Solar panels and battery - any real world reccomendations?

Mercenary Keyboard Warrior said:
Don't think I can think of a single solar install I know of recently that didn't include batteries of some description.
They make a lot of sense for just about every individuals use case IMO.

All the off gridders use them, if anyone is going to be after the most reliable use case its them.

I think V2G may be a massive over reach. Whilst I am sure some will be happy to do this, those on company lease schemes maybe I think the added charge / discharge is likely at some point to be monitored by and restricted by the manufacturers.
They have no reason at all to basically provide you a house battery that potentially degrades components within the warranty period. None at all.
Suspect it would become a fair usage thing, "enabled" for occasional emergency useage.
Just my gut feel.
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Mine - installed last october, zero batteries
 
I think EV batteries are going to be much better being recycled into home storage batteries at the end of their EV lives, than being used while still in the EV.

For whatever reason, it's more economical at the moment for home batteries to be built from entirely new cells.
 
Bug One said:
For whatever reason, it's more economical at the moment for home batteries to be built from entirely new cells.
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i think the reason is purely because there are simply not enough old car batteries to use, and those that there are are likely from nissan leafs (leaves?) the one car which DOES struggle with significant battery degredation so maybe by the time the leaf is written off they batteries are so far gone its not worth it.

when i installed my system (june/july 2021) i had the option of a recycled battery or a new one. I initially ticked recycled only to be told they were oos with no idea of when they would be back in, so i got new.
 
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Welshman said:
Just didnt have the extra money needed at the time and thought, at least get the panels up and start with something and grow it from there, when funds allow.
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indeed. i am not saying you made the wrong decision.... hopefully your system was specced such that adding one in at a later date will be simple with not too much extra gubbins needed. I stretched for the battery (and it was a stretch) purely because of the vat.... it was 5% at the time on solar panels...... and that carried over to the battery as well but ONLY if i had it installed then........ at the time (may be different now) if i bought later i would pay 20% vat on it.
 
Ultimately solar and batteries take the load off the grid which means that the grid can then manage the UK's energy in a more effective and hopefully green way.

If my installation of solar helps towards that, then frankly that's good enough to me. I've said this many times in these threads, but I know I'm doing the right thing, and I'm actually gaining financially as a result. Sure, the initial investment was large, and I'm not doing it as an ROI project, but my immediate bills have decreased - and that is important. I can write off the £12k - I'm not getting it back and I don't care, the value outweighs the cost.

As an analogy, say you live in the countryside and you buy a car that's say £15k. That's money you'll never get back, and you'll never get an ROI for the investment in the car. However, the VALUE that the car brings to you is higher than the cost. i.e. you can drive to work, shops, do hobbies, go on holiday, visit places, connect you to wealth in other areas, do errands, go to the dump etc.... the value of the car to you in that situation is worth more than the investment.

I see my solar panels that way, as far as I'm concerned I'm not getting my money back, but the value I get from it on a day-to-day life is immediate.
 
bigmike20vt said:
indeed. i am not saying you made the wrong decision.... hopefully your system was specced such that adding one in at a later date will be simple with not too much extra gubbins needed. I stretched for the battery (and it was a stretch) purely because of the vat.... it was 5% at the time on solar panels...... and that carried over to the battery as well but ONLY if i had it installed then........ at the time (may be different now) if i bought later i would pay 20% vat on it.
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No if i add a battery, then its either a new inverter ( hybrid) or an ac coupled system.
 
Welshman said:
No if i add a battery, then its either a new inverter ( hybrid) or an ac coupled system.
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ahh that is a bit of a pain... given that is the case (and just my musings feel free to ignore) it may be worth waiting and seeing if V2H actually takes off any time soon. Octopus were trialing it with nissan leafs a couple of years back (i almost signed up but got solar instead) ..... if a car does offer it to anyone on anything other than a trial basis it may make more sense to put the cost that upgrading your system would be and putting it into a car........ if i had to pick, my money would be on MG they seem pretty forward thinking. They already offer vehicle to load which can power some of your stuff in an emergency and more importantly are one of the more affordable EV companies.
 
bigmike20vt said:
ahh that is a bit of a pain... given that is the case (and just my musings feel free to ignore) it may be worth waiting and seeing if V2H actually takes off any time soon. Octopus were trialing it with nissan leafs a couple of years back (i almost signed up but got solar instead) ..... if a car does offer it to anyone on anything other than a trial basis it may make more sense to put the cost that upgrading your system would be and putting it into a car........ if i had to pick, my money would be on MG they seem pretty forward thinking. They already offer vehicle to load which can power some of your stuff in an emergency and more importantly are one of the more affordable EV companies.
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My diesel car doesnt run on electric....and i only do around 1.5 to 2k miles a year, so wont be upgrading anytime soon, as my car owes me nothing and is only just running in at 100k miles. So no leccy vehicle hear for some time.
 
Batteries can be added pretty cheaply, for a fraction of the cost of an EV, and I suspect a lot of people are in the same situation as @Welshman I am, but I do around 8000 miles a year, and my 14 year old car is on 133,000 miles and I've no intention on changing it any time soon, wife does about 2000 a year in her 16 year old 50,000 mile car. If I was paying £500 a month for a nice new EV I wouldn't be able to afford the the system I've installed.
 
Ron-ski said:
With a 3.6kW inverter your basically hadicapping your 6.48kW of panels, so the sun is shining, your panels are capable of producing over 6kW, yet they are capped at around 3.6, that's an awful lot of generation you're going to lose. If you had half panels west facing half east facing it would not be quite so bad, but it will still clip production. You need at least a 5kW inverter, preferably 6kW.
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It's my Dad's install, I told him about the inverter but he didn't want to change. Due to the roof he can only have 12 panels facing east and 4 south facing. The 12 panels will also have some shading from nearby buildings. Installation is next week so I'll get access to the app and check the production stats.
 
pcfarrar said:
It's my Dad's install, I told him about the inverter but he didn't want to change. Due to the roof he can only have 12 panels facing east and 4 south facing. The 12 panels will also have some shading from nearby buildings. Installation is next week so I'll get access to the app and check the production stats.
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As I mentioned earlier, I've got the same inverter and I rarely see clipping but half of my panels face NW. You've got around the same amount of battery storage as I do.
 
bigmike20vt said:
I agree V2G may be a hard sell unless government incentivised it... but V2H i absolutely think will be a goer........ the battery warranty may be an issue... but if you are talking just 10% of the battery allowed per day for instance, the reality is that is only one full charge every 10 days extra and that may not be such a big deal, esp with battery tech improving all the time.
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Well like I said the car manufacturers will IMO take some convincing.
Its one thing enabling the ability to do it every so often its a completely different thing doing it repeatedly.

My main issue is they stand to gain zero benefit from it, they could potentially see issues from it.
Why would they allow it, it makes no sense to me as to why they would wholesale embrace it.

Welshman said:
Mine - installed last october, zero batteries
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There is always one ;)

But as you have said your considering it now.

Although I kind of actually meant people that I know directly, such as at work etc.
I guess I can include our valleys people in my definition ;)
 
I don’t really see how the warranty issue is actually that difficult to solve. Just change it from milage to cycles or kWh. The BMS measures it already so it’s not like the data doesn’t already exist.

What’s in it for the manufacturers? Competitive advantage, one of them will do it, Ford already does in the states. If the rest don’t pile of the band waggon, they’ll loose sales and the Chinese are also coming….
 
Thats an interesting one, I would argue its not that much of a competitive advantage since the majority of the users wont be taking advantage of it.
As such it has a real risk of falling into one of the traps many products and services have previously where a non core add on is enabled that is badly taken advantage of by a few (who see it as a real benefit) and that then leads to fair usage type policies when the company finds out its costing them a fortune.

The majority wouldn't likely see any advantage and then the scenario can flip, if its unlimited then the manufacturer will see an increase in people hitting problem points (such as battery %) or the manufacturers competitors who dot offer it may be able to flip it and offer say a higher battery % guarantee after x years.
The majoirty of consumers will likely rank a higher battery % guarantee after x years than V2H.
Bug One said:
I think EV batteries are going to be much better being recycled into home storage batteries at the end of their EV lives, than being used while still in the EV.

For whatever reason, it's more economical at the moment for home batteries to be built from entirely new cells.
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Its also different tech. I am not sure i would want ex car cells at home personally.

Also i suspect economies will mean ex car batteries go to grid level storage rather than home.
Its easier to rack out containers with a system that allows like packs to be slotted in, eg all leafs into containers 1-10, Tesla S packs in 11-20 etc
That way like packs can be controlled by software and hardware that allows them to function as is and be monitored until they are no good even for that level of supply.
Home use typically wants more reliability than your likely to get with old EV batteries.
And the cost of stripping down and testing the cells etc is not going to be cheap. At grid scale they can not bother with that and just accept dead cells, bad performing cells etc
 
Freefaller said:
My gas is over 10p.

Still have the heating on but the hot water has been off for a month now.
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But while on flux you are better off paying 10p for a kWh of gas to heat the water than using a kWh of electricity you could export for 24p (or 36p in peak)… so it renders diverting the solar to heating the water redundant.

If you have a heat pump then you’re probably looking at more like 0.25kWh of electricity which makes it cheaper to use it than the gas, but flux definitely seems to render immersion heater diverting redundant to me, at least for now.
 
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Zeeflyboy said:
But while on flux you are better off paying 10p for a kWh of gas to heat the water than using a kWh of electricity you could export for 24p (or 36p in peak)… so it renders diverting the solar to heating the water redundant.

If you have a heat pump then you’re probably looking at more like 0.25kWh of electricity which makes it cheaper to use it than the gas, but flux definitely seems to render immersion heater diverting redundant to me, at least for now.
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Why pay 10p of gas when I get free hot water from solar? Or have I missed something?
 
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