £40k on a car, and it losses half the value in 3-4 years. So I hardly think spending a few thousand on a battery is a bad investment, at least it will eventually pay for itself, unlike the deprecation you take from a car.

Not to mention the fact some people actually want to make a difference to the planet while they can, every bit of energy you can produce, store, and use locally means less infrastructure needed to support yet another household.

Lead by example, not with your wallet. What good is it going to be having a great investment portfolio if you live in a polluted mess of a world, spend all that saved money on air filters, and pollution reduction and sun cream, and flood defences etc?

If everyone is/was so selfish (and most are) we might as well just get it over with and start WW3.
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The point is if you don't use the energy it goes into the grid for someone else to use. So it's not a complete waste. Someone else gets to use your clean energy rather than them buying in dirty energy.

Now take the environmental impact of producing the batteries, transporting them across the world and then installing them.

If your solar doesn't produce enough to keep them charged a lot of the time all year around or you don't set them up to charge from the grid as you don't use off peak power supply. Then the batteries will degrade even faster than normal. Also is their power diminished being outside the home or in the cold garage in cold winters?

So yes you are causing more harm than good if you cannot keep them topped up.

I only have a 2kw solar array on my roof. Last week I made 4.1 Kwh total.

I don't have a off peak meter. So i can't charge the batteries for cheap either. The plus side is my all day energy is cheaper than his peak energy. I pay around 12p vs his 15-18p.

I also have gas central heating which is far cheaper than electric heating which is probably why he has off peak energy type.

So for his specific case it may be wortwhile. But again it is a very specific case. It won't suit everyone.
 
Doobedoo said:
10 year guaranteed with 70% of original capacity. People on the money saving forum are talking about them lasting much longer.

I’m not sure if anyone has had one for that long, yet.
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The problem is you wont save enough money from the battery in 10 years to pay for the new battery you need in 10 years. Any money saved from the battery will go towards the replacement battery meaning it makes you get less money from the entire system. Remove the battery and increase your profits.

EDIT: At least when I ran the numbers a few months ago that was true. If its changed I would like to see the numbers so I can get one.
 
There is nothing to say the battery won’t last as long as my solar panels which is great. At that point hopefully prices have reduced so increasing my capacity or replacing is not so much of a big thing.

I agree if your main concern is punching numbers and salivating over roi’s then put it in a bank or whatever.

Fortunately or unfortunately depending on your perspective I guess, crunching numbers and profits are not really a big part of my life. You could even say that, that level of thinking is what has caused us to sleepwalk into current environmental concerns we have heard so much about.
 
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Some more interesting things.

V2G trial with solar energy
If you have solar or other microgeneration systems, we'll pay you 26p for every kWh sold back to the grid, as measured by your OVO Smart Meter. That includes all of the energy exported from your other microgeneration, as well as the energy exported via your vehicle-to-grid charger.

https://www.ovoenergy.com/electric-cars/vehicle-to-grid-charger

The grid is the UK’s energy network, connecting millions of homes to thermal power stations and renewable energy sources. And it’s getting greener. But green energy is intermittent by nature. We can’t switch it on when demand is high. And without flexibility, adding more renewables to the grid is complicated and expensive.

For a flexible, balanced grid, we need more control. And that starts on your driveway.
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Doobedoo said:
There is nothing to say the battery won’t last as long as my solar panels which is great. At that point hopefully prices have reduced so increasing my capacity or replacing is not so much of a big thing.

I agree if your main concern is punching numbers and salivating over roi’s then put it in a bank or whatever.

Fortunately or unfortunately depending on your perspective I guess, crunching numbers and profits are not really a big part of my life. You could even say that, that level of thinking is what has caused us to sleepwalk into current environmental concerns we have heard so much about.
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Do you realise that if what we are saying about the battery's is correct then not only are they wasting money but they are environmentally unfriendly. Not crunching numbers and profits is how you sleep walk into environmental concerns.

No home battery will last as long as good solar panels. That's not how battery's work. Even the best batteries will have a fraction of the lifespan compared to solar panels. If there is a new battery system that is worth it I would love to know. I have been the edge of getting a system for years but every time I crunch the numbers they turn out to be environmentally unfriendly and don't save any money.

EDIT: I have not crunched the numbers on your system. Which is why I was asking for them as I am looking for a worthwhile battery system that is environmentally friendly and saves money. So far I have been unable to find one.
 
Air your concerns over on the money saving forum plenty of people who know more than me will debate on the subject.

You claim it’s a waste of money I say otherwise. I put my money where my mouth is and so far it’s working for us and will only get better as the weather improves.
 
I’ll post up this post from the money saving forum as it sums it up to some degree.

I think if you are going for a battery on straight out financial terms, its borderline even with shopping around for the best deal to get a break even in 10 years. Infact I'd say its highly unlikely.

The cheapest way to do it even now seems to be with a sofar me3000sp and pylontech batteries.
But if you go for 6kwh useable (7.2kwh) and use it fully every day, assuming a 13p/kwh charge then you can save 6x365x0.13 =£285 a year.
A quick glance at Ebay says that system will cost you £3k and that's Installing yourself , so over the 10 years it will cost you £150.
You could argue the batteries working that way will last 20 years, and so you could almost double your investment over the 20 years.

However, that's quite flawed, you dont generally get enough solar to charge the batteries in the winter.
My sofar which has been in for just shy of 11 months has done only 183 full battery cycles not the 330 odds you would expect if it had been cycling every day for 11 months.
Theres a caveat in there about micro cycles where it discharges a couple of kwh and then is recharged up to 100% again.
My system doesnt read that so I dont know how much of that the system is doing, i can only read total full cycles of the controlling battery, some days its doing a lot of micro cycles, and some days none at all.

So you can set it to charge on e7. And so save 8p /kwh, but say you do that for the 150 darkest days of winter, you are only saving 6x150x0.08= £72
Plus the 183 days I've saved is 183x6x0.13 = £142 so a saving of £214

So after nearly a year of running batteries I cant see the breakeven being ten years, 15 or so seems logical I think.

So with all this said, I would obviously advise against batteries right?

On the contrary, I'd say if you are going batteries. go big.
I'm about to invest another few thousand to get my storage to around 22kwh, as that's what my house tends to use on an average day.

The new lux parallel systems will run the pylontech at 90% discharge in comparison with 80% discharge on the sofar.
And being parallel, they can cover 7.2kw of load, instead of the 3kw of the sofar.

Will it break even in 10 years? Not a chance, but it will give me a ton of satisfaction at not buying leccy at 13p pretty much ever.

This month isn't necessarily a great month to use, but I'm gonna anyway, this month I've exported over 200kwh, but bought 175kwh.
Theres no other way to justify my expenditure than just to say this sort of thing irritates me.
I mean at 13p, the total cost is only £22 odds, so hardly earth shattering, but it just irritates me.

Most of my solar is not fit, so I'm not getting paid for most of it, and so I want to self consume as much as possible.

My analysis is probably similar to many on here, and I know Mmmmikey has decided that he is going to use the export tariff to offset cost and charge overnight, and make the sun powered immersion redundant by also immersing overnight too, but I'm looking to self use, rather than *profit*, so I'm looking to move to using more of my solar rather than exporting it.

Or at least, that's my feeling today, I've flip flopped on this quite a few times, including recently calling ovo about the v2g trial.... mostly because I'm interested in using the v2g charger as a v2h charger after the trial, but also because they were advertising a high export tariff in the evenings for grid support.

However my leaf is a 15 plate and still under warranty. You can sign a letter to say you opt out of the warranty... but it's not just the battery warranty, it's the entire car warranty.

Also they are not really interested in large solar arrays, they ideally want to be at the 4kw array size.

Finally they want around 1000 people on the trial, so far they have less than 100, so goal posts may move.

Hope that helps someone
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They're a bit late to the future. The Japanese did stuff like that years ago, allowing people to use their electric cars as a power supply during the aftermath of the tsunami.

Until they have a breakthrough with Lithium-Air, the battery tech we use won't last. THe thing is, battery powered cars just shift the CO2 emissions elsewhere rather than make a solution, which is perfect for NIMBY's I guess.
 
One of the hidden benefits of course of having battery storage is should there be a grid outage you have some control over what you have stored and can in theory still function when the rest are sitting in the dark trying to find a candle ;)
I bet you would be popular with the neighbours at that point

Currently they are using new cells and hence they are expensive. Plenty predict that once EVs start being recycled and with the batteries estimated as being probably 70% capacity by that point, the logical next step is these will go into home and commercial battery storage where the density issue will be far less of a problem.
 
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