Solar panels and battery - any real world reccomendations?

HungryHippos · 13 Oct 2022 at 12:50

But not the horrible brown Noctua fans.

katie279 · 13 Oct 2022 at 12:57

Yeah think I'm gonna wait until the Givenergy 9.5Ti Founders Edition - uses more energy than it stores.....

john_smith · 13 Oct 2022 at 13:06

HungryHippos said:
Yes the interface of the Givenergy site is really good, lots of good data for techies

Thinking about adding RGB to mine, make it a bit quicker if I put in red RGB.

My power wall has a green led round the side. It's a shame it's not RGB and changes colour to indicate charge.

Mercenary Keyboard Warrior · 13 Oct 2022 at 13:24

katie279 said:
Yeah think I'm gonna wait until the Givenergy 9.5Ti Founders Edition - uses more energy than it stores.....

Can it run Crysis?

katie279 · 13 Oct 2022 at 13:35

Need to check with my husband - like most girls, I only play the Sims.......

StuB · 13 Oct 2022 at 13:59

Kill_Phil said:
Finally found a reasonably priced installer. Any experience of solis anyone? Have 2 options 1) solis inverter with 2 x 5.2kw fox batteries and 2) givenergy inverter with 9.5kw givenergy battery.

Solis setup actually comes in a bit cheaper but tempted by the givenergy as seems more established and be less space to install?

Roughly what sort of price were you quoted for the Givenergy?

Kill_Phil · 13 Oct 2022 at 16:09

StuB said:
Roughly what sort of price were you quoted for the Givenergy?

Just shy of 13k but that's with bird mesh protection. Tbf it's still on the high side but given the current market don't think I'll get it any cheaper....

And @Mercenary Keyboard Warrior apologies its the lv5200 which is actually 5.12kwh

Mercenary Keyboard Warrior · 13 Oct 2022 at 16:13

Kill_Phil said:
Just shy of 13k but that's with bird mesh protection. Tbf it's still on the high side but given the current market don't think I'll get it any cheaper....

And @Mercenary Keyboard Warrior apologies its the lv5200 which is actually 5.12kwh

right and no worries, so its got 90% DOD anyway, so useable is 4.68 which means the GE is actually probably slightly higher in usable

Journey · 13 Oct 2022 at 16:13

HungryHippos said:
Thinking about adding RGB to mine, make it a bit quicker if I put in red RGB.

katie279 said:
Yeah, agree - was thinking of getting a whole set of RGB fans to cool the inverter. If I can avoid negative airflow in the case, then it might just allow me to squeeze a bit more out....

Right, I am so going to get some RGB 50-50 strips for my Victron gear and new battery rack. If I don't get anything extra from it, at least we'll have some real data to base future setups on.

Although on a serious note, I could hook it up to the Victron GX and have it change colour based on the charge of the batteries, green for full, yellow/orange for discharging and red for totally out of juice.

SoliD · 13 Oct 2022 at 16:48

Brown for powercut?

StuB · 13 Oct 2022 at 17:00

Kill_Phil said:
Just shy of 13k but that's with bird mesh protection. Tbf it's still on the high side but given the current market don't think I'll get it any cheaper....

And @Mercenary Keyboard Warrior apologies its the lv5200 which is actually 5.12kwh

Thanks, assuming you've got a reasonable number of solar panels then that seems to be about the going rate.

Kill_Phil · 13 Oct 2022 at 17:20

StuB said:
Thanks, assuming you've got a reasonable number of solar panels then that seems to be about the going rate.

Yeah it's for a 5.4kwh system. Have the option to expand on the other side of the roof down the line

Journey · 13 Oct 2022 at 18:13

SoliD said:
Brown for powercut?

You can't make brown from LED's as brown is a shade (best description I can give atm) of orange.

Besides brown is the colour of AC live in my house, so that would be backwards. :cry:

Ron-ski · 13 Oct 2022 at 18:51

Those of us that will have whole house backup need some sort of warning system that there is a power cut, otherwise we could potentially overload the inverter, what are the solutions?

Mercenary Keyboard Warrior · 13 Oct 2022 at 18:55

Ron-ski said:
Those of us that will have whole house backup need some sort of warning system that there is a power cut, otherwise we could potentially overload the inverter, what are the solutions?

Spy on your neighbours

Ron-ski · 13 Oct 2022 at 18:56

Mercenary Keyboard Warrior said:
Spy on your neighbours

Probably the first we'd know is when they come knocking asking why we still have power

Mercenary Keyboard Warrior · 13 Oct 2022 at 18:58

Ron-ski said:
Probably the first we'd know is when they come knocking asking why we still have power

In all seriousness yes.

We had apower cut couple of months ago and within a couple of minutes the neighbour was out as well as us trying to look in peoples houses to see how far it went

Eventually I managed to get onto national grids site

OH! You can sign up on national grid for alerts at your postcode

Ron-ski · 13 Oct 2022 at 19:13

That's the thing though, when you have a power cut you know because the lights go out etc, but with whole house back up they won't, so you wouldn't go peering out the windows etc.

You can buy alarms etc, or it may be something in my case that the Victron software can do, I have however just signed up to UK Power Networks text alert service (thanks)

Troop · 13 Oct 2022 at 19:32

Ron-ski said:
That's the thing though, when you have a power cut you know because the lights go out etc, but with whole house back up they won't, so you wouldn't go peering out the windows etc.

You can buy alarms etc, or it may be something in my case that the Victron software can do, I have however just signed up to UK Power Networks text alert service (thanks)

You can set up an alarm on the VRM portal to email you any alarm state, works well, I turned it off..... annoying ****

Ron-ski · 13 Oct 2022 at 19:34

@Troop I presume it can't be configured for specific alarms then?