I wanted to moan about the 2p rise in two days on diesel prices and say here we go againSorry cant fit a pump at home.
Last edited:
EV general discussion
- Thread starter Ricochet J
- Start date
and here we are only paying 2p/mileI wanted to moan about the 2p rise in two days on diesel prices and say here we go again
Deleted User 298457
Deleted User 298457
and here we are only paying 2p/mile
I still haven't bothered to distinguish the EV on my regular electricity bill. It is so trivial it is unreal (£80-£100 mo total incl standing charge).
Soldato
- Joined
- 23 May 2006
- Posts
- 7,948
it helps i have solar and a house battery combined with intelligent.... but even with charging 2 EVs our december and january electricity bills were £90 inc SC each month..... those are for the 2 worst months of the year for us.
I still haven't bothered to distinguish the EV on my regular electricity bill. It is so trivial it is unreal (£80-£100 mo total incl standing charge).
gas OTOH, that was also (just over) £90... on the bright side that should really plummet come march so only one more month of high gas hopefully, by which point hopefully my combined electricity and gas should be back to double digits (fingers crossed).
Which isnt to brag....... but i really do get fed up with folk (some who are friends) telling me that solar and battery in the UK "just doesnt work" because "we dont get enough sun".
(and our solar system now is looking positively archaic now after just 2.5 years, with 15x 340w panels. my parents in law had a system installed a year ago and in that time similar sized panels had gone up to 410ishw panels).
Last edited:
you’d expect a south facing system to pay back in 7-8 years so if it cost £7k to install, it should be netting you £1k saving per year. If it’s east-west it’s more like 10/11 years.
The battery when combined with a time of use tariff will pay back very quickly if it’s sized correctly. I’ve had mine 2 weeks and I’ve not touched day time electricity since, everything I’ve imported from the grid has been at 7.5p/kwh rather than 30p.
The battery when combined with a time of use tariff will pay back very quickly if it’s sized correctly. I’ve had mine 2 weeks and I’ve not touched day time electricity since, everything I’ve imported from the grid has been at 7.5p/kwh rather than 30p.
Last edited:
Soldato
- Joined
- 19 Oct 2002
- Posts
- 17,683
- Location
- Shakespeare’s County
Im personally of the view batterys make more sense that solar in the UK.
I had solar and home battery storage installed in July 2022. [14x 420w panels, 10 kWh battery and a solar diverter to heat water]
I'm not tracking the precise cost saving but generally the monthly energy saving is more than the monthly cost of the loan to get the system. [I think December is the only month we are over that]
Soldato
- Joined
- 23 May 2006
- Posts
- 7,948
it depends what your motivations are (save money, help the grid, be self sufficient as much as possible - the latter really mostly for deeply rural people with lots of power loss) , what kind of solar array you can fit as well as the gamble of export prices and cheap time of use prices.
both of them work on their own, either with just solar running your house when sunny and getting decent export prices on the correct tariff at the moment
or just a battery, if you can combine that with a time of use tariff to charge it on cheap power and run off battery
but having both means you really can make the most of cheap energy as well as harvest all of the sun you generate (with solar only you will over produce a lot for part of the day but not have any for the rest).
on the right tariff with good export prices there is an argument that you dont need a battery, equally there is an argument that if your battery is big enough and you have a cheap offpeak tariff like intelligent octopus (but you need an EV as well for that - tho given the topic of this thread perhaps that could help you decide to go full EV) you dont need solar as you can charge the battery super cheap and run the home off that.
add to that in the future if we end up being able to run our homes off our car battery then a home battery will lose some of its utility... but who knows when that will happen.
(how is that for fence sitting
)personally i would not be without either but ymmv..... but just having either one of them makes a huge difference and either one will pay for them selves (so long as energy prices dont radically alter)
Last edited:
It completely depends on your usage. If you are a light user spending only £30-40/month then obviously you aren't going to save thousands! On the other hand if you're running a server 24/7, doing washing machine/dryer loads every day, and charging a car every couple of days, then you're going to save a lot more.
Sticking the figures into my spreadsheet, if we were able to shift 90% of our usage to our night rate of 7.5p then we'd save ~£100/month on electricity. A battery is very tempting, but we're planning to move in the next 5 years or so, so solar not so much (battery can be moved easily* to the new property).
I assume the profits from selling your "product" will more than outweigh the costs though?
* obviously there are electrician costs for the disconnection and reconnection.
Last edited:
I think when I did calcs, the most saving I could get would have been batteries, charged overnight on Int Octopus then run the house for the rest of the day..
Solar helps, but payback time increased, although getting solar at the same time as batteries allows the VAT to be removed (I think that's still the case!)..
However, I'd need 20kwh of batteries for our house (4 adults, 2 are largely home during the day, a fair bit of 'tech' on etc, around 20kwh per day, currently around £1800 a year)..
I think £15k minimum, possibly £20k for a full install and that is quite a lot to recoup..
Solar helps, but payback time increased, although getting solar at the same time as batteries allows the VAT to be removed (I think that's still the case!)..
However, I'd need 20kwh of batteries for our house (4 adults, 2 are largely home during the day, a fair bit of 'tech' on etc, around 20kwh per day, currently around £1800 a year)..
I think £15k minimum, possibly £20k for a full install and that is quite a lot to recoup..
Last edited:
Yeah, I think we're looking at a 7-8 year payback for battery only with a cheap time-of-use tariff, or 9-10 with solar as well
This ^ based on standard unit pricing for the last 12 months I generated just under £1,200 worth of electric on a system that was £6,000 to install. It will pay for itself in theory in 6 years depending on what happens with electricity prices, allowing an extra year to allow for DC-AC loss.
Especially with getting paid for export nothing is going to waste. If you have the money and a suitable location to install it's the biggest no brainer solution I've ever seen.
you can now get a 15kwh battery for £2500, you just need an inverter, say £600, an electrician to install it and some paperwork from your DNO.
We are going well off topic, there is a massive thread on this in home and garden. Please use it.
Soldato
- Joined
- 23 May 2006
- Posts
- 7,948
do check but i *think* from the start of this year vat on batteries has been scrapped (and home car chargers) are now vat free regardless of if the same time as a solar install or not.
Last edited:
My main problem with solar is that I've got a really bad roof for it being a hip type with the southern elevation being the triangular end. West is a decent size chunk of roof but partially shaded by massive oak trees in the afternoon. East elevation the kitchen juts out so the roof is broken up into small sections.
Maybe something will come out in the future that would make it worthwhile putting something on the south side. Just need someone to invent triangular panels
Maybe something will come out in the future that would make it worthwhile putting something on the south side. Just need someone to invent triangular panels
Soldato
- Joined
- 23 May 2006
- Posts
- 7,948
in which case - assuming you dont want land solar, then a battery will be your big win..... and keeping on topic, if you were to get an EV, that would allow you to charge both the car and the home battery for 7.5p / kwh, which allowing for inefficiencies would be the equivalent of maybe 8.5p kwh electricity when running off battery (as well as the 7.5p between 11:30pm - 5:30am as well as any bonus slots).My main problem with solar is that I've got a really bad roof for it being a hip type with the southern elevation being the triangular end. West is a decent size chunk of roof but partially shaded by massive oak trees in the afternoon. East elevation the kitchen juts out so the roof is broken up into small sections.
Maybe something will come out in the future that would make it worthwhile putting something on the south side. Just need someone to invent triangular panels