Soldato
SP are pants go to Octopus its only a 4 week wait
I cant because of my install certification. Scottish power at 12p per kwh are the highest paying ones.
Solar panels and battery - any real world reccomendations?
- Thread starter GinG
- Start date
I cant because of my install certification. Scottish power at 12p per kwh are the highest paying ones.
Man of Honour
Thats not a bad rate, higher than octopus will pay if your on any of their smart tariffs, would be tempting if it wasn't such a pain to move.
Anyone tempted by the Intelligent Octopus Flux:
Anyone tempted by the Intelligent Octopus Flux:
- Off-peak (7pm - 4pm): 27.1 p/kWh at Current Flexible prices
- Peak (4pm - 7pm): 36.1 p/kWh at Current Flexible prices
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Soldato
It may be 1:1 price wise, but due to efficiency losses it won't be
I'm staying with standard Flux, not that I can move anyway, but even if I could I wouldn't as I can suck enough power in to fully charge my batteries in the 3 hour off peak period if need be, and that will easily run our house for a day.
I'm staying with standard Flux, not that I can move anyway, but even if I could I wouldn't as I can suck enough power in to fully charge my batteries in the 3 hour off peak period if need be, and that will easily run our house for a day.
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Soldato
Same here….dont use enough power to worry about switching. Even in bad solar days im still only sucking max 2kwhs from the grid and around 400 whs of that is in the peak period
Soldato
SP SEG version thing had a couple of caveats though and one was that you wouldn't use a battery to export power (as they deem it brown energy not green).
Soldato
I just watched MKBHD's solar video - Its probably not fully representative given he is pretty wealthy and probably lives in a larger than your typical American's but even still there is some pretty mind blowing energy consumption happening.
To add some additional context, he said his heating was gas, drives an EV and air conditions his house in the summer. It's also typical for Americans to have gas appliances which includes hobs, ovens, tumble driers and washing machines - he mentioned that he might be swapping some appliances to electric.
Even taking into account driving and EV and having air conditioning, I was totally blown away when he said his total energy usage for the year was 54,000Kwh or 150kwh per day and the house baseload was circa 400W. It's not even that hot in New Jersey where he is based, average day time high in summer is 28C. Either way, that is just an insane amount of electricity usage, do Americans not have energy efficiency and insulation standards standards?
Anyway back to the solar, he has a 28kw Tesla solar roof system with 3 power walls which cost $120,000 less a tax credit which took it to just under $100,000.
His annual electricity bill was over $9,000 pre solar and post solar it was just the standing charge thanks to net metering.
Even driving an EV and having a house heated fully be electricity (non-heat pump), I just cant see how I could possibly come close to using 54,000kwh per year. That's just utterly ridiculous and no wonder your average Americans carbon footprint is so large.
EDIT: forgot to pink the video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJeSWbR6W04
A quick google suggests no family either, so that 54,000kwh without heating is probably just him.
To add some additional context, he said his heating was gas, drives an EV and air conditions his house in the summer. It's also typical for Americans to have gas appliances which includes hobs, ovens, tumble driers and washing machines - he mentioned that he might be swapping some appliances to electric.
Even taking into account driving and EV and having air conditioning, I was totally blown away when he said his total energy usage for the year was 54,000Kwh or 150kwh per day and the house baseload was circa 400W. It's not even that hot in New Jersey where he is based, average day time high in summer is 28C. Either way, that is just an insane amount of electricity usage, do Americans not have energy efficiency and insulation standards standards?
Anyway back to the solar, he has a 28kw Tesla solar roof system with 3 power walls which cost $120,000 less a tax credit which took it to just under $100,000.
His annual electricity bill was over $9,000 pre solar and post solar it was just the standing charge thanks to net metering.
Even driving an EV and having a house heated fully be electricity (non-heat pump), I just cant see how I could possibly come close to using 54,000kwh per year. That's just utterly ridiculous and no wonder your average Americans carbon footprint is so large.
EDIT: forgot to pink the video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJeSWbR6W04
A quick google suggests no family either, so that 54,000kwh without heating is probably just him.
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Soldato
Not bad, 147 kWh per day, or average base load of 6 kw.
Is he mining crypto or something? I'd really struggle to use that much even if I was being frivolous.
No mention of mining for a pool - he said is AC was his biggest drain and you could see spikes in the telemetry when his AC kicked on at 5+kw.
Given it was kicking on and off, its probably old and not an inverter model that can ramp up and down.
Even then a 5kw draw from an AC unit is huge.
Given it was kicking on and off, its probably old and not an inverter model that can ramp up and down.
Even then a 5kw draw from an AC unit is huge.
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Soldato
Ac is pretty efficient, I could have 2-3 units on all day and they'd not use loads.
With the weather capping at 28c as well it's odd they'd need so much AC.
Mainly use mine in the summer, or heating mode in winter occasionally.
With the weather capping at 28c as well it's odd they'd need so much AC.
Mainly use mine in the summer, or heating mode in winter occasionally.
Soldato
I watched that video earlier and I don't think his data is accurate at all - I think his system has a CT installed incorrectly and it's double counting something and counting his solar production as house usage too. One of the screenshots shows his house usage tracking the solar production exactly...
When he shows his setup he has 3 Tesla solar inverters (which are only available in 3.8 or 7.6kW versions), that means his total possible AC output is 22.8kW but the production graph spikes to nearly 36kW at points - it's just not right at all.
I live in the same part of New Jersey and I use about 12,500kWh of electricity a year which includes cooling a (old and not very well sealed) 3000sq ft house and charging a car...
My usage for the year so far for reference...
Oh and the DC size of his system is about 3.5x mine but the production figures he's showing are 8x mine for the same time period
My production:
His production:
As you can see it's virtually a mirror image (makes sense, he'll have the same weather) but there's just no way he's producing 8x as much!
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We went for a solar & battery installation back in January but we have had a lot of issues. I think basically our installers turned out to be complete cowboys. The system they sold us consists of
The next issue was low temperatures. Basically, in January the battery would barely charge and then during a cold spell in February the battery would not charge at all. At the sales stage, the “survey”, and during installation we had asked whether a “cold” loft would be suitable and had been reassured “yes all is fine”. Eventually the installer got a firmware update from the battery manufacturer.
Once they got that sorted, we begun to suspect that they battery system never got anywhere to the 10.2 kWh it was supposed to have. With the battery at 100% we could only consume between 3 and 4 kWh before it was down to its safety 16% minimum and would then draw from the grid.
Our solar installation company did not want to know and basically gave us the silent treatment, so we started contact the regulators. More on that later
Next, we had issues with the smart meter as the engineers Octopus sent out refused to do the install as our original solar system installer done such a poor job with wires not properly secured to anything and other issues. For that we had our first and only success with these “self-regulators” as the building control one, NAPIT, eventually got that sorted for us.
With that sorted, we were more and more convinced that the battery was giving us nowhere near the specified 10 kWh. Although it was inconsistent it was generally far closer to half the nominal capacity.
Our installation company’s sale person and senior electrician (who they sent to sort out the wiring and also the firmware updates in February) were fobbing us off saying everything was fine. The only thing the electrician did was check that each battery individually was at 100%.
By now it was summer so the battery was barely being used and I had told them that the issue won’t get noticed when the battery is not really being utilized.
The so-called regulators have been totally useless.
About the only one who did anything was NAPIT (although since the smart meter people said that the installation wasn’t building reg compliant, I suspect they had no choice).
The worst one was MCS who totally washed their hands by saying that they are standards organisation but while our installer is registered with them, they are not certified to install system with a battery. A very strange position: MCS are prominently featured in all advertising by the installer on their website, and sales process and we know from the sales manager that they never sell the plain system. That is, all their installations are with a battery but this self-regulator just fobbed us off.
The regulator we had the most dealings with was HIES and again they were useless.
After a lot of back and forth they eventually “looked” at our figures and said basically that inverter logs are not accurate enough. The whole time I got the feeling from HIES that they only represent their members and not consumers. The HIES agent for our case basically said that technical issues are between us and the manufacturer – despite us having been supplied with a whole system with all parts chose by our installer. Unsure how Sales of Goods applies to installations, but certainly did not expect a “regulator” to basically say that an installer they regulate can totally wash their hands of any issues.
None of the regulators cared about any mis selling of capabilities the system does not actually have. The so-called intelligent battery system which was meant to reduce the payback time by quite a bit – it seems that although claiming 24/7 sunshine in their calculations is now regulated anything else marketing can make up and lie about is fair game!
Really unsure where to take this now.
Maybe a small claims court but they might deem it too technical. Might have to pay an actual solar system engineer to at least verify that the battery does not work correctly.
Maybe Trading Standards? Or the regulator’s regulator if there is such a thing.
Meantime we paid about £4k for two batteries and only have the benefit of one.
I have been calculating the battery capacity figures from the full inverter logs. Basically, for each day I work out the min time, max time, start of daylight (first time each day there is any charging), end of daylight (last time each day where there is any charging) and then work out who much was used after that and then take the SOC percentages at these time to work out what the capacity was.
If I don't exclude days where SOC usage was under 2kWh I get a crazy chart like this:
if on the other hand I take those figures but exclude any days where usage was under 2kWh I get something like this:
Like I said, the figures are all over the place but the trendline's ~5-6kWh is about half of what we should have.
- 2 x 5.1 kWh Pytes 48100R
- 10 x 415W = 4.15 kW panels
- Afore Inverter
The next issue was low temperatures. Basically, in January the battery would barely charge and then during a cold spell in February the battery would not charge at all. At the sales stage, the “survey”, and during installation we had asked whether a “cold” loft would be suitable and had been reassured “yes all is fine”. Eventually the installer got a firmware update from the battery manufacturer.
Once they got that sorted, we begun to suspect that they battery system never got anywhere to the 10.2 kWh it was supposed to have. With the battery at 100% we could only consume between 3 and 4 kWh before it was down to its safety 16% minimum and would then draw from the grid.
Our solar installation company did not want to know and basically gave us the silent treatment, so we started contact the regulators. More on that later
Next, we had issues with the smart meter as the engineers Octopus sent out refused to do the install as our original solar system installer done such a poor job with wires not properly secured to anything and other issues. For that we had our first and only success with these “self-regulators” as the building control one, NAPIT, eventually got that sorted for us.
With that sorted, we were more and more convinced that the battery was giving us nowhere near the specified 10 kWh. Although it was inconsistent it was generally far closer to half the nominal capacity.
Our installation company’s sale person and senior electrician (who they sent to sort out the wiring and also the firmware updates in February) were fobbing us off saying everything was fine. The only thing the electrician did was check that each battery individually was at 100%.
By now it was summer so the battery was barely being used and I had told them that the issue won’t get noticed when the battery is not really being utilized.
The so-called regulators have been totally useless.
About the only one who did anything was NAPIT (although since the smart meter people said that the installation wasn’t building reg compliant, I suspect they had no choice).
The worst one was MCS who totally washed their hands by saying that they are standards organisation but while our installer is registered with them, they are not certified to install system with a battery. A very strange position: MCS are prominently featured in all advertising by the installer on their website, and sales process and we know from the sales manager that they never sell the plain system. That is, all their installations are with a battery but this self-regulator just fobbed us off.
The regulator we had the most dealings with was HIES and again they were useless.
After a lot of back and forth they eventually “looked” at our figures and said basically that inverter logs are not accurate enough. The whole time I got the feeling from HIES that they only represent their members and not consumers. The HIES agent for our case basically said that technical issues are between us and the manufacturer – despite us having been supplied with a whole system with all parts chose by our installer. Unsure how Sales of Goods applies to installations, but certainly did not expect a “regulator” to basically say that an installer they regulate can totally wash their hands of any issues.
None of the regulators cared about any mis selling of capabilities the system does not actually have. The so-called intelligent battery system which was meant to reduce the payback time by quite a bit – it seems that although claiming 24/7 sunshine in their calculations is now regulated anything else marketing can make up and lie about is fair game!
Really unsure where to take this now.
Maybe a small claims court but they might deem it too technical. Might have to pay an actual solar system engineer to at least verify that the battery does not work correctly.
Maybe Trading Standards? Or the regulator’s regulator if there is such a thing.
Meantime we paid about £4k for two batteries and only have the benefit of one.
I have been calculating the battery capacity figures from the full inverter logs. Basically, for each day I work out the min time, max time, start of daylight (first time each day there is any charging), end of daylight (last time each day where there is any charging) and then work out who much was used after that and then take the SOC percentages at these time to work out what the capacity was.
If I don't exclude days where SOC usage was under 2kWh I get a crazy chart like this:
if on the other hand I take those figures but exclude any days where usage was under 2kWh I get something like this:
Like I said, the figures are all over the place but the trendline's ~5-6kWh is about half of what we should have.
Could you share some pictures of your inverter and batteries and consumer unit(s)? Helpful to cover off the basics here before getting into the weeds.We went for a solar & battery installation back in January but we have had a lot of issues. I think basically our installers turned out to be complete cowboys. The system they sold us consists of
First thing we noticed is that the sale teams had sold us an “intelligent battery” which they had described as “monitors the energy market ever 30 minutes” amongst other things like being able to buy, store and sell using live rates to decrease the payback time. Turned out that the inverter they supplied is not able to any such thing and is only programmable by going up into the loft and struggling with a single line display thing.
- 2 x 5.1 kWh Pytes 48100R
- 10 x 415W = 4.15 kW panels
- Afore Inverter
The next issue was low temperatures. Basically, in January the battery would barely charge and then during a cold spell in February the battery would not charge at all. At the sales stage, the “survey”, and during installation we had asked whether a “cold” loft would be suitable and had been reassured “yes all is fine”. Eventually the installer got a firmware update from the battery manufacturer.
Once they got that sorted, we begun to suspect that they battery system never got anywhere to the 10.2 kWh it was supposed to have. With the battery at 100% we could only consume between 3 and 4 kWh before it was down to its safety 16% minimum and would then draw from the grid.
Our solar installation company did not want to know and basically gave us the silent treatment, so we started contact the regulators. More on that later
Next, we had issues with the smart meter as the engineers Octopus sent out refused to do the install as our original solar system installer done such a poor job with wires not properly secured to anything and other issues. For that we had our first and only success with these “self-regulators” as the building control one, NAPIT, eventually got that sorted for us.
With that sorted, we were more and more convinced that the battery was giving us nowhere near the specified 10 kWh. Although it was inconsistent it was generally far closer to half the nominal capacity.
Our installation company’s sale person and senior electrician (who they sent to sort out the wiring and also the firmware updates in February) were fobbing us off saying everything was fine. The only thing the electrician did was check that each battery individually was at 100%.
By now it was summer so the battery was barely being used and I had told them that the issue won’t get noticed when the battery is not really being utilized.
The so-called regulators have been totally useless.
About the only one who did anything was NAPIT (although since the smart meter people said that the installation wasn’t building reg compliant, I suspect they had no choice).
The worst one was MCS who totally washed their hands by saying that they are standards organisation but while our installer is registered with them, they are not certified to install system with a battery. A very strange position: MCS are prominently featured in all advertising by the installer on their website, and sales process and we know from the sales manager that they never sell the plain system. That is, all their installations are with a battery but this self-regulator just fobbed us off.
The regulator we had the most dealings with was HIES and again they were useless.
After a lot of back and forth they eventually “looked” at our figures and said basically that inverter logs are not accurate enough. The whole time I got the feeling from HIES that they only represent their members and not consumers. The HIES agent for our case basically said that technical issues are between us and the manufacturer – despite us having been supplied with a whole system with all parts chose by our installer. Unsure how Sales of Goods applies to installations, but certainly did not expect a “regulator” to basically say that an installer they regulate can totally wash their hands of any issues.
None of the regulators cared about any mis selling of capabilities the system does not actually have. The so-called intelligent battery system which was meant to reduce the payback time by quite a bit – it seems that although claiming 24/7 sunshine in their calculations is now regulated anything else marketing can make up and lie about is fair game!
Really unsure where to take this now.
Maybe a small claims court but they might deem it too technical. Might have to pay an actual solar system engineer to at least verify that the battery does not work correctly.
Maybe Trading Standards? Or the regulator’s regulator if there is such a thing.
Meantime we paid about £4k for two batteries and only have the benefit of one.
I have been calculating the battery capacity figures from the full inverter logs. Basically, for each day I work out the min time, max time, start of daylight (first time each day there is any charging), end of daylight (last time each day where there is any charging) and then work out who much was used after that and then take the SOC percentages at these time to work out what the capacity was.
If I don't exclude days where SOC usage was under 2kWh I get a crazy chart like this:
if on the other hand I take those figures but exclude any days where usage was under 2kWh I get something like this:
Like I said, the figures are all over the place but the trendline's ~5-6kWh is about half of what we should have.
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Soldato
We went for a solar & battery installation back in January but we have had a lot of issues. I think basically our installers turned out to be complete cowboys. The system they sold us consists of
First thing we noticed is that the sale teams had sold us an “intelligent battery” which they had described as “monitors the energy market ever 30 minutes” amongst other things like being able to buy, store and sell using live rates to decrease the payback time. Turned out that the inverter they supplied is not able to any such thing and is only programmable by going up into the loft and struggling with a single line display thing.
- 2 x 5.1 kWh Pytes 48100R
- 10 x 415W = 4.15 kW panels
- Afore Inverter
The next issue was low temperatures. Basically, in January the battery would barely charge and then during a cold spell in February the battery would not charge at all. At the sales stage, the “survey”, and during installation we had asked whether a “cold” loft would be suitable and had been reassured “yes all is fine”. Eventually the installer got a firmware update from the battery manufacturer.
Once they got that sorted, we begun to suspect that they battery system never got anywhere to the 10.2 kWh it was supposed to have. With the battery at 100% we could only consume between 3 and 4 kWh before it was down to its safety 16% minimum and would then draw from the grid.
Our solar installation company did not want to know and basically gave us the silent treatment, so we started contact the regulators. More on that later
Next, we had issues with the smart meter as the engineers Octopus sent out refused to do the install as our original solar system installer done such a poor job with wires not properly secured to anything and other issues. For that we had our first and only success with these “self-regulators” as the building control one, NAPIT, eventually got that sorted for us.
With that sorted, we were more and more convinced that the battery was giving us nowhere near the specified 10 kWh. Although it was inconsistent it was generally far closer to half the nominal capacity.
Our installation company’s sale person and senior electrician (who they sent to sort out the wiring and also the firmware updates in February) were fobbing us off saying everything was fine. The only thing the electrician did was check that each battery individually was at 100%.
By now it was summer so the battery was barely being used and I had told them that the issue won’t get noticed when the battery is not really being utilized.
The so-called regulators have been totally useless.
About the only one who did anything was NAPIT (although since the smart meter people said that the installation wasn’t building reg compliant, I suspect they had no choice).
The worst one was MCS who totally washed their hands by saying that they are standards organisation but while our installer is registered with them, they are not certified to install system with a battery. A very strange position: MCS are prominently featured in all advertising by the installer on their website, and sales process and we know from the sales manager that they never sell the plain system. That is, all their installations are with a battery but this self-regulator just fobbed us off.
The regulator we had the most dealings with was HIES and again they were useless.
After a lot of back and forth they eventually “looked” at our figures and said basically that inverter logs are not accurate enough. The whole time I got the feeling from HIES that they only represent their members and not consumers. The HIES agent for our case basically said that technical issues are between us and the manufacturer – despite us having been supplied with a whole system with all parts chose by our installer. Unsure how Sales of Goods applies to installations, but certainly did not expect a “regulator” to basically say that an installer they regulate can totally wash their hands of any issues.
None of the regulators cared about any mis selling of capabilities the system does not actually have. The so-called intelligent battery system which was meant to reduce the payback time by quite a bit – it seems that although claiming 24/7 sunshine in their calculations is now regulated anything else marketing can make up and lie about is fair game!
Really unsure where to take this now.
Maybe a small claims court but they might deem it too technical. Might have to pay an actual solar system engineer to at least verify that the battery does not work correctly.
Maybe Trading Standards? Or the regulator’s regulator if there is such a thing.
Meantime we paid about £4k for two batteries and only have the benefit of one.
I have been calculating the battery capacity figures from the full inverter logs. Basically, for each day I work out the min time, max time, start of daylight (first time each day there is any charging), end of daylight (last time each day where there is any charging) and then work out who much was used after that and then take the SOC percentages at these time to work out what the capacity was.
If I don't exclude days where SOC usage was under 2kWh I get a crazy chart like this:
if on the other hand I take those figures but exclude any days where usage was under 2kWh I get something like this:
Like I said, the figures are all over the place but the trendline's ~5-6kWh is about half of what we should have.
I feel your pain, although by comparison no where near as bad.
My installers are replacing my 4 batteries middle of Aug. My manufacturer, Solax, also useless.
Last communication they said in summer I shouldn't expect claimed efficiency as weather affects them.
IMO this is indicative of solar right now, manufacturers aren't that good, many installers aren't that great and looking for a fast buck.
I am not confident batteries are going to fix my issue, IMO there is something wrong with them in design or something.
When we tested my 4 individually, full discharge and then recharge, they all fell short of where they should be.
I plotted every days charge, how the batteries performed etc, noted how many days the batteries fell below listed minimum SOC.
At that point the installer came back with they would swap them. I suspect they could see how they would struggle to defend the court position.
Check if your installer are under RECC https://www.recc.org.uk/
Thanks, let me dig out some photos.
That's the inverter and various switches. That wall is the far one (we're end terrace) so no wonder things got cold in the winter.
The two batteries:
Only the master one has the DIP switches set for our inverter but then the battery manual does say that is what you are meant to do.
that's new mini unit they installed downstairs where the CS is. Unsure why the first switch is off but I think that is not connected?
The consumer units is old but they didn't touch that. This is what there is after the smart meter people were done. Initially the solar installers had left that a mess but cables are now all actually secured to wall / back of the box.
We've going through the useless regulators process so we haven't actually touched anything ourselves. The cowboy solar installer didn't produce any handover book but at least the manuals for all the parts are online. So far only had to restart the system ones a few months ago when it stopped working.
What I have considered, is trying just one battery at a time. Would have to change the DIP switches for the 2nd when trying that one. I had hoped not to have to touch much as then the installer could claim I damaged something.
No, we do not charge the batteries from the grid at all. We are now on the Octopus - only Flexible for now - so we could consider topping up at cheap rates later in the year. Very unflexible inverter though but at least they left the default password on it.
(Speaking of default password, has anyone changed the WiFi password on their inverter? Ours is an access point with a default password and while it's range isn't great that doesn't seem a good idea.)
Soldato
By contrast my GE system I'm pretty sure I'm getting the full 8.2 kWh it advertises, or near enough not to matter.
No system is perfect but GE at least seems to reasonably do what it says it will do so far!
No system is perfect but GE at least seems to reasonably do what it says it will do so far!
Thanks.
They have tons of logos and stuff:
but no RECC
Seems that your installer is better than ours then. Even with going via the regulators, they won't even acknowledge there's anything wrong.
HIES's inspector came back and dismissed our figures in no time at all (they were the jokers who insisted that any complaint we made to our installer had to be via registered mail and each time give them 14 days), I cannot see how the even looked at them and we supplied the whole inverter logs plus our calculations and also figured I got by using a power meter and consuming a load (boiling bunch of kettles) and those results were very close to the inverters logs - the rest were probably baseline stuff like the router, fridge etc.
On first glance looks ok. 6a mcb will be off as they’re just using it as a blank I expect. They should have labelled.
What’s max DoD is it set to?
Ignoring SOC for a moment, how does grid import compare to what you would expect through the day and post sunset?
(Dongle should be set to join your Wi-Fi and then the WAP function password changed to something that isn’t insecure.)
What’s max DoD is it set to?
Ignoring SOC for a moment, how does grid import compare to what you would expect through the day and post sunset?
(Dongle should be set to join your Wi-Fi and then the WAP function password changed to something that isn’t insecure.)
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