Looking to go solar

Same here. My battery costs 67.5p to fill up, that does me on a normal day.

One good thing about a Tesla is that it can discharge at 5kwh. Without that high discharge rate I’d be needing the grid from time to time even with plenty of juice in the tank.
 
Alright so had a good think today, and I think solar with battery would make sense if I can fill it overnight for cheap.

Without any crypto farming I use about 10 kwh per day, but if I add my Chia farm it may creep nearer to 20, bundle some aircon on top, and on really hot summer days I could certainly use around 24 kwh per day.

Couple of queries though:

I understand that to really take advantage of a battery you need to have a tariff that has cheap overnight rates, I'm currently on the variable/capped one with EDF, but I do have an older smart meter, think it's a SMETS1 version. Do all providers have one like this? I'm guessing night rate is cheaper but day rate may be more expensive.

For the SEG export thing, how does this work? Can I sell extra energy generation to the best bidder or does it have to be my energy company?

For batteries themselves, having a quick read in the other thread, it seems they can only discharge so quickly. What is the rate of discharge for a standard home battery? I would not wish to expend the kind of cash I'd need to get something like a Powerwall.
 
HungryHippos said:
For batteries themselves, having a quick read in the other thread, it seems they can only discharge so quickly. What is the rate of discharge for a standard home battery? I would not wish to expend the kind of cash I'd need to get something like a Powerwall.
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Lots of packs offer various discharge rates, it totally depends on the approach you take, so use small modular style batteries, that are as little at ~2kWh per pack and can be stacked and offer higher discharge rates, I'd suggest you look at what sort of pack size you want to achieve/can afford then look at what is on offer from the various manufacturers, a power wall is not an exception by any means lots of packs can discharge at 5kW+.

HungryHippos said:
For the SEG export thing, how does this work? Can I sell extra energy generation to the best bidder or does it have to be my energy company?
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You can have a completely different company taking your outbound vs. your inbound, but the best price is 5.5p per kWh.

HungryHippos said:
I understand that to really take advantage of a battery you need to have a tariff that has cheap overnight rates, I'm currently on the variable/capped one with EDF, but I do have an older smart meter, think it's a SMETS1 version. Do all providers have one like this? I'm guessing night rate is cheaper but day rate may be more expensive.
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You'll need a SMETS2 meter AFAIK still, but companies like Octopus will arrange one to be installed for you at no cost.
 
Yep thanks, seems like Octopus Go is the kind of thing you'd need, 7.5p/kwh for 4 hours between 00:30 and 04:30, which in theory is enough time to fill a decent sized battery up with smart charging.

I do wonder though if these types of cheap unit prices on the overnight thing will always exist? If you add a battery and prices keep going up and up then the battery becomes less worthwhile.

The way I see it, panels by themselves may well be worth it, just to help cover some costs and pair with the aircon for summer time cooling.

Battery would likely be worth it as long as you can get good overnight pricing for at least a few hours a night, if not then battery would wind up costing too much.

The unit rates on Octopus Go for electric outside of night time are higher as well, worth bearing in mind. Not sure if they will also be going up more with the cap changes.
 
I've had a couple of chats with installers, and the most sensible layout for me is probably about 10 panels, with 390W panels it's basically a 3.9KW system.

I am still not convinced a battery is worth it, unless you can definitely get really cheap off-tariff electric all the time, I don't see this as 100% possible though.

Are the Octopus Go rates going up in April? they would become even less attractive if so.

I think the panels alone would be worth it anyway, take the edge off the monthly bills, but for the battery to make sense I either need insane generation which I can't get, or I think I need a really good reliable tariff that won't have the rug pulled out from under me later.

My plan may be to just add panels for now and worry about battery addition down the line.
 
With FIT at 5-6p unless you are at home all day I struggle to see solar as viable without a battery. Would need to properly crunch the numbers though.
 
Will be at home at least 4 days a week maybe 5, hoping for 5 or so.

Run a chia farm which is currently about 740TB of hard drives, and I have aircon as well. I can use a lot of what I generate I think without needing to store anything.

Depends on a few factors though I think, battery isn't an absolute necessity if you can consume a good percentage of generated kwhs without one.
 
HungryHippos said:
I've had a couple of chats with installers, and the most sensible layout for me is probably about 10 panels, with 390W panels it's basically a 3.9KW system.

I am still not convinced a battery is worth it, unless you can definitely get really cheap off-tariff electric all the time, I don't see this as 100% possible though.

Are the Octopus Go rates going up in April? they would become even less attractive if so.

I think the panels alone would be worth it anyway, take the edge off the monthly bills, but for the battery to make sense I either need insane generation which I can't get, or I think I need a really good reliable tariff that won't have the rug pulled out from under me later.

My plan may be to just add panels for now and worry about battery addition down the line.
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Octopus Go is going to £0.30/£0.075

There are others I think eon for example is still at £0.045 but it's a matter of being able to get in to new suppliers currently.
 
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