Solar panels and battery - any real world reccomendations?

I did set the charge timers initially in the portal before I set up the automation.

The Octopus dispatching signal turns on at 23.30 and turns off at 05.30 regardless of whether the car is plugged in or not so it always runs the automation.

GivTCP is fully local control so even if you set the charge times in the portal previously, GivTCP overwrites them locally and the portal has no idea it’s happened unless you refresh the registers manually with the little refresh button.

I use the automation to reset the charge timers back to 23.30-0530 just in case the Octopus API goes down or can’t be read. If it doesn’t trigger, it still charges. If it can’t be read it should default back to the charge timers although I can’t say that’s tested.
 
father-ted said:
We have just recieved this proposal from 'Spectra Solar':
Solar PV System Size: - 8.36kW
Battery Storage Size: - 10.64kWh
Total price for installation: - £12,358.38

Description of Goods Qty Unit Price Total Price
19 X Jinko Tiger Neo 440W N-Type All Black Mono Panels
Price includes all cable & electrical sundries
(25yr Product Warranty- 30yr Linear Power Warranty)
1 INCLUDED INCLUDED
Sunsynk 8kW ECCO Hybrid Inverter
(10yr Manufacturer warranty)
1 INCLUDED INCLUDED
Emlite NET Gen meter 1 INCLUDED INCLUDED
10.64kWh Sunsynk Battery Storage (90% Usable)
(NEW 2024 BATTERY)
(10yr Manufacturer warranty)
1
INCLUDED
INCLUDED
Renusol Roof Mounting Kit 1 INCLUDED INCLUDED
Wi-Fi Dongle for Cloud Access/Mobile App 1 INCLUDED INCLUDED
Consumer Unit + SPD 1 INCLUDED INCLUDED
Bird Protection + Installation 1 INCLUDED INCLUDED
7kW MyEnergi Zappi Untethered Charger 1 INCLUDED INCLUDED
Description of Services Qty Unit Price Total Price
Design, Installation & Setup 1 INCLUDED INCLUDED
MCS Cert, DNO(G98/G99), Elec Cert (EIC), HIES Warranty IBG 1 INCLUDED INCLUDED
Free Site Survey prior to Installation 1 INCLUDED INCLUDED
Free Online Monitoring 1 INCLUDED INCLUDED
24 Months defects “return to site” warranty 1 INCLUDED INCLUDED
Goods & Services Sub Total: £11,378.38
Scaffolding: £980.00
VAT @ 0%: £0.00
Total: £12,358.38

I have no idea abount any of this, please advise - is it a good price, is it decent equipment.
Should I ask to change anything, add anything or remove anything?
Our average usage per month over the last 7 months is 865kw - the hot tub has been off since January, so that will be going back on again soon (which will increase this usage).

Many thanks
Click to expand...
Got back onto Spectra Solar to amend the quote.
Asked for additional panels for the detatched garage, an extra battery, with the batteries etc all housed inside the garage.
This does mean I will have to dig a trench from the house to the garage 7m away (I will do that myself to save some cash).
The scaffold is more expensive as they have to run down the side of the house above an extension, then the same around the back.
They have come back with this quote:

Solar PV System Size: - 10.12kW
Battery Storage Size: - 15.96kWh
Total price for installation: - £14,996.00

23 X Jinko Tiger Neo 440W N-Type All Black Mono Panels
Price includes all cable & electrical sundries
(25yr Product Warranty- 30yr Linear Power Warranty)
1 Sunsynk 8kW ECCO Hybrid Inverter
(10yr Manufacturer warranty)
1 Emlite NET Gen meter
1 15.96kWh Sunsynk Battery Storage (90% Usable)
(NEW 2024 BATTERY)
(10yr Manufacturer warranty)
1 Renusol Roof Mounting Kit
1 Wi-Fi Dongle for Cloud Access/Mobile App
1 Consumer Unit + SPD
1 Bird Protection + Installation
1 4X Tigo Optimisers
1 Armoured Cable + Ducting
1 7kW MyEnergi Zappi Untethered Charger
1 Description of Services Qty Unit Price Total Price
Design, Installation & Setup
1 MCS Cert, DNO(G98/G99), Elec Cert (EIC), HIES Warranty IBG
1 Free Site Survey prior to Installation
1 Free Online Monitoring
1 24 Months defects “return to site” warranty
1 Goods & Services Sub Total: £14,016.00
Scaffolding: £980.00
GROUND WORKS TO BE CARRIED OUT BY CUSTOMER PRIOR TO INSTALLATION £0.00
VAT @ 0%: £0.00
Total: £14,996.00

Our average usage per month over the last 7 months is 865kw - the hot tub has been off since January, so that will be going back on again soon (which will increase this usage), as will the car charger.
All advice greatfully recieved.
Many thanks
 
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@father-ted Doesn't look too bad an increase for the extra capacity, but I'll let other judge that one as they're more familiar with pricing.

One thing I noticed, the first quote seems to imply one 10.64kWh battery, but I'm guessing it was actually two 5.32kWh batteries given the size increase this time is only 5.32 kWh.

Would they perhaps entertain something from https://www.fogstar.co.uk/collections/solar-battery-storage the Sunsynk inverter is 48v.

Also are you expecting to run the house of the system if the grid goes down, or just have some back up sockets?
 
Price looks good for what you are getting, its cheaper than my system was for a more complex install and includes a car charger. IMO of course.

For context, mine was 23 panels inc bird mesh (east/west), 8kw inverter, GivEnergy all in one 13.5kwh (100%) and whole home back up gateway. It was £16k

EDIT: If you can, it would be ideal if they split the main tails just after the meter and wire in the car charger there so you can place the CT's for the battery 'after' this point so they can't see the load of the car charger. That will prevent the charger from draining the battery.
 
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Ron-ski said:
@father-ted Doesn't look too bad an increase for the extra capacity, but I'll let other judge that one as they're more familiar with pricing.

One thing I noticed, the first quote seems to imply one 10.64kWh battery, but I'm guessing it was actually two 5.32kWh batteries given the size increase this time is only 5.32 kWh.

Would they perhaps entertain something from https://www.fogstar.co.uk/collections/solar-battery-storage the Sunsynk inverter is 48v.

Also are you expecting to run the house of the system if the grid goes down, or just have some back up sockets?
Click to expand...
What would the extra benefit be for the battery storage you are suggesting please, it is obviously more expensive?
Would my current quote run the house or just a few sockets in an outage? (I hadnt really considered that)
What else would I need please? (so I can consider the cost versus likelihood)
 
b0rn2sk8 said:
EDIT: If you can, it would be ideal if they split the main tails just after the meter and wire in the car charger there so you can place the CT's for the battery 'after' this point so they can't see the load of the car charger. That will prevent the charger from draining the battery.
Click to expand...
@father-ted

Q5PSEeY.jpeg


This will save you headaches on the long run as it will ensure any 'intelligent charging' doesn't discharge your batteries (presumably you'll be moving to something like Octopus intelligent go once installed).
 
father-ted said:
What would the extra benefit be for the battery storage you are suggesting please, it is obviously more expensive?
Would my current quote run the house or just a few sockets in an outage? (I hadnt really considered that)
What else would I need please? (so I can consider the cost versus likelihood)
Click to expand...
I don't think it will more expensive, per kWh it's highly likely cheaper (£2500 buys a 15kWh battery) , but without an itemised quote it's difficult to say.

I'm not familiar with Sunsynk, but likely you'd need a gateway to handle changeover for grid outages, a couple of backup sockets is a lot cheaper to achieve though. 8kW would be enough to run most things, but obviously 8kW is the limit, draw too much and the inverter would trip out.

You'd need to ask Spectra Solar what the options are.
 
After reading through this thread and seeing some people's quote figures, am I being quoted really high by Octopus and Sunsave?
We have a detached house with a normal pitched roof with proposal to put panels on both sides of the roof (east/west).
The east side of the roof has a large conservatory spanning the width of the house so I dunno how the scaffolding will go but i'm sure it's possible somehow.

Annual usage: ~6700kWh
EV + AC in conservatory, induction hob, gas central heating.
Both quoted system below provides ~ 6kWp

You guys think it's possible to get this system under about 13k from local installers? We're based in Oxfordshire.

Octopus:
15 x JAM54D41-435/LB 435 Watt Panels (JA Solar)
1 x Giv-HY5.0 V3 (GivEnergy)
1 x Giv-Bat9.5 (GivEnergy)
1 x Enviroguard

Total system price before discount
£13,899.00
Excluding £0.00 VAT
East West or Additional Array Labour
£1,140.00
Additional Scaffolding
£1,000.00
Total system price after discount
£16,039.00
Excluding £0.00 VAT
Purchase Price
£16,039.00
Including £0.00 VAT

Sunsave Plus Subscription
14x Trina Solar Co. Ltd. 440W solar panels
GivEnergy 9.5kWh battery
GivEnergy 5kW inverter
Scaffolding and installation
Bird protection

Monthly payments: £127.51 for 20 years adding up to about £30k (which includes a ~5k "maintenance and monitoring" fees and replacement of inverter and batteries if needed at 10-12 year mark)

Total credit amount​

£18,130

APR​

5.9%

Interest rate​

3.2%

Deposit​

£0.00
 
Kyaw25 said:
After reading through this thread and seeing some people's quote figures, am I being quoted really high by Octopus and Sunsave?
We have a detached house with a normal pitched roof with proposal to put panels on both sides of the roof (east/west).
The east side of the roof has a large conservatory spanning the width of the house so I dunno how the scaffolding will go but i'm sure it's possible somehow.

Annual usage: ~6700kWh
EV + AC in conservatory, induction hob, gas central heating.
Both quoted system below provides ~ 6kWp

You guys think it's possible to get this system under about 13k from local installers? We're based in Oxfordshire.

Octopus:
15 x JAM54D41-435/LB 435 Watt Panels (JA Solar)
1 x Giv-HY5.0 V3 (GivEnergy)
1 x Giv-Bat9.5 (GivEnergy)
1 x Enviroguard

Total system price before discount
£13,899.00
Excluding £0.00 VAT
East West or Additional Array Labour
£1,140.00
Additional Scaffolding
£1,000.00
Total system price after discount
£16,039.00
Excluding £0.00 VAT
Purchase Price
£16,039.00
Including £0.00 VAT

Sunsave Plus Subscription
14x Trina Solar Co. Ltd. 440W solar panels
GivEnergy 9.5kWh battery
GivEnergy 5kW inverter
Scaffolding and installation
Bird protection

Monthly payments: £127.51 for 20 years adding up to about £30k (which includes a ~5k "maintenance and monitoring" fees and replacement of inverter and batteries if needed at 10-12 year mark)

Total credit amount​

£18,130

APR​

5.9%

Interest rate​

3.2%

Deposit​

£0.00
Click to expand...
I certainly wouldnt be touching the sunsave quote……..its ludicrous
 
Kyaw25 said:
After reading through this thread and seeing some people's quote figures, am I being quoted really high by Octopus and Sunsave?
We have a detached house with a normal pitched roof with proposal to put panels on both sides of the roof (east/west).
The east side of the roof has a large conservatory spanning the width of the house so I dunno how the scaffolding will go but i'm sure it's possible somehow.

Annual usage: ~6700kWh
EV + AC in conservatory, induction hob, gas central heating.
Both quoted system below provides ~ 6kWp

You guys think it's possible to get this system under about 13k from local installers? We're based in Oxfordshire.

Octopus:
15 x JAM54D41-435/LB 435 Watt Panels (JA Solar)
1 x Giv-HY5.0 V3 (GivEnergy)
1 x Giv-Bat9.5 (GivEnergy)
1 x Enviroguard

Total system price before discount
£13,899.00
Excluding £0.00 VAT
East West or Additional Array Labour
£1,140.00
Additional Scaffolding
£1,000.00
Total system price after discount
£16,039.00
Excluding £0.00 VAT
Purchase Price
£16,039.00
Including £0.00 VAT

Sunsave Plus Subscription
14x Trina Solar Co. Ltd. 440W solar panels
GivEnergy 9.5kWh battery
GivEnergy 5kW inverter
Scaffolding and installation
Bird protection

Monthly payments: £127.51 for 20 years adding up to about £30k (which includes a ~5k "maintenance and monitoring" fees and replacement of inverter and batteries if needed at 10-12 year mark)

Total credit amount​

£18,130

APR​

5.9%

Interest rate​

3.2%

Deposit​

£0.00
Click to expand...
You should be able to get all that for around £9-10k easily now. That price is very expensive.
 
I've just paid around that sort of money for 29 panels and a 15kWh battery, installed etc. I'd say it was on the very expensive side. The Sunsave numbers aren't even worthy of discussion.

Also, only 15 panels total? That implies a 7/8 split, which is tiny for a detached house even by new-build standards. Do you have velux windows or anything like that in your roof or some other reason why you're only able to get so few panels up? IMO you should be absolutely cramming the roof full of as many panels as you can get - they are cheap vs the cost of scaffolding etc so you might as well go as big as you can while you're up there. Even if you don't need that extra electricity, the export will probably shorten your ROI time by a fair chunk even after the extra costs of the panels and larger inverter are factored in.
 
DRZ said:
I've just paid around that sort of money for 29 panels and a 15kWh battery, installed etc. I'd say it was on the very expensive side. The Sunsave numbers aren't even worthy of discussion.

Also, only 15 panels total? That implies a 7/8 split, which is tiny for a detached house even by new-build standards. Do you have velux windows or anything like that in your roof or some other reason why you're only able to get so few panels up? IMO you should be absolutely cramming the roof full of as many panels as you can get - they are cheap vs the cost of scaffolding etc so you might as well go as big as you can while you're up there. Even if you don't need that extra electricity, the export will probably shorten your ROI time by a fair chunk even after the extra costs of the panels and larger inverter are factored in.
Click to expand...
It's a 3 bed detached in an area with similar sized semi-detached houses so it's not a biiig house. Plus a bit of the west roof is taken up by a little window protrusion from the main bedroom but no velux or anything like that. So it is more or less the max the roof can fit I believe. That's a lie, could fit about 18-19!

Thanks for the insight guys, I'll contact more local companies for quotes.

Also just found out Barclays (our mortgage provider) does a 1k reward for this with a trustmark certified installer.
 
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Agreed that quote is nuts.

I paid £16k for 23 panels (with bird protection, 8kw inverter and a GivEnevery 13.5kwh all in one.

Also I very much second the notion of cramming as many panels on the roof as possible. It’s the cost effective option when doing east/west due to additional scaffold costs and lower production of the panels. You need to make the most of the fixed installation costs.
 
Kyaw25 said:
After reading through this thread....

Octopus:
15 x JAM54D41-435/LB 435 Watt Panels (JA Solar)
1 x Giv-HY5.0 V3 (GivEnergy)
1 x Giv-Bat9.5 (GivEnergy)
1 x Enviroguard


Sunsave Plus Subscription
14x Trina Solar Co. Ltd. 440W solar panels
GivEnergy 9.5kWh battery
GivEnergy 5kW inverter
Scaffolding and installation
Bird protection
Click to expand...
Shouldn't be much more than £8k

Solar panels and battery - any real world reccomendations?

You'll pay 20% VAT on battery without solar panels installed with it. You'll still need an inverter. Someone will have to install it. May need DNO application if it can export. Reliant on a cheap off-peak tariff always existing that you can get onto. To some degree here you may as well just...
forums.overclockers.co.uk forums.overclockers.co.uk
 
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father-ted said:
What would the extra benefit be for the battery storage you are suggesting please, it is obviously more expensive?
Would my current quote run the house or just a few sockets in an outage? (I hadnt really considered that)
What else would I need please? (so I can consider the cost versus likelihood)
Click to expand...
The "new 2024" battery in the quotes you have are the sunsynk G5.3

10.64 = 2 batteries
15.96 = 3 batteries

Spectra charges £210 per 440w jinko panel they install. And if I recall correctly, they said they charged £50 per optimiser.

From my man-look, the only difference between your two quotes are 4 panels, extra battery, 4 optimisers and the armoured cabling for £2638.
Assuming that the armoured cabling was £100,
the battery cost is £1500 per battery, which isn't too bad.

For comparison, my Spectra-installed L5.1 battery was £1450 per battery (I have two installed)
L5.1 = 4.61 kWh usable (5.12kwh 90% DOD)
G5.3 = 4.77 kWh usable (5.32kwh 90% DOD)
 
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Just paid for the following, chucking it in here for reference - £12873.60 in London from Ovo.
Code: 
Solar panels × 12 Jinko 430W
Inverter - SolarEdge 5kw
Battery - GivEnergy 9.5kWh + 3kw inverter
Mounting kit
Scafolding to access roof
Bird blocker
Canopy over battery
Also potentially relevant - Ovo have a 3 year 0% finance via Propensio, and Ovo have an export rate that's available only to people who get solar from them
 
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maddness said:
so essentially setting price cap enabled means it wont charge in the day intelligently, it will only charge from 23:30 - 05:30 @ the 7.5p rate

my cars will charge between 23:30 - 05:30 (set in the ohme app)
and my pv batteries are set to fill from the grid 23:30 - 05:30 (set in the giv app / cloud)

if the batteries are set to charge at the same time as the cars then it wont use the batteries to charge the cars, also the rest of the house will use the 7.5 grid rate between these hours too

is that not how it works?

=============================

for the ev charger, it connects to wifi, and communicats over the cloud to the inverter, because I have a give inverter, option D or E is most suitable, i guess if i need to use wired, i need to see what the data / comms cable is, i can worry about that later
Click to expand...
@b0rn2sk8

Yesterday I tested the system by plugging in the car in the morning. Right away a message on the Ohme app indicated that the price cap was enabled, auto scheduling the charging from 23:30 to 05:30 without intervention from me.

At 23:30 the car started charging, the give batteries were at approx 15% at this time. Both the car and the battery started charging simultaneously, the car reached 90% as set and the battery reaching 100%. During this time the car did not take any power from the batteries.

The grid supplied power to the house, car, and batteries from 23:30 to 05:30 @ 7.5p rate as expected and required.

So it looks like it worked as supplier suggested, they said set the batteries to charge for the full duration from 23:30 - 05:30 to prevent it being used.

Looking at the cloud so once batteries reach to 100% it stays at 100% until 5:30 in the morning, i checked on another day:

Screenshot-2024-07-15-151258.jpg
 
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