Solar panels and battery - any real world reccomendations?

I got a solar quote from octopus and their price was far too high also. It’s the opposite in heat pumps, their pricing is very aggressive.


JackRegan said:
Any cheaper for a Feb and later installation?
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Batteries are already zero vat when installed as part of a solar system. They only attract VAT currently when installed as standalone devices.
 
I had another 10.2 today, clearly the limit on my system with a fully clear day this time of year, maybe tomorrow I'll hit 10.3 with the extra 3 minutes of daylight :cry:
 
ok had the surveyor come round yesterday.
he was happy with the layout and runs for the wiring

roof measured and managed to fit 10 panels rather than 8

final proposal:
10x jinko 440wp
3.6kwh sunsynk ecco hybrid inverter
5.12kwh sunsynk l5.1 battery (2.5kwp discharge)
bird protection
fitting/certification
scaffolding

total damage = £6.9k after some bargaining

gonna go for it
 
tamzzy said:
ok had the surveyor come round yesterday.
he was happy with the layout and runs for the wiring

roof measured and managed to fit 10 panels rather than 8

final proposal:
10x jinko 440wp
3.6kwh sunsynk ecco hybrid inverter
5.12kwh sunsynk l5.1 battery (2.5kwp discharge)
bird protection
fitting/certification
scaffolding

total damage = £6.9k after some bargaining

gonna go for it
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that really doesnt look bad at all.
Can you add battery capacity? Its not that much so I would potentially want to ensure i could add more at a later date. Most allow multiples but I would just check personally.
 
Mercenary Keyboard Warrior said:
Can you add battery capacity? Its not that much so I would potentially want to ensure i could add more at a later date. Most allow multiples but I would just check personally.
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yes, clarified with the company they will add extra batteries post-installation
company said it would be the same price regardless of whether it was installed during the PV installation or after
damage = £1450 per extra 5.12kwh sunsynk l5.1 which seems reasonable

surveyor recommended getting one battery first then adding the second later on (as it's the same price regardless of installation date) and allows me to gauge my requirements
said wouldn't recommend getting more than 2 batteries due to my usage scenario, only having 10 panels and inverter only being 3.6kwh
1 battery will provide 2.5kwp discharge so 2 will max the inverter
 
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We recently got three quotes (2 other companies declined - too busy with heat pumps to do PV only installs now!). This is for a split/dual aspect roof layout.

Quote 1 (Octopus):
17x JA Solar 405 W Panels
5 kWh GivEnergy inverter
9.5 kWh GivEnergy battery
Bird protction/2x scaffolding/G99 included
£17k

Quote 2:
20x Hyundai 435 W panels
5 kWh SolarEdge inverter
10 kWh SolarEdge battery
20x SolarEdge optimisers
Bird protection
NO scaffolding or G99 costs included.
£22.3k

Quote 3:
22x Jinko 430 W Panels
6 kWh Growatt inverter
15 kWh Growatt battery
11x Optimsers
Bird protection/2x scaffolding/G99 included
£17k

I'd have probably perferred a GivEnergy system over Growatt had the quotes been somewhat closer, but we wanted better panels, and the GivEnergy system offered only did 3.6 kW from the battery. The Growatt should do the full 6 kW with this setup, which is what I think we'll go with. It doesn't feel like there's much in the way of bargins around here compared to some quotes! Also interesting to see Octopus quoting with 435 W panels now. We asked for better than 405 W and got told told flat out no, and that was only 6 weeks ago!
 
b0rn2sk8 said:
The scaffold is up, not long to go!
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My install did went ahead and they got it all done in a day instead of the planned 2 days except Givenergy AIO failed to commission properly and they are spent most of today on the phone to Givenergy today trying to resolve it. They coming back on Wednesday for round 2 with Givenergy to sort it out.

The install it's self is nice and neat and the work looks great. Lets hope they get the battery sorted on Wednesday and in the mean time its solar only for now.
 
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b0rn2sk8 said:
My install did went ahead and they got it all done in a day instead of the planned 2 days except Givenergy AIO failed to commission properly and they are spent most of today on the phone to Givenergy today trying to resolve it. They coming back on Wednesday for round 2 with Givenergy to sort it out.

The install it's self is nice and neat and the work looks great. Lets hope they get the battery sorted on Wednesday and in the mean time its solar only for now.
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My installer said this is why they try to avoid givenergy unless customers really push for it.
Apparently half a day to get an inverter commissioned with GE is quite normal.

From the consumer point of view thats pretty insignificant if you get a system thats better than average.
For an installer its clearly something that makes planning and time on site an issue.
 
Mercenary Keyboard Warrior said:
My installer said this is why they try to avoid givenergy unless customers really push for it.
Apparently half a day to get an inverter commissioned with GE is quite normal.

From the consumer point of view thats pretty insignificant if you get a system thats better than average.
For an installer its clearly something that makes planning and time on site an issue.
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I'm pretty sure we used the same installer ;)

That said, it wasn't off the back of your experience, I know someone personally that used them for a small commercial project and had a great experience and I can't really fault them either.

I'm cleaning the soffits tomorrow :D
 
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Bit of an update, Givenergy support got the battery up and running today. It's been updated and it has run through it's calibration cycle and is now powering the house.

The remaining issue is that the PV is not showing up in the AIO system. The modbus (?) is reading the PV generation, I can see the readout on the meter in the gateway but that information isn't getting to the inverter in the battery so its not able to 'grab' any of the excess solar to store. It's also not showing up in the app/dashboard - presumably this is the inverter rather than the gateway which handles this.
 
Mercenary Keyboard Warrior said:
My installer said this is why they try to avoid givenergy unless customers really push for it.
Apparently half a day to get an inverter commissioned with GE is quite normal.

From the consumer point of view thats pretty insignificant if you get a system thats better than average.
For an installer its clearly something that makes planning and time on site an issue.
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Im having problems as well with my givenergy battery.

Stated 5.2kwh battery, charges from empty to full 2.4kwh, today 3.3kwh way below stated capacity.....

Also getting BMS under/over voltage notifications as well, battery been in what, 3 months?

Looking online seems not the only one.
 
BUDFORCE said:
Im having problems as well with my givenergy battery.

Stated 5.2kwh battery, charges from empty to full 2.4kwh, today 3.3kwh way below stated capacity.....

Also getting BMS under/over voltage notifications as well, battery been in what, 3 months?

Looking online seems not the only one.
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I have Solax but from what I can tell 99% of solar issues are in fact battery issues.
And I suspect its actually a far worse problem than people realise as I bet a lot of people just assume its working.
I think the main issue is that a decent sparky can test just above everything with a solar install, there is quite limited stuff than can do with a battery as the BMS will be controlling stuff.

Where is yours located? They do suffer from cold issues.
 
The smaller GE batteries simply don't seem as good to me, don't think they get 100% DoD like the 8.2/9.5 ones do as well, so any issue is exacerbated by the smaller capacity.
 
The 100% thing is just a different marketing approach between gross capacity to usable capacity. My ‘100% DoD 13.5 kWh battery is nearer 15kwh in gross capacity.

However, my battery was fixed but it’s erroring out again so it’s back with support then to deal with.
 
BUDFORCE said:
Im having problems as well with my givenergy battery.

Stated 5.2kwh battery, charges from empty to full 2.4kwh, today 3.3kwh way below stated capacity.....

Also getting BMS under/over voltage notifications as well, battery been in what, 3 months?

Looking online seems not the only one.
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I think it's related to the cold. Those battery are only 80% dod anyway so in theory only take 4.1 to get back to 100%.
 
Mercenary Keyboard Warrior said:
I have Solax but from what I can tell 99% of solar issues are in fact battery issues.
And I suspect its actually a far worse problem than people realise as I bet a lot of people just assume its working.
I think the main issue is that a decent sparky can test just above everything with a solar install, there is quite limited stuff than can do with a battery as the BMS will be controlling stuff.

Where is yours located? They do suffer from cold issues.
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Loft and it is cold up there so maybe it is that.
 
b0rn2sk8 said:
The 100% thing is just a different marketing approach between gross capacity to usable capacity. My ‘100% DoD 13.5 kWh battery is nearer 15kwh in gross capacity.

However, my battery was fixed but it’s erroring out again so it’s back with support then to deal with.
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I couldn't honestly recommend Giv now as my top pick, I think they are just having too many issues, and as you said earlier you just want it to work you shouldn't have to be technical or even have to understand something you want as a turnkey solution.
 
BUDFORCE said:
Loft and it is cold up there so maybe it is that.
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Yeah loft will only be marginally warmer than outside.
My batteries are heated and I can see them taking longer to charge right now, and they are fairly heavily insulated as well.
Mine seem to charge at 100% from about 14C, below that they charge slower. (Below zero they will not charge and below -10 they will not discharge. without heating, with heating they will discharge to -30C from memory)
The heating seems to keep them above zero, probably 5-10C.

Interesting that my installer specifically answer my question in regards batteries before I had an install with one of the directors saying "mine are on a north facing wall and I do not have any issues with cold"
And yet this year they have emailed people (I wasn't interestingly wonder if its to do with my complaints about battery performance not meeting expectations) offering chippie supplied cabinets with insulation to help the charging issues many of us had last year.
The battery heating option is in the installer menu, duh why?, so I was unaware how to turn it on last year.

Full capacity is only achieved with LiFePO4 at 23C and gains capacity above that.
 
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Mercenary Keyboard Warrior said:
Yeah loft will only be marginally warmer than outside.
My batteries are heated and I can see them taking longer to charge right now, and they are fairly heavily insulated as well.
Mine seem to charge at 100% from about 14C, below that they charge slower. (Below zero they will not charge and below -10 they will not discharge. without heating, with heating they will discharge to -30C from memory)
The heating seems to keep them above zero, probably 5-10C.

Interesting that my installer specifically answer my question in regards batteries before I had an install with one of the directors saying "mine are on a north facing wall and I do not have any issues with cold"
And yet this year they have emailed people (I wasn't interestingly wonder if its to do with my complaints about battery performance not meeting expectations) offering chippie supplied cabinets with insulation to help the charging issues many of us had last year.
The battery heating option is in the installer menu, duh why?, so I was unaware how to turn it on last year.

Full capacity is only achieved with LiFePO4 at 23C and gains capacity above that.
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Ok cheers, maybe I shouldn't be too worried.

But I got a bit annoyed with the answer I got from the installer, I sent a screenshot of the thing saying 100% charge from 2.4kwh.

He came back and said, the max charge discharge rate of the inverter is 2.5kw so the system is working fine......

Was pretty nice and polite about it and said it was probably the screenshot not being clear (it was, but whatever) but that a kwh is a measurement of capacity not power.

So the only two conculsions I get from this was A. Tyring to fob me off or B. Genuinely doesn't know the difference between which is concerning.

Hasn't come back to me yet either.
 
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