Solar panels and battery - any real world recommendations?

reef said:
It will be a total pain on the Fox. I priced up full EPS with an automatic changover switch on a Fox KH10 and the amount of work needed meant it was just cheaper to go Sigenergy with the gateway. Fox really need to come out with an equivalent. Originally they said June for it, but there has been no sign.

I would have needed two new consumer units (in both house and garage) and the changover switch itself. Even then, it wouldn't be instant.

Like you we get regular power cuts so needed something, especially as we're all electric.
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I had 4 power cuts in the space of 24 hours. 3 in the same day (due to recent lightning storm) and another the following day. The joys of living semi-rural in East Yorks :D
 
rangor gubbins said:
If i had the time, I'd love to build a system similar to yours. But unfortunately due to budget and time availability I have to go with a more basic system (Fox ESS).
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Solax is not massively different in price to fox and it costs in the region of £500-600 to convert to full EPS.
As it intercepts the incoming feeds (all do I believe for full EPS) then you don't need to mess with your house wiring.

I have solax and I was not a big fan initially but they have done a lot of work on the options and now I think its actually pretty darn good.

I have had two power outages since I had mine and its practically instant changeover. 1 PC went out one time and the other the other time.
My cooker clock which is super sensitive didn't go wonky either time.

I would look for a solax installer as well and see what they can do.
Unfortunately my installer wont cover your patch, I do rate them pretty highly TBH.

This is what I have.
www.solaxpower.com

SolaX X-ESS G4 | Solar ESS System | 3-7.5 kW | 5-15 kW

The SolaX X-ESS G4 is an all-in-one smart energy storage system with an inverter, battery, and Matebox, featuring a modular design for easy installation and scalable configurations. Contact us today!
www.solaxpower.com www.solaxpower.com
If you look at the picture with the full system (its by the "product advantage") from top to bottom its inverter, matebox, bms, 2x battery, floor stand
The matebox is the bit that has two options, a normal one and one that provides full house EPS so you pick the one you want which is why the price diff is not that high to add full house EPS.

Personally from what you have said I would contact solax ask from some local installers and get one to quote for what you want.
It can't hurt to see.
 
My automatic switchover is in the ‘could be fastert’ camp and usually most of my electronics reboot even if you only see a slight flicker in the lights.

We had a powercut the other day and everything stayed on but the solar was pumping at the time so that may have kept stuff up.
 
Personally I don't really care if stuff goes out/reboots. I mean sure its nice if they don't, but I don't want the agro of having to manually switch a circuit.
I know it will switch and unless I happen to be overloading it all will be good.
The important stuff is fridge, fridge freezer and freezer. The rest is just life and if I hadn't got solar then they would all be out completely
Actually just realised its 3 outages, the last time Pcs didnt go out and there was just a light flicker, what tipped us off first was house alarms going off, then the drama started on the local facebook group.

IMO if you want outage support (islanding as most call it) there is no reason to accept manual solutions now.
If Fox can't do an automated solution for sensible money and you want EPS then Fox isn't the correct manufacturers kit to buy into.
Its part of the issue with some installers only wanting to install a certain manufacturers kit, if thats not the right kit for you they don't simply say so
 
Mercenary Keyboard Warrior said:
Solax is not massively different in price to fox and it costs in the region of £500-600 to convert to full EPS.
As it intercepts the incoming feeds (all do I believe for full EPS) then you don't need to mess with your house wiring.

I have solax and I was not a big fan initially but they have done a lot of work on the options and now I think its actually pretty darn good.

I have had two power outages since I had mine and its practically instant changeover. 1 PC went out one time and the other the other time.
My cooker clock which is super sensitive didn't go wonky either time.

I would look for a solax installer as well and see what they can do.
Unfortunately my installer wont cover your patch, I do rate them pretty highly TBH.

This is what I have.
www.solaxpower.com

SolaX X-ESS G4 | Solar ESS System | 3-7.5 kW | 5-15 kW

The SolaX X-ESS G4 is an all-in-one smart energy storage system with an inverter, battery, and Matebox, featuring a modular design for easy installation and scalable configurations. Contact us today!
www.solaxpower.com www.solaxpower.com
If you look at the picture with the full system (its by the "product advantage") from top to bottom its inverter, matebox, bms, 2x battery, floor stand
The matebox is the bit that has two options, a normal one and one that provides full house EPS so you pick the one you want which is why the price diff is not that high to add full house EPS.

Personally from what you have said I would contact solax ask from some local installers and get one to quote for what you want.
It can't hurt to see.
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Your system sounds good. I'm buying ours through the solar together scheme, so can only choose fox ess or tesla.
I'm going to go with the fox ess, without eps backup as the company installing it will only do EPS with a dedicated new mini CU. But I may look into asking another electrician to do the wiring for EPS backup tied to our existing CU at a later date.
 
I've not watched the video but I prediction is South/North is better in winter but east/west is better in summer and overall it works out as a wash.

I will edit as to wether I was correct or not in a few minitues.

Edit: pretty sure I was right, 3% difference is in the margin of error IMO. He didn't discuss the winter/summer differences but I know in the real world my neighbours much smaller south facing array out performs my larger east-west array in the dephs of winter by a material margin for that ~6 week period.
 
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The thing is, if you have a heat pump, that ~6 week period is when the solar panel electricity will save you the most amount of money.

But in the end it doesn't really matter - the difference is not that big, as to make the roof orientation a major factor when choosing a house to buy. Even less, a reason to relocate.
 
Ron-ski said:
If moving, then a house with a decent size roof, without obstacles and shading is more important than orientation I'd say.
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Ideally I would say the ability to have a tracking ground array would be above suitable roof for me. :) ;)

Next move if it happens will be to where we can have land and a 10kw+ array of both plane and pitch tracking would be on my must do list.

But yeah 20 panels facing east/west better than 10 panels facing south for sure.
 
Ron-ski said:
Don't forget sufficient land to have a wind turbine, oh and a suitable stream for hydro electric ;)
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I probably would wind turbine if I could*, unless I move its too flat round here for a stream of any consequence :)

*But it would need to be a proper one not a silly scaled down funky contraption attached to a house :)
 
Heyo fellow OCUKers, a relative is looking at some solar panels and I was wondering if you fine folk had any recommendations on companies as I know nothing! They're based near north london.

They've had Project Solar round and Octopus, from memory. Octopus I can't remember what they said, Project Solar quoted 10 panels for ~20k. I know nothing more than that unfortunately.

I'd suggested solar and a battery a while back, so this is kinda all my fault. Though it does seem that they've potentially ditched the battery idea.

Thanks all.

Edit: the 20k is with a battery, I did think it was a bit high.
 
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Obviously we have no details but 20k for 10 panels and battery sounds quite lofty, loftie.

10 panels and a battery is sub 10k these days.
 
Yep definitely too high. My initial quotes were between £12-16k for 8-16 panels and a battery. In the end it came out to £11.5k for 12 panels, battery and gateway. Some companies worth checking out are Project Green, Array Electrics and Little Green Energy Company. Probably best to stay away from Heatable - they're usually far more expensive.
 
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Thanks for the quick responses folks. Was my thoughts too.

I have a few more details.

10 evolution max 500w panels.
Fox energy cube 8.6kwh.

I believe there was wiggle room on the price TBF, but that was the 'sticker price'.

I can't see any form of gateway (dunno what the proper term is).

Not sure if they calculated the max panels, I believe they could be pushed to 12 they said. One of the neighbours has (iirc) 12, though I did think they could have had more. Depends on the footprint of the panel I suppose.
 
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