Solar panels and battery - any real world reccomendations?

Kill_Phil · 31 Jan 2023 at 17:05

HungryHippos said:
I would have assumed you having scaffold up and running may have also been something they'd have liked to piggy back on, oh well, like you say

Yup, even gave the guy the name of the roofer who sorted my stack out when moved in. Hey ho at least I got an audit trail now if it ends up causing damage to my property

Zeeflyboy · 31 Jan 2023 at 22:08

All up and running, just need a visit in a week or so to fit bird blocker (some clips needed due to panels not having the lip on one edge) and get the car charger hooked up for solar excess.

Had to run off before he finished, but had a cheeky look while at work and saw it chugging away with pretty decent production this late in the day and with the shading issues at this time of year:

Total production today was 5.3kwh, and the system only went live at just before midday so that’s pretty cool for a winter day!

Panels all up:

Installer sent me this shot of the roof too… makes the panels one house over look a bit puny lol.

john_smith · 31 Jan 2023 at 22:09

That's a mega system. Congrats, you'll love it.

gpuerrilla · 31 Jan 2023 at 22:19

Agree, you will be edging @katie279 for the sunniest location shortly!

Ron-ski · 31 Jan 2023 at 22:27

@Zeeflyboy very nice, can you link it up with PV Output and join the team?

gpuerrilla · 31 Jan 2023 at 22:28

Good spot on the promoting Ron. Will upload Jan's data tomorrow in one batch. Must get round to finishing off my HA automation.

Zeeflyboy · 31 Jan 2023 at 22:52

Ron-ski said:
@Zeeflyboy very nice, can you link it up with PV Output and join the team?

I’ll try and remember to take a look when I get a chance, I assume it’s pretty straight forward?

Ron-ski · 1 Feb 2023 at 06:24

@Zeeflyboy That depends, on my SolarEdge system it was as simple as getting the API key and adding it to PV Output, but with others its more complicated.

Zeeflyboy · 1 Feb 2023 at 07:58

Just from a brief look, it seems that there isn’t anything that straight forward for Solis.

I did find this which scrapes the SolisCloud and can then send to pvoutput https://github.com/dkruyt/ginlong-scraper

I believe there is similar stuff for HA too which is something I’ve been meaning to look into.

When I can figure it out there is also a modbus thing you can do with a wave share device to make the Solis inverter fully controllable from HA and then control charge rates etc with Solar forecasts and so on… will probably take me a while to wrap my head around how exactly one achieves it (ignore the name, it supports some Solis inverters too) https://github.com/wills106/homeassistant-solax-modbus/

Welshman · 1 Feb 2023 at 08:24

Zeeflyboy said:
Just from a brief look, it seems that there isn’t anything that straight forward for Solis.

I did find this which scrapes the SolisCloud and can then send to pvoutput https://github.com/dkruyt/ginlong-scraper

I believe there is similar stuff for HA too which is something I’ve been meaning to look into.

When I can figure it out there is also a modbus thing you can do with a wave share device to make the Solis inverter fully controllable from HA and then control charge rates etc with Solar forecasts and so on… will probably take me a while to wrap my head around how exactly one achieves it (ignore the name, it supports some Solis inverters too) https://github.com/wills106/homeassistant-solax-modbus/

hows the weather looking with you, to test out that new shiny system??

Zeeflyboy · 1 Feb 2023 at 10:35

Now we’re cooking!

Edit - currently generating 2.7kw at 10:37am

Battery is already 88%… supposed to be cloudy later but we’ll see.

Zeeflyboy · 1 Feb 2023 at 11:36

scaffold was a good opportunity to fix my gutters… whoever built the house seems to think water flows uphill

Edit - 3.9kw at 11:30 and battery full already - doh!

Peteronthesouthcoast · 1 Feb 2023 at 12:18

94JDH said:
19kWh batteries actually - nobody charges their EV from batteries so your logic s completely flawed!

FYI. I have an electric golf, 26kw batteries for the house and a 14.4kw solar system.

I charge the Golf from the batteries at least once a month. If you are out all day in the car, the charging has to be done when there is no solar production, hence using my house batteries to do this.

To prolong the batteries of the Golf I normally only charge it up to 80%. Yesterday I had to do 126 miles so the Golf was charged up up to 100% overnight from my batteries so I would not suffer from "range anxiety".

Last month we generated 596kw. It was a good January but last year (which was poor) that figure was only 508kw.

Mercenary Keyboard Warrior · 1 Feb 2023 at 12:29

Peteronthesouthcoast said:
FYI. I have an electric golf, 26kw batteries for the house and a 14.4kw solar system.

I charge the Golf from the batteries at least once a month. If you are out all day in the car, the charging has to be done when there is no solar production, hence using my house batteries to do this.

To prolong the batteries of the Golf I normally only charge it up to 80%. Yesterday I had to do 126 miles so the Golf was charged up up to 100% overnight from my batteries so I would not suffer from "range anxiety".

Last month we generated 596kw. It was a good January but last year (which was poor) that figure was only 508kw.

How much did you generate in your best ever month? Assuming you had all those panels last summer?

Peteronthesouthcoast · 1 Feb 2023 at 13:53

Here is the answer.

Originally we installed 17 x 235watt Sanyo's in October 2011.
In September 2021 we then added 4.8kw on the east roof and a further 5.6 on the south roof.

The spreadsheet has been adapted to the expansion, so the first set of columns just relate to our original panels. The last 3 are new ones on the East roof and then the south roof with the grand total on the extreme right. Highest ever day was June 14th when we managed 87.7kw. Yearly target was 14,000 but last year was a good one. Still hoping I might get 2,000 one month although no idea what to do with it other than help out the grid

2021/2022	Output	Target	% of target	Actual Reading	Meter Reading	Plus/Minus KW
Year 11					for target	for target
October	276.9	299	92.61	43809	43831	22.10	240.2	364.4	881.5
November	216.5	179	120.95	44025	44010	15.40	154.3	290.0	660.8
December	96.2	132	72.88	44122	44142	20.40	66.6	134.5	297.3
January	172.3	153	112.61	44294	44295	1.10	108.3	227.7	508.3
February	249.4	220	113.36	44543	44515	28.30	199.9	329.0	778.3
March	394.4	398	99.10	44938	44913	24.70	372.3	553.7	1320.4
April	493.8	500	98.76	45432	45413	18.50	527.4	679.1	1700.3
May	499.1	513	97.29	45931	45926	4.60	516.4	679.2	1694.7
June	539.8	536	100.71	46470	46462	8.40	585.2	720.1	1845.1
July	578.9	510	113.51	47049	46972	77.30	636.7	772.7	1988.3
August	542.8	472	115.01	47592	47444	148.13	520.1	692.6	1755.5
September	381.8	389	98.14	47974	47833	140.90	377.6	487.0	1246.4
Total	4441.9	4301					4305	5930	14677

94JDH · 1 Feb 2023 at 15:40

Peteronthesouthcoast said:
FYI. I have an electric golf, 26kw batteries for the house and a 14.4kw solar system.

I charge the Golf from the batteries at least once a month. If you are out all day in the car, the charging has to be done when there is no solar production, hence using my house batteries to do this.

To prolong the batteries of the Golf I normally only charge it up to 80%. Yesterday I had to do 126 miles so the Golf was charged up up to 100% overnight from my batteries so I would not suffer from "range anxiety".

Last month we generated 596kw. It was a good January but last year (which was poor) that figure was only 508kw.

I should have said most people don't charge from the batteries because usually they have a cheap EV rate like Octopus Go.
A lot of people don't have large amounts of storage capacity either so won't have the capacity to support the house and the EV from batteries.
The mileage I do, I'd need a minimum of 30kWh batteries just for that purpose alone.
That's great generation, what size arrays produced that, are you on 3'phase as well?

Edit: you've answered above !!

Hawk Tuah · 1 Feb 2023 at 21:37

One of my neighbours has some pretty fancy bird protection. Not seen anything like this before.

b0rn2sk8 · 1 Feb 2023 at 21:47

Yeh, that’s the posh stuff, it’s very, very expensive.

TNA · 2 Feb 2023 at 08:33

Won't that hinder ventilation though?

Hawk Tuah · 2 Feb 2023 at 08:40

I'd imagine so. Wonder if they're hybrid solar panels (so - heat water too)?