Solar panels and battery - any real world reccomendations?

Welshman said:
No the tv doesnt generate anything, but newer tvs use less power and thats how the payback was being calculated.

The grid isnt getting greener, they still burning gas and coal to run it, they just offset with carbon paybacks etc etc
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The grid is getting greener. All the solar being added, all the wind etc means it IS getting greener.
Its not green but the % of renewable production increases each year
 
Welshman said:
Do people always look for a financial payback on everything?? I know i didnt when i bought mine. I based it on lowering monthly bills and moral grounds of green energy. Payback didnt come into the equation for me.
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Not always but solar wont replace my gas use in winter will it. Personally I consider it like an investment, last year I was getting quotes of 10 panels for £10k... so it made no sense, this year things are better I can ROI in 10 years or less and the return is higher than is likely investing elsewhere so I will proceed on that basis.

Bug One said:
Everyone's situation is different. I want to be able to cover as much of my daily use as possible all year year round.

For me, covering the house load and starting to trickle power into the battery as soon as the sun is up, and extending the generation period as long as possible into the evening - is far more important than what peak I get at midday.
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I think the battery will be more important to me in winter, the extra panels on the garage will see a lot of shade in winter even on sunny days so in terms of generation I don't think they make a real statistical difference to my winter generation.

Mercenary Keyboard Warrior said:
Never rule out the want to upsell and the fact its not a straight forwards game with a correct answer as to whats best.
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I didn't get that vibe, to be fair I knew what I was going into as they pretty much said they only sell (what they think) is the best stuff and best quality on the market.
 
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Bug One said:
I'd take the specification from the company that's done an actual survey more seriously than the second one who hasn't. If they think optimizers are necessary, they're probably right.

Do you have an image of the roof?
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Picture complete with waiting pigeons. Garage is just off to the right hand side.

mgVrU1ph.jpg
 
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HungryHippos said:
Without just picking bits to reply to, the WiFi dongle does two things:
  • AP Mode = Broadcasts it's own SSID (you can see it in WiFi networks on capable devices).
  • STA Mode = Connects to your WiFi network to route data to GE.
The dongle also has an admin portal, as you've found out.

Assuming the dongle is working and all connected up OK then look at the following:

Get your dongle IP address and then just connect to it via a web browser. I can see my dongle is called HF-A21 and is visible in my router connected devices, with a local IP address.

From my regular desktop machine I can just browse via Chrome to http:// followed by the dongle IP address, in my case http://192.168.1.184. This prompts for the admin details.

Lock down AP mode
  1. Go to AP Interface Setting on the left.
  2. Change the Pass Phrase value to something else. I use the serial number of the Inverter for ease of remembrance. This is visible on the GE dashboard in various places. This is the password demanded if anything connects to it.
  3. Optionally mark the Network Name(SSID) as hidden. This will mean you can't see it to connect though without undoing this. Hidden network does not mean it's not broadcasting or make it secure, just an optional step you can do to improve security.
Lock down Admin
  1. Go to Device Management on the left.
  2. Change the Password field to something stronger than the probably insecure one that is set by default.
Security



Regarding this more specifically, it's actually worse than you think, because if someone has connected to your WiFi dongle, yes they can browse the internet probably very poorly. Being connected to this though, if they get into the dongle admin portal with the insecure password it came with, they can read your current WiFi password and SSID in plain text within the STA Interface Setting page.
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I've put the dongle on a separate wifi network and on separate VLAN. In fact all my IoT devices are. It pings me if a new device joins the "IoT" network - not the best solution but good enough. Although I have changed the SSID, passwords and everything else so it's as good as it can be for now. I do want a gen 2 so that I can just wire it up without wifi.
 
Freefaller said:
I've put the dongle on a separate wifi network and on separate VLAN. In fact all my IoT devices are. It pings me if a new device joins the "IoT" network - not the best solution but good enough. Although I have changed the SSID, passwords and everything else so it's as good as it can be for now. I do want a gen 2 so that I can just wire it up without wifi.
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I'd like that but I don't have any of the more advanced networking kit, smart if you can do it though.

My switches are all unmanaged ones etc.
 
Bug One said:
This might be useful.

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Thats a really good review. I was going to recommend some stuff but he actually picked it up and used it himself. (The aussie stuff)

I was considering optimisers/micro inverters but I found some data on failure rate and much like the main inverters there seemed to be a reasonable % failure around the 10 year mark. That put me off as I wouldn't want to go up and mess with it myself and research showed it was a lot of agro finding people to do it.
Hence it was costly and what do you do if one inverter fails, replace them all, or risk another failing say 6 months later!?
 
200sols said:
I didn't get that vibe, to be fair I knew what I was going into as they pretty much said they only sell (what they think) is the best stuff and best quality on the market.
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I wasn't saying for you specifically, but in general.

I have a bit of a bugbear with solar installers tbh. They offer far too little option. A guy at work with an almost south facing roof just had 16x 405w panels fitted and a 3.68kw inverter! The most common installer failure!

In your case I would have hoped they would have supplied 2x quotes, one with optimisers and one without. You can then decide yourself if its worth say £2k to go with it or not.
Based on a consistent expectation of output.

It seems the trade want to generally supply one option they think is best, or they can supply.
 
Mercenary Keyboard Warrior said:
I wasn't saying for you specifically, but in general.

I have a bit of a bugbear with solar installers tbh. They offer far too little option. A guy at work with an almost south facing roof just had 16x 405w panels fitted and a 3.68kw inverter! The most common installer failure!

In your case I would have hoped they would have supplied 2x quotes, one with optimisers and one without. You can then decide yourself if its worth say £2k to go with it or not.
Based on a consistent expectation of output.

It seems the trade want to generally supply one option they think is best, or they can supply.
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I agree on the common install failure…colleague of mine had 6.4kw of panels fitted and a 3.6kw inverter, just because the supplier didnt want to do the dno paperwork. Its crazy having those panels clipped down to 3.6kw

when i asked him about doing the dno paperwork himself and getting a bigger inverter, he said he already produced more than he needs, so no point. He also gets paid zero for export as he cant be bothered to switch from his current supplier who are only offering 2p……
 
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Mercenary Keyboard Warrior said:
I wasn't saying for you specifically, but in general.

I have a bit of a bugbear with solar installers tbh. They offer far too little option. A guy at work with an almost south facing roof just had 16x 405w panels fitted and a 3.68kw inverter! The most common installer failure!

In your case I would have hoped they would have supplied 2x quotes, one with optimisers and one without. You can then decide yourself if its worth say £2k to go with it or not.
Based on a consistent expectation of output.

It seems the trade want to generally supply one option they think is best, or they can supply.
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I'm not even sure they fit anything but SolarEdge inverters now :p

I did ask for two quotes on the array size one with panels on the garage and one without. The without quote was 11 panels on the main roof still with SolarEdge system, that was £7500 and bird netting was £400 on that. So with battery £15400.
 
Does having an underpowered inverter lead to them being overworked, and shorten their lifespan?

I over specced my micro inverters so they're always running well under their maximum capacity.

What happens to the DC from the panels if the inverter hits it's maximum capacity?
 
200sols said:
Picture complete with waiting pigeons. Garage is just off to the right hand side.

mgVrU1ph.jpg
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Have you considered having that soil pipe vent removed, you can fit a one way valve internally, both of ours are done that way. The tiles are likely pretty standard, so should be able to get hold of them easy enough. You may get more panels on, and it will certainly look nicer than a gap down the middle, unless the panels fit just above it anyway.

Mercenary Keyboard Warrior said:
In your case I would have hoped they would have supplied 2x quotes, one with optimisers and one without.
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If they only fit SolarEdge then you have to have optimisers.

Only the other day on another forum I saw someone explaining how they go to great lengths to avoid clipping, 5.25kw system SW facing with a 3.68kW inverter :mad:
 
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Ron-ski said:
Have you considered having that soil pipe vent removed, you can fit a one way valve internally, both of ours are done that way. The tiles are likely pretty standard, so should be able to get hold of them easy enough. You may get more panels on, and it will certainly look nicer than a gap down the middle, unless the panels fit just above it anyway.
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They're just concrete tiles. Another house has 14 panels on this roof but their vent was on the north side, the other 3 soil stacks all have internal valves but this one vents outside.
 
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