Ronski's Solar & battery DIY build with whole house backup

That's an average of around 16 kWh a day, background usage is around 500w, that straight away is 12 kWh a day. There is a server running 24/7 (consumes on average 226w), 2 fridges freezers, various networking equipment and other everyday stuff. Oven is electric, we watch TV, use computers etc.

Personally I blame the Mrs, she's always making tea :cry: Seriously though, compared to some its low, others its high, so I'd say slightly above average usage.
 
That's an average of around 16 kWh a day, background usage is around 500w, that straight away is 12 kWh a day. There is a server running 24/7 (consumes on average 226w), 2 fridges freezers, various networking equipment and other everyday stuff. Oven is electric, we watch TV, use computers etc.

Personally I blame the Mrs, she's always making tea :cry: Seriously though, compared to some its low, others its high, so I'd say slightly above average usage.
slightly above average usage.

i thought i was average. i consume 2000kwh a year! a year!
 
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i thought i was average. i consume 2kwh a year! a year!
You sure you only consume 2 kWh a year???? I'm sure you've got something wrong there!

According to Ofgem the average flat or 1 bedroom house consumes 1800 kWh a year, the average 4+ bedroom house which we come into is 4100 kWh. Going by what I've seen posted on here 6000 kWh a year is quite low compared to some.
 
You sure you only consume 2 kWh a year???? I'm sure you've got something wrong there!

According to Ofgem the average flat or 1 bedroom house consumes 1800 kWh a year, the average 4+ bedroom house which we come into is 4100 kWh. Going by what I've seen posted on here 6000 kWh a year is quite low compared to some.
yes, just got my bill yesterday and it still says 2000kwh electricity annual estimate, and it has been for the last 5 years. 10000kwh of gas.
this is a 4-bed semi-detached. i do have a 2kwh solar panel, but no batteries, so it all gets exported if i dont use it. Taking an average of 4 years of generations gives me 5kwh a day, most of it tends be in the summer, which is then exported out
 
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yes, just got my bill yesterday and it still says 2kwh electricity annual estimate, and it has been for the last 5 years. 10kwh of gas.
this is a 4-bed semi-detached. i do have a 2kwh solar panel, but no batteries, so it all gets exported if i dont use it. Taking an average of 4 years of generations gives me 5kwh a day, most of it tends be in the summer, which is then exported out
you sure its not 2000kwh a year electric and 10,000kwh a year gas….

otherwise it doesnt make sense.
 
@Megahackerd If you run a router 24/7/365 that will use roughly 7.5w, that's 65.7 kWh a year, now you're going to be running a fridge as well, as various other stuff, you see why I don't think your using 2 kWh a year?

2 KW of panels is not going to produce a lot, probably around 2000kWh a year, even if it completely covered you're background usage, there would still be the hours of darkness.

As @Welshman has suggested, its likely to 2000 kWh or 2 MWh, which is far more believable.
 
@Megahackerd If you run a router 24/7/365 that will use roughly 7.5w, that's 65.7 kWh a year, now you're going to be running a fridge as well, as various other stuff, you see why I don't think your using 2 kWh a year?

2 KW of panels is not going to produce a lot, probably around 2000kWh a year, even if it completely covered you're background usage, there would still be the hours of darkness.

As @Welshman has suggested, its likely to 2000 kWh or 2 MWh, which is far more believable.
sorry my bad. i was supposed to type 2k kwh and missed the k
 
how come victrons are recommended. i see renogy and they seems far cheaper for a charge controller
If you're building your own system Victron is the way to go really, individual components = easy to replace anything that goes wrong.
I have 3 Rasbery Pi's running my 3 system, and you can configure so much.
 
Everything has come down in price, would certainly be a lot cheaper now, I also wouldn't build my own batteries, would probably use the Gobal Power batteries.

@Megahackerd As with everything, it depends what you want, how much flexibility, what quality, how much you're willing to pay etc. My inverter can easily exceed 8kW (they do a 12kW one as well) , it was pretty straight forward to connect it up so it could power the entire house in the event of a power cut -and my Solaredge system will keep running then as well.

I wrote my own code which runs on the Victron system to control forced discharging, how many inverters can you do that on?
 
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Everything has come down in price, would certainly be a lot cheaper now, I also wouldn't build my own batteries, would probably use the Gobal Power batteries.

@Megahackerd As with everything, it depends what you want, how much flexibility, what quality, how much you're willing to pay etc. My inverter can easily exceed 8kW (they do a 12kW one as well) , it was pretty straight forward to connect it up so it could power the entire house in the event of a power cut -and my Solaredge system will keep running then as well.

I wrote my own code which runs on the Victron system to control forced discharging, how many inverters can you do that on?
Thanks. For my use case (powering lights in the shed and garden) it seem a bit overkill to have that much control, but I can understand in your scenario
 
I now have my heating system fully connected up, and the Cerbo will turn it on if/when the batteries get down to 8°C and turn it off at 12°C.

I've also now have my functional incubators, made from polycarbonate. I've basically got four sides, which bolt to the aluminium end plates, and a top, so each battery is enclosed. I've bolted three sides on both batteries, still need to make the mounts for the fourth side on each.

This is the only picture I have at the moment, its one of the end plates.

End-Cover.jpg


They certainly appear to retain the heat for longer, if its still not enough I'll have to wrap them in a fire blanket.

The last 24 hours temperatures. The orange and green line is the two batteries, the white line is a temperature sensor thats on an isolator that gets a bit warm - you can see how quick that drops off compared to the batteries.

Temperatures.jpg
 
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