Soldato
Thank you. I didn't realise how much they used, it more than I though but I guess with a drying cycle included it makes more sense.
Solar panels and battery - any real world reccomendations?
- Thread starter GinG
- Start date
Thank you. I didn't realise how much they used, it more than I though but I guess with a drying cycle included it makes more sense.
Soldato
Which is fine but combis are bleh when it comes to volume especially if you want to have a shower whilst someone else may use some hot water and you want the heating on, having had traditional, combi and pressurised I would never go back to anything else whilst I can have pressurised personally.
Combi was a nightmare where there were four of us. It was alledgedly overspecced as well!
Its all a balance though, do you want extreme savings or quality of life.
So I just checked my cylinder, its a little under but lets call it 2kwh per day (thats the listed heat loss equivalent at slightly higher temp than mine is set at)
Seeing as its gas heated and I pay about 8p a unit now (was under 4p until recently) I think its worth 16p a day to have 300 litres of mains pressure hot water available and still be able to run the heating flat out at the same time should that be necessary
Also I assume as its indirect the elements are only specced for emergency use, its a 3kwh element in it, so same as a kettle, dont think im going to want to be heating that with electric!
As i mentioned above we had a problem pre xmas when it was cold, and the hot water was still available, was only towards the end it was a bit meh in temp as it was refilled and of course lost some temp over time.
Thats good, ours is 1.4-2.4 depending on cycle. Probably most of the time its 2.4 since we tend to run the 95 degree wash.
I like the stuff clean
Associate
Had a quote, is this reasonable or expensive?
Two rows of 4 x 370W J.A. solar panels with a peak performance of 2.96kW, and an annual production of approximately 2,220kW hours on a south facing roof. Total £4,957.79 subject to survey of property.
Two rows of 4 x 370W J.A. solar panels with a peak performance of 2.96kW, and an annual production of approximately 2,220kW hours on a south facing roof. Total £4,957.79 subject to survey of property.
Soldato
Average. E.On is £4,857 for an 8 panel 2.88kWp system, and they offer 3 years 0%.
Soldato
@Mercenary Keyboard Warrior I guess it wasn't that over specced, I simply went for the largest Worcester Bosch Combi I could, and that was a Greenstar HighFlow 440, which is the same size as a washing machine, and is floor mounted, this was installed in December 2005. We're a family of four and we've never had an issue with the amount of hot water it would supply (we run two showers off of it), pressure did drop after they installed water meter, but its still fine, just not as good as it was. If I was replacing it today, I would go for a different system, simply because things have moved on, there was probably fully pressurised system back then but not so common.
Got an updated quote with a bigger battery from what seems to be the local rip off company 4.4kw system with 12 JA Solar Panels 370w with Tigo optimisers, Pylon Force L2 low voltage 10.65kWh battery £13,959!!!!
Got an updated quote with a bigger battery from what seems to be the local rip off company 4.4kw system with 12 JA Solar Panels 370w with Tigo optimisers, Pylon Force L2 low voltage 10.65kWh battery £13,959!!!!
Associate
- Joined
- 28 Mar 2004
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- 1,989
Some of these quotes are nuts! My father in law has just had a quote for 16 x 410w panels (6.6kwh array), 5kw invertor, 7.2kwh battery (3 x 2.4kwh batteries) and Iboost hot water divert for under £10k Gonna pull the trigger tomorrow with luck
just spent a lot of time looking into hot water diverters and went for the myenergi eddi instead of the iboost+. It's a bit more expensive but looks to be a bit better engineered.
The three I narrowed it down to were the:
Solic 200 - cheap but basic - looks well made though - £200'ish
iboost+ - more expensive but with more feedback on how it's being used, bit plasticky though - £330'ish
myenergi eddi - looks to be very well engineered with lots of metal, big passive heatsink and very nice UI for showing what it is doing. £400'ish
There's a few others but I discounted them.
The three I narrowed it down to were the:
Solic 200 - cheap but basic - looks well made though - £200'ish
iboost+ - more expensive but with more feedback on how it's being used, bit plasticky though - £330'ish
myenergi eddi - looks to be very well engineered with lots of metal, big passive heatsink and very nice UI for showing what it is doing. £400'ish
There's a few others but I discounted them.
Soldato
- Joined
- 7 Aug 2004
- Posts
- 11,041
Can someone explain to me what sort of solar people have in their homes? And how does it interact with grid energy ? Do you really save that much money ? How long would it take to pay itself back ? (lets say an example of a 10 grand solar investment)
I'm slowly considering solar but to be honest I want to do it myself & run 'off grid', but then still have a regular electric connection that's hardly used in summer - I am suspicious that if you have 'grid approved' solar, they will still make bank off you, and you still end up paying a fair chunk of money anyway, at least truly independent your not paying for already free sunlight - ideally I want to supply my own energy and only draw from the grid when required.
I'm slowly considering solar but to be honest I want to do it myself & run 'off grid', but then still have a regular electric connection that's hardly used in summer - I am suspicious that if you have 'grid approved' solar, they will still make bank off you, and you still end up paying a fair chunk of money anyway, at least truly independent your not paying for already free sunlight - ideally I want to supply my own energy and only draw from the grid when required.
It will depend on a variety of things, but ultimately the payback on battery storage is often very long*
*but it energy price continue to go up the payback accelerates
Soldato
You need some sort of change over switch to be off grid/on grid. You can still do a DIY grid tied installation, but you need to get Part P signed off, and without an MCS installer/electrician you can't get paid for exports, which if you use/store enough won't matter anyway. How much space do you have for solar panels, and how much battery storage you thinking of having. You might even need part P for a completely off grid installation, but some councils can do that, others won't.
Soldato
Thanks for posting this up, more to add to the research list!
One thing I havent got to yet, there is clearly a controller for this. One video I was watching used their solar for current needs, then battery storage, then hot water, then their EVs in that order.
I havent worked out which bit if kit specifically controls that, do you know.
I probably need to go back to a few vids I saw and google the items. One showed a GUI screen that showed the flow of electricity, so for example early morning it was showing some low generation plus it drawing from the battery. They were offgrid though so could be a slightly diff setup.
Soldato
Your optimum point is probably not going zero from the grid but to find the spot where you can minimise your bill from the grid when amortising the cost of your solar over a sensible period (say 15 years). Assuming you want to save most money from this and not reduce your carbon footprint as much as possible.
Soldato
To give you an idea we have 4kw, and no battery. Electricity usage has changed, over this time period, started Chia in May, and single 3080 on Nicehash in October. So February 2021 to February 2022 we used 2100 kWh of what we produced, so at current rates saved £609 in electric. Actual usage in that period was 8687kwh, but if I take into account additional usage from Chia and NiceHash then we'd use around 10,000 kWh.
Soldato
To go properly off-grid you'd likely need a very large solar array and a lot of battery storage, more than the 4.4KW solar and 8.2KWH battery I'm getting.
In the winter they won't produce anywhere near as much, so you'd likely need a backup in case solar generation is lower or has a fault.
I know a guy who's done it but he had a small house, and he used solar with a backup diesel generator.
Not the kind of thing you want to approach lightly, and really will depend a lot on how much you can generate/store and how much you can use. For most of us I think going off-grid is not feasible.
Soldato
I stumbled across this vid the other day, they spent iirc about £27k (diff vid explaining their setup)
www.youtube.com
So a sunny start to a winter day, then it clouded over. They generated about 6KWH. In theory they need to be able to survive on that 6kwh a day, thats not much, but not impossible.
However when you look at how much was pumped in when the sun was out at 10am it was a lot, if that spike wasnt there then they would be probably more like 3kwh. Their base load looked to be about 100w or so, so the majority would have been soaked up by the baseload!
SOLAR IN UK WINTER: What our DIY OFF GRID SOLAR POWER SYSTEM produced in ONE DAY in JANUARY.
Have you been considering installing solar power but are unsure whether you can generate enough power in winter? In this video we share what we produced on ...
www.youtube.com
So a sunny start to a winter day, then it clouded over. They generated about 6KWH. In theory they need to be able to survive on that 6kwh a day, thats not much, but not impossible.
However when you look at how much was pumped in when the sun was out at 10am it was a lot, if that spike wasnt there then they would be probably more like 3kwh. Their base load looked to be about 100w or so, so the majority would have been soaked up by the baseload!
For the iboost - possibly this: https://www.marlec.co.uk/solar-iboost-user-operating/
Solar iBoost+ has a default cut in threshold of 100W of export before diversion commences. Models from May 2019 have a programme feature to increase the threshold level in 50W increments up to a maximum of 500W. When the battery storage threshold is <100W the Solar iBoost+ can be installed as supplied in its default mode resulting in battery storage prioritised with water heating following when the batteries are full.
The eddi has a hub which can hook up to an app to show you what it's doing as well.
Soldato
@Combat squirrel
It's just not feasible really to go off grid completely with solar.
It's not impossible, but difficult and very expensive to the point where it would be pretty uneconomical.
Solar is far from perfect, it tends to generate a lot of energy in the summer on clear days, and little in the winter.
You also don't get much back from exporting, so to get the energy in the winter you'd need a huge array, which would end up very inefficient in the summer as youd be generating way more than you'd need.
Need to think of solar as more of a supplement.
If you had the space (not sure if you need planning permission etc) you could probably pair up something like a wind turbine with solar and between the two it may be more feasible.
Obviously most standard residential properties it wouldn't be feasible to have a wind turbine.
It's just not feasible really to go off grid completely with solar.
It's not impossible, but difficult and very expensive to the point where it would be pretty uneconomical.
Solar is far from perfect, it tends to generate a lot of energy in the summer on clear days, and little in the winter.
You also don't get much back from exporting, so to get the energy in the winter you'd need a huge array, which would end up very inefficient in the summer as youd be generating way more than you'd need.
Need to think of solar as more of a supplement.
If you had the space (not sure if you need planning permission etc) you could probably pair up something like a wind turbine with solar and between the two it may be more feasible.
Obviously most standard residential properties it wouldn't be feasible to have a wind turbine.
Soldato
@Ron-ski I tried to PM you but its not enabled. Would I be able to mail you or something?
Soldato
Not sure why you can't, I've sent you a PM, just reply to that.
Soldato
Yes that worked, it wouldnt let me create one to you earlier!