Solar panels and battery - any real world reccomendations?

Scottm said:
£12,295 with a 5.12kWh Sunsynk battery. I know it's a lot but I don't think prices are going down any time soon with inflation at 10%.
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It's not the worst price I've seen but it's not the best either.

What is your usage like on electric kwh per day?

Is this your 1st quote or just the best one?

5 kwh is a pretty small battery and unless it has 100% DoD you won't get 5 kwh out of it.

As with all things it will essentially boil down to how efficiently you can use the system and how much it may save you in the long run.

Friend of mine is getting an install off the same people I used, less panels (5.6kwp in 14 panels) but it's a 5kw inverter with G99 application, and a 9.5kwh battery for around £12K, so it's still possible to get more for the same sort of cash as you're spending.
 
HungryHippos said:
It's not the worst price I've seen but it's not the best either.

What is your usage like on electric kwh per day?

Is this your 1st quote or just the best one?

5 kwh is a pretty small battery and unless it has 100% DoD you won't get 5 kwh out of it.

As with all things it will essentially boil down to how efficiently you can use the system and how much it may save you in the long run.

Friend of mine is getting an install off the same people I used, less panels (5.6kwp in 14 panels) but it's a 5kw inverter with G99 application, and a 9.5kwh battery for around £12K, so it's still possible to get more for the same sort of cash as you're spending.
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We have an ASHP which runs 24/7 along with my PC, server and an aquarium so our usage is quite high, around 5,900kWh per year. I've been strung along by a large solar company for 4 months now so I have just cancelled today and I'm getting more quotes. Can I ask who your installer was?
 
Scottm said:
We have an ASHP which runs 24/7 along with my PC, server and an aquarium so our usage is quite high, around 5,900kWh per year. I've been strung along by a large solar company for 4 months now so I have just cancelled today and I'm getting more quotes. Can I ask who your installer was?
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I don't mind sharing it, but I know they have a 4-5 month lead time on any new installations agreed today due to demand, and I'm not sure if they'd install at your location might be too far away as they're fairly local to me in Hampshire area. It's these guys. No harm in asking though I think?

Fag packet maths has your usage down at 16 kwh per day roughly which isn't far off mine really. A decent system without much shading and relatively southish facing, should be capable of producing around 1000 kwh per 1kw of panels in a year, so in your case I would agree, aim for around 6kw of panels makes sense. I could only get to 4.8kwp due to roof space or I would have happily added another 3-4 panels myself.

Seeing as how your usage is similar to mine, I can already tell you that 5 kwh battery will probably be a little small. I have an 8.2 kwh one which works out better as it's around 50% of my daily usage but even so sometime I wish I had a little more!.

In the winter I charge it with Octopus Go, but Octopus are doing a new tariff for ASHP customers called Cosy which would give you two fairly decent off-peak rates where you could theoretically charge the battery back up to cap and get away with less overall capacity: https://octopus.energy/cosy/
 
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HungryHippos said:
I don't mind sharing it, but I know they have a 4-5 month lead time on any new installations agreed today due to demand, and I'm not sure if they'd install at your location might be too far away as they're fairly local to me in Hampshire area. It's these guys. No harm in asking though I think?

Fag packet maths has your usage down at 16 kwh per day roughly which isn't far off mine really. A decent system without much shading and relatively southish facing, should be capable of producing around 1000 kwh per 1kw of panels in a year, so in your case I would agree, aim for around 6kw of panels makes sense. I could only get to 4.8kwp due to roof space or I would have happily added another 3-4 panels myself.

Seeing as how your usage is similar to mine, I can already tell you that 5 kwh battery will probably be a little small. I have an 8.2 kwh one which works out better as it's around 50% of my daily usage but even so sometime I wish I had a little more!.

In the winter I charge it with Octopus Go, but Octopus are doing a new tariff for ASHP customers called Cosy which would give you two fairly decent off-peak rates where you could theoretically charge the battery back up to cap and get away with less overall capacity: https://octopus.energy/cosy/
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HungryHippos said:
I don't mind sharing it, but I know they have a 4-5 month lead time on any new installations agreed today due to demand, and I'm not sure if they'd install at your location might be too far away as they're fairly local to me in Hampshire area. It's these guys. No harm in asking though I think?

Fag packet maths has your usage down at 16 kwh per day roughly which isn't far off mine really. A decent system without much shading and relatively southish facing, should be capable of producing around 1000 kwh per 1kw of panels in a year, so in your case I would agree, aim for around 6kw of panels makes sense. I could only get to 4.8kwp due to roof space or I would have happily added another 3-4 panels myself.

Seeing as how your usage is similar to mine, I can already tell you that 5 kwh battery will probably be a little small. I have an 8.2 kwh one which works out better as it's around 50% of my daily usage but even so sometime I wish I had a little more!.

In the winter I charge it with Octopus Go, but Octopus are doing a new tariff for ASHP customers called Cosy which would give you two fairly decent off-peak rates where you could theoretically charge the battery back up to cap and get away with less overall capacity: https://octopus.energy/cosy/
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I did think about a bigger battery but thought it probably wouldn't pay for itself. Does charging with Octopus Go save you quite a bit in winter? I see it's 11p per kWh overnight but then 41p during the day.
 
Scottm said:
I did think about a bigger battery but thought it probably wouldn't pay for itself. Does charging with Octopus Go save you quite a bit in winter? I see it's 11p per kWh overnight but then 41p during the day.
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You have to run your own figures as well as work out what you can move off-peak, or into the Cosy window should you choose to go with that for your ASHP system.

Go theoretically requires an EV but I was able to move myself to it without any special steps involved. Not sure if they will continue to allow that forever.

Time of use tariffs will be cheaper if you can move enough off-peak. For any of them you'll need a working smart meter that can do 30 min data reads. Battery helps with moving stuff off-peak even if it doesn't natively support it.

Don't forget with such tariffs you don't need the battery to cover the cheap time periods, only the more expensive ones.

For Go for example the grid can power the home for the 4 hours or so whilst it's charging the battery and it won't cost much to do that. This means the battery + solar just needs to last as much of the remaining 20 hours as possible.

The benefit of off-peak charging is clearly better in the winter, and you can double up the usage on certain things like the ASHP assuming it has some extra controls for timing you can program in.
 
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OllyM said:
0.65kWh generation in a month is insane! :eek:

Did you know that it'd be that bad before you installed the system?
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Yes - the installer had an app on his iPad which showed the position of the sun for each month. We could see from mid November to mid Jan it was out of line of sight.

It's only a couple of months, and we are on a cheap overnight tariff anyway, so only use peak (34p) elec for a few hours each day at this time.

[Let's say we generated 180 kWh of solar in December (Like Freefaller above) - that's just £13.50 spent at 7.5p]
 
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SDK^ said:
Yes - the installer had an app on his iPad which showed the position of the sun for each month. We could see from mid November to mid Jan it was out of line of sight.

It's only a couple of months, and we are on a cheap overnight tariff anyway, so only use peak (34p) elec for a few hours each day at this time.

[Let's say we generated 180 kWh of solar in December (Like Freefaller above) - that's just £13.50 spent at 7.5p]
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Good pragmatism - just need to lean a bit more on battery tech and cheap rates than you would if you weren't in sun's range.

Still sounds well worth it regardless - it's easy to turn into a real scrooge with solar as you start cursing every cloud and spot of rain...!
 
Had a neighbour get a system installed via Solar together Hampshire.

Many local authorities run this scheme.

It is like a group buying effort via the Council.

Installation was fine for him although much delayed.

He has a 7.8kw system on an east and south roof, hence 2 lots of scaffolding. He has 2 x 6.5kw batteries. He paid the extra for a diverter and bird proofing his panels. Final bill just over 14k. Installed October this year, contract signed last year.

Hampshire's scheme is now closed but it has run it twice
 
Peteronthesouthcoast said:
Had a neighbour get a system installed via Solar together Hampshire.

Many local authorities run this scheme.

It is like a group buying effort via the Council.

Installation was fine for him although much delayed.

He has a 7.8kw system on an east and south roof, hence 2 lots of scaffolding. He has 2 x 6.5kw batteries. He paid the extra for a diverter and bird proofing his panels. Final bill just over 14k. Installed October this year, contract signed last year.

Hampshire's scheme is now closed but it has run it twice
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October 2023 fitting or october 2022?..
 
Peteronthesouthcoast said:
Had a neighbour get a system installed via Solar together Hampshire.

Many local authorities run this scheme.

It is like a group buying effort via the Council.

Installation was fine for him although much delayed.

He has a 7.8kw system on an east and south roof, hence 2 lots of scaffolding. He has 2 x 6.5kw batteries. He paid the extra for a diverter and bird proofing his panels. Final bill just over 14k. Installed October this year, contract signed last year.

Hampshire's scheme is now closed but it has run it twice
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I registered for that scheme too (in Hampshire), but the quotes were massively overinflated for the cheapest chinese kit.
 
Peteronthesouthcoast said:
Had a neighbour get a system installed via Solar together Hampshire.

Many local authorities run this scheme.

It is like a group buying effort via the Council.

Installation was fine for him although much delayed.

He has a 7.8kw system on an east and south roof, hence 2 lots of scaffolding. He has 2 x 6.5kw batteries. He paid the extra for a diverter and bird proofing his panels. Final bill just over 14k. Installed October this year, contract signed last year.

Hampshire's scheme is now closed but it has run it twice
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it's not good value at all at the moment, one of my old friends did it, and the quote was both expensive and lacking in quality.

Better just paying a decent firm to go and do it.
 
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