Solar panels and battery - any real world reccomendations?

Mercenary Keyboard Warrior said:
I must admit if I was buying solar again now. I would be speccing what I want. And ideally looking to find a spark to install it much like Ronski did.
Click to expand...
Don't talk to me with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight!

Mind you, I do have enough actual DIY tasks ATM so I would probably still be in the considering stage.
 
Mercenary Keyboard Warrior said:
Anyone with any knowledge in regards this approach as opposed to roof mounted I would like to know more please
Click to expand...

What do you need to know?

Do you have additional capacity on the current Inverter or need to add another?

Fitting them to the wall basically needs a suitable mounting frame, bolt the panels on and cable them up.
 
Ron-ski said:
What do you need to know?

Do you have additional capacity on the current Inverter or need to add another?

Fitting them to the wall basically needs a suitable mounting frame, bolt the panels on and cable them up.
Click to expand...

Will need another inverter as mine is close to max and certainly couldnt be on one string for the west facing.

Really I am just after anything I need to know. I think I need to have a matched inverter. Does that sound right?

I'm going to start looking at frames etc and need to do an accurate measure to see what I could fit.

Yeah planning it says as long as they do not extrude more than 20cm they fall within permitted development.

Having a steep angle was the plan anyway, as said they are better for the worst conditions.

They are going to be seen as the south side of my house faces a set of 4 townhouses where the backs of theirs face my wall.

I was thinking two rows. In portrait. I think it will be 8 or 10 panels that way. I would look to go for the absolute highest wattage I could find. Think that might be 430 in the normal size.
Would probably go all black as well so they look nicer and if needed treat the frames to a coat of black paint so they look as "one" as possible.
 
Mercenary Keyboard Warrior said:
Really I am just after anything I need to know. I think I need to have a matched inverter. Does that sound right?
Click to expand...
If I remember correctly you have whole house backup, if so you need the second inverter to be controlled by the first inverter. Say the grid goes down, both inverters carry on generating power, the batteries fill up, the inverter throttles back, but the other inverting carries on generating power, what happens?
In my system the Victron will alter the frequency, its called frequency shifting and my SE inverter will stop producing power, and the Victron throttles back just enough to cover loads.
So you need to make sure whatever you have will do this.
Also the first inverter needs to be able to take excess power from the other inverter and charge the batteries.

Probably the easiest way is to use the same make of inverter, so long as they play nice together, including the above, and also with data collection.

You'd also need to do a G99 with the DNO for the increase in generation power.

Will the town house shade the panels in the winter months?
 
Mercenary Keyboard Warrior said:
This just popped up from a company I follow on youtube
Its about MCS registration
Seems as we have come across a pretty pointless thing

Click to expand...
Well, that was great timing from that 'tuber!

Have to say that not only are our cowboys not MCS battery approved, even for just the PV part they should theoretically fail on [what] docs, labels, etc.

Interesting to see that Tesla are no fans of HIES.
 
Last edited:
I've added a vertically mounted panel to a south facing wall. I only had space for one. It gets direct sun very early in the day, and will have direct light all year round. Kind of a use what you got situation.

I made my own frame for it using some spare galvanised angle bar. One part bolted to the wall, then another bolted to the panel and a bolt either side between them. Then the lower I designed another 3d printed bracket / mount to get the angle just right above the panel below it.
 
Im using Home Assistant with a GivEnergy system using GivTCP, and one HA entity is the "mode". This gives a drop down list of states including ECO, ECO (Paused), Timed Demand, Timed Export, unknown.

Lets say I change the mode to "Timed Export" and change start and end times for cycles on Home Assistant dashboard. I then log into the giveenergy portal (waiting a few minutes incase of any sync delay) but the portal doesn't change to reflect my new timings or the operation mode. Am I missing a step? Id rather alter the program times in HA as its quicker and easier to change on the fly...
 
Last edited:
It seems that it responds to the times in HA and doesn't seem to care that the times in the web portal are different. I suppose that makes sense in that updating the web portal uses a username and login, and I guess that the web portal isnt reading timed program data from my inverter...?
 
It will probably send the commands when the time comes, if you set timed export manually it will stop discharging from the battery altogether until that time comes if what I read is correct. It will send command when time to start the discharge period and when over it will flick eco mode back on.

I wanted to test givtcp but cant yet as installer still dragging their feet with hard-wiring connection since they failed to install antenna then tried claiming it never came with one, the wifi is too unreliable for stable read in givtcp and half the time it wont even pick up inverter and 99% of the time home don't work on the app lol. Yesterday I had several gaps of time covering total of 6 hours.

Although I don't know why im trying to test home assistant as its just in a VM on gaming PC that goes off every night and there is still supply issue with the pi's and im not paying amped up prices.
 
Last edited:
I've received a new quote this morning and guidance is appreciated as its the most expensive but also the highest number of panels:

  • 6.22kW Solar PV System
  • 15 x 415w Eurena Panels
  • 2 x 5kWh Growatt AXE Battery
  • Growatt Inverter
  • 3 x Tygo Optimisers
  • Smart Monitoring
  • Hies Registration
  • Epvs Validation
  • MCS Certification
  • 5347 kwh per annum
£13,500 plus £50 per panel bird guard
 
That’s actually a decent quote. Can’t grumble at that, the prices are certainly coming down.

Me fitting the panels and running the cables, sparky fitted batteries and wired panels…12.6k

21 x 410 panels 8.6kw
3 x 4.8kw batteries total 14.4kw
6kw Solis hybrid inverter
1 x heated cabinet
All associated bits like consumer unit, wiring etc.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom