Let’s be realistic, it’s no worse than the typical massive oil tank in the garden and oil boiler slapped on the outside of the house.
Solar panels and battery - any real world reccomendations?
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Was going to say the same. And also makes these houses much nicer to live in.
At least around here that isn't the case - most of the oil tanks are hidden away and those that aren't are fairly discrete tucked into a corner and most houses had internal boilers, though we replaced ours with one outside when we moved in but it is out the back out of sight for the most part. While the heat pumps, etc. are mostly stuck half-way up the buildings visible from all around.
That goes both ways in my experience - the boiler that was in place when we moved in was terrible, replaced with an external one which is "comparable to a quiet library" and you only really hear the noise momentarily when it kicks in or shuts off. Same for heat pumps - some around here are pretty much silent others you can plainly hear from a distance.
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Fair enough, there is no reason you can’t also do that with a heat pump, they don’t need to be stuck up high on a wall. Obviously it costs money which is why people don’t want to do it.
The only thing you can’t do is block the fan on the front and the radiator on the back but they certainly can be made to be much more discreet then just slapping them on the side of a building.
That said, manufacturers do need to do a better job of making them look less industrial.
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True, goes much further than the manufacturer though - several neighbours have done extensions or built new houses and only one has gone to an effort and spent a bit of money to make it look nice and blend in with the surroundings, the others have been done as cheap as possible and IMO look like an eye sore - 2 of them have this grey corrugated metal roofing which looks more like something you'd put on a shed completely out of character with the rustic tiles predominant in the area.
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Seriously considering getting solar in the next few years - will be needing to re-roof the house soon (original roof on a 1950s house, starting to show its age) and tempted to lay out for solar at same time.
if re-roofing then might as well get it integrated
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Didn't consider integrated panels to be fair but a quick google does say it should be cheaper overall (due to not paying for as many tiles etc). Might get a few quotes in the new year and see what I can get and also look at a battery system also
and also you're not paying for 2x scaffolding too
and most importantly, looks a hell ton nicer than panels sticking out of the roof
Quite literally just cover you entire roof with in-roof panels, they are way cheaper per sq metre than tiles, and unlike tiles the panels will pay you back. You should have as few tiles as you can get away with, and since you are having the roof re-done getting all the kit in the loft should be a non-issue. Question is do you convert to a warm roof at the same time, or stick to cold?
Rant incoming.
The inverter setup on that system is just odd. They bought in the panels from the field as DC to the plant room and attached them all into a string inverter when there is literally two hybrids with batteries attached right next to them.
I get the rear panels are slightly shaded by the front in the depth of winter but it’s literally for a few minutes a day and that could be resolved spacing the panels slightly further apart or not angling the front panels up to 40 degrees. The optimisers on the front strings will be doing next to nothing the entire time.
They’ve gone to all that effort to maximise the output of the panels (which from what I can see will clip in summer and be constrained by an export limit anyway) and then introduced a near 10% round trip efficiency loss on anything going through the battery by AC coupling it.
Even if you accept the premise the front panels couldn’t be moved further forward, you could have put the front strings into the hybrid inverters and utilised their capabilities more effectively.
You could still optimise the rear strings on solar edge if that’s what you really want and the hybrid inverters probably can’t take all that solar anyway but at least make use of the capability you already have there.
It would have cost less in equipment and required less messing about with negotiating with the grid because they are always concerned about total inverter capacity even if it’s limited because they are still exposed to it for short spikes.
The DC charger is interesting but one thing they didn’t mention (and I doubt they even realise) is that most cars fire up their battery heaters whenever you attach a DC charger as they are expecting 100+kw not 25kw. They burn through loads of energy heating the battery rather than charging the car which doesn’t happen when you AC charge. I assume there are also limitations on charging the battery when the charger is also running.
The logic of AC coupling the batteries and the round trip losses is even more odd when you also consider the charger and their export limit so you’d assume they would want to do some solar charging to maximise the output of the panels.
You know when people post their build lists in general hardware and they’ve literally gone to every segment, sorted by high to low and got one of the most expensive of everything….
There's a couple of things that make me wary about in roof panels:
- Shorter warranties (e.g 15 years for in roof vs 25 years for on roof) .
- ~5-10% less efficient than on-roof. I believe this is due to the lack of airflow underneath the panels resulting in overheating. Although presumably this is more of an issue in summer and the efficiency is more comparable in winter?
So whilst in roof panels are certainly cheaper in the short term if you're redoing the roof anyway, I'm not sure they stack up so favourably over the long term (25+ years).
I'm still in the very early stages of researching all this though, so would appreciate any counter points to the above.
I don't really buy the aesthetic argument either. If the roof was entirely panels, then I agree it would look nicer, but if you have to surround the edge of the panels with tiles, I think it looks like a bit of a bodge.
- Shorter warranties (e.g 15 years for in roof vs 25 years for on roof) .
- ~5-10% less efficient than on-roof. I believe this is due to the lack of airflow underneath the panels resulting in overheating. Although presumably this is more of an issue in summer and the efficiency is more comparable in winter?
So whilst in roof panels are certainly cheaper in the short term if you're redoing the roof anyway, I'm not sure they stack up so favourably over the long term (25+ years).
I'm still in the very early stages of researching all this though, so would appreciate any counter points to the above.
I don't really buy the aesthetic argument either. If the roof was entirely panels, then I agree it would look nicer, but if you have to surround the edge of the panels with tiles, I think it looks like a bit of a bodge.
You are correct to say panels installed in roof are slightly less efficient due to heat but that’s only in the height of summer on the hottest days, it’s not really an issue outside of that.
If you’ve are re-roofing, they are significantly cheaper to install in that way compared to the normal over tile approach, that’s a hell of a lot of 15ps to make up from your few % efficiency gain. Don’t forget, it’s not just the tiles, it’s the labour.
I wouldn’t be concerned about the warranty. Panels are extremely reliable and I’m pretty sure the warranty only covers the panel itself, not the scaffolding or labour required to replace it.
So even if a single panel failed prematurely after 10 years, it’s likely you’ll just replace the lot as you’ll not be able to get a direct replacement anymore. Panel tech (and wattage) will have moved on and the marginal cost to replace one vs all of them won’t be significant. It will be more cost effective to update them all to benefit from higher output panels.
Not sure I agree with you on the aesthetic point, almost all retrofit panels look like a bodge, even those with solar skirt (which also reduces efficiency as it traps the heat under the panels).
If you’ve are re-roofing, they are significantly cheaper to install in that way compared to the normal over tile approach, that’s a hell of a lot of 15ps to make up from your few % efficiency gain. Don’t forget, it’s not just the tiles, it’s the labour.
I wouldn’t be concerned about the warranty. Panels are extremely reliable and I’m pretty sure the warranty only covers the panel itself, not the scaffolding or labour required to replace it.
So even if a single panel failed prematurely after 10 years, it’s likely you’ll just replace the lot as you’ll not be able to get a direct replacement anymore. Panel tech (and wattage) will have moved on and the marginal cost to replace one vs all of them won’t be significant. It will be more cost effective to update them all to benefit from higher output panels.
Not sure I agree with you on the aesthetic point, almost all retrofit panels look like a bodge, even those with solar skirt (which also reduces efficiency as it traps the heat under the panels).
On those sunny hot days you will be producing so much anyway that a slight loss in efficiency is not going to be noticeable.
Aesthetics is of course a personal choice.
Eh? You can use the same panels, why do the warranties all of a sudden become shorter? You do know you don't need in-roof specific now and there are many in-roof tray manufacturers.
Hardly since we aren't the hottest country they'll be used in.