Solar panels and battery - any real world reccomendations?

Yep wife will stick washing machine on at 9pm or they leave the lights on in rooms they are not in. Not gonna lose my sanity though.. *shrugs*
 
I'm quite surprised, my wife has taken to timing the washing machine and dishwasher quite well, without much effort on my part. We've had solar for years, but it's only recently we've made the effort to put the loads on when it's sunny.
 
gpuerrilla said:
Yep wife will stick washing machine on at 9pm or they leave the lights on in rooms they are not in. Not gonna lose my sanity though.. *shrugs*
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It's also the in-laws, culturally her mum is used to making a lot of food, and as such all the applicances are on at once which not only decimates the charge on the battery, but is just badly managed (IMO)! :D

I'm not losing my sanity over it as ultimately it's still cheaper than it would be without solar and storage... I just wish a little bit of care and attention would be taken to exploit solar rather than seeing it as a "well our bills will be lower anyway" sort of mentality...
 
Yeah I totally understand, what I meant was if I kept speaking about it (to the family) you get the label of being obsessed and the annoying guy - because the logic and decisions to stagger them appliances is either too much hassle for them or they have not digested correctly.

When I have been at home and used loads of appliances balancing the load I have got the daily grid use down to 2kWh. However the days I am out we can use as much as 9kWh or a tad more if people just blindly use stuff at the wrong times.
 
Kill_Phil said:
@iwrox installer has confirmed it's the sph range. Can I check how you made up the RS485 cable for it? Seems a pita they don't provide the cable...
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Sorry been away this week! Its really easy, I ordered an RS485 adaptor (£5 from Ama) and then you just need to cut the end off an RJ45 cable and wire white/blue to A and blue to B on the adaptor.

Finally plug into the RS485-2 port on the Growatt (usually spare) and set the mode to VPP.
 
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Hopefully once my system is up and running we should eliminate all grid usage as long as there is enough solar production. The Quattro 48/10000 can produce 8kw as long as it's not too hot.
 
gpuerrilla said:
Yeah I totally understand, what I meant was if I kept speaking about it (to the family) you get the label of being obsessed and the annoying guy - because the logic and decisions to stagger them appliances is either too much hassle for them or they have not digested correctly.

When I have been at home and used loads of appliances balancing the load I have got the daily grid use down to 2kWh. However the days I am out we can use as much as 9kWh or a tad more if people just blindly use stuff at the wrong times.
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Mrs works in Science, and has half an engineering head on her some days so she loves the knowledge and data. So I should feel lucky as it seems a lot of other people just don't give two hoots, which would annoy me more than I can imagine.
 
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Friday was a good day for late November! Not a bit of shading in site :) 13.1kWh generated from a 4.25 array.

Shame I wasn't home as could have run another load for free :p

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iwrox said:
Friday was a good day for late November! Not a bit of shading in site :) 13.1kWh generated from a 4.25 array.

Shame I wasn't home as could have run another load for free :p
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We generated 8.1 from a 4kw array (no sign of clouds), so 13.1 is incredible.
 
Friday was a good day but I've noticed one of my strings does a lot better than the other this time of year, so my generation for Friday was around 8.3 as well.

Just the way the sun operates this time of year I think, without that ideal fully south-facing no shading rooftop, just have to make do :)

Checking a solar map thing and my string of 6 is south facing, string of 7 is west facing, so I think the 6 panels on the south facing roof are doing the most heavy lifting currently. In theory I have an east facing roof I could have added some panels to but it would have definitely upped the cost a fair bit, and meant additional scaffold needing to be put up outside of my freehold land.

You can check your roof orientation here: https://www.pvfitcalculator.energysavingtrust.org.uk/
 
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gpuerrilla said:
Wow it certainly was! Do you live in Kent perchance?
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Yep! :p

November has been a proper mixed bag though, all over the place in terms of generation. Still fighting to get Eco7 activated then I will start force charging the battery and load shifting washing/dishes to overnight.


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Kot said:
Would you believe it!!! the 2nd quote again not my roof lol but they are getting closer
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So finally got the 3rd quote for the correct roof lol. This working from home solar quote system is pants lol

I have tree shading and chimney shading issues so knew I was in for some fun, I had narrowed it down to solar edge or Hybrid with Tigo optimisers, never even gave Enphase a thought--you guessed it, this quote was for Enphase IQ7A inverters, with Pylon batteries, these batteries are only what they use, I dont want them, batteries need to be outside. Oh they also wanted to install 833 modules with gallium?

It's 2 x 5kw arrays on a south and west facing roofs.
Has anyone recently installed Enphase ?? would be interested in your comments.
Noticed no one yet is selling the new Enphase IQ10 10kWh batteries (AC Coupled) in the UK yet they are in use in USA and due here 4th Q of 2022, which would be a preferred option if I do go for Enphase. certainly their monitoring system is very good.

if its SE then they do a 8kw and a 10KW Hybrid single phase inverter and a new 10kw DC coupled battery yes-- both external and expensive lol

I have been very pro-active the last few months, researching lol I know a lot more than when I first started, having Contacted at least 20 installers, only 5 came to visit for survey, found 2 who do SE ( 1 of which is coming this next week to survey) and only another 1 who recommended Hybrid with Tigo. The rest were arm chair Online EasyPV warriors looking to make a quick buck with inflated prices with no idea about shading issues etc some even wanting to put modules on the east roof which is totally shaded surely the Green blobs on the Google earth map indicates trees close by!!!! Thinking these armchair surveyors are really ex-double glazing reps reflected by their inflated quotes lol
 
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