Yes, I understand the logic. The electrician who split the tails 25 years ago did it without pulling the fuse. He did it while standing on a rubber mat, and it all looked rather worrying. I didn’t want the Henley removed, but it does make a lot of sense. Hopefully that’s it for electrical work now. We passed the inspection, and I took care not to mention who did the wiring for our new electric fire….
I actually had the main fuse and its holder (“the cut out”) upgraded by our DNO UK Power Networks a few weeks ago. It was a 60A fuse which I thought a bit marginal what with charging the car and so on. UKPN agreed and upgraded it to 100A free of charge. Of course for a while there was a bare cable directly connected to the network, with no fuse, sticking out of the wall.
The old boy who did the work told his younger mate that when he was in training he was told to stand in his rubber boots and hold the bare cable with his bare hand, just so he could learn that it was all safe if you had the right protective gear on. His mate was incredulous, as was I!
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Blimey, what a mess. 
Not blaming you of course but this is typical for electricians these days.
Luckily it’s in the garage and we don’t have to look at it. The main thing is that it meets the regulations and is nice and safe, but yes, it does look messy. The old consumer unit had all the connections at the top, but this is more like an octopus with wires coming out all over the place, which is why it looks a bit scruffy.
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Yes we had to have a new switching isolator, it was part of the EPS solution for the battery/inverter. Our house fuse is 100 Amps, so a 100 Amp rotating switch was installed… it’s quite a big beast… but all brand new and certified passed meeting current specs… photo also had to be taken etc.
BTW we were recommended FuseBox consumer units as well… apparently they are considered currently best in class and British made.
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A cable gland is missing from the bottom of the isolator box. You may wish to get them back to sort it.
I think if you mean the MEM box, that’s actually HH’s existing consumer unit for his audio radial. It’s not a new install so the regs wouldn’t call for that gland to be added. Unlike on the main consumer unit where, as it’s a new install, a means to keep a fire inside the metal box is mandatory. On the new isolator, the glands are built in for 25 sq mm tails on in and out.
Or perhaps I am misunderstanding your point?
I was there when the isolator box was installed and there are no glands, as you say. Guinless’s post got me worried! Thanks for the reassurance. The Memera was the bee’s knees of consumer units when it was installed. The Napit man has inspected it and was happy with it, and that’s good enough for me.
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Aah, I see. I assumed a gland had been missed off.
All ok then .
I have spent a lot of time with this book during my own electrical adventures. The third amendment has only recently been published as a set of cut out paragraphs to add to this edition, so I know more about the current regs than most people would ever want to know!
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Decided to switch to Intelligent Octopus GO till October/November when Cosy is better for the ASHP. I looked at Intelligent Octopus Flux but I don’t think it would cope with my 3.68kW limit and the high levels of power from the solar at times.
I am going to charge the battery every night and then start discharging before panels start generating. I will then discharge or pause the battery to stop it getting too full during the day. This will generate more income than staying on Cosy all summer.
Phil
Sounds like rather a lot of manual intervention is needed. Maybe try Home Assistant if you can.
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The SolarEdge system does all the work.
Like many with solar one tends to check what it’s doing and make tweaks to suit the weather. The HA Solar forecast addin is pretty hopeless. Writing automation might be time consuming.
Phil
That’s a shame about the HA addin.
There might be different solar forecast methods you can use in HA. The one I currently use in HA is rather good and tends to be uncannily accurate on PV geneneration, it’s Forecast.Solar and it uses data from
I set it for my three arrays that are different angles and orientations.
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Oh! That’s the one I use!
Several years ago when I was setting up HA it seemed to be bad at predicting when the weather was unsettled. Today 27kWh actual 26.1.
I will have to check it daily for a while.
Thanks Simon
Phil
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Our Go tariff is saving us quite a lot, with the overnight rate of 7p compared to the Cosy rate of 14p. As well as exporting in the day we are discharging from 8pm to 10.30pm, which does up to 10kWh, and then importing from 1am. So on 10kWh we make 80p a day for doing nothing. The import fills the battery by 5.30 and then it discharges a bit by the time the sun comes up. The battery was refilled to 100% by about 9am and then it exports. We’ve generated 38kWh today - our best yet, and exported nearly 29. We will switch back to Cosy in the autumn.
The only downside to the intelligent Go is setting up the car charging. It was all working well using the Renault app to control it all, but the Zappi seems to get confused and tries to charge the car with solar, which we don’t want to do. Hopefully we are there but for some reason it hasn’t been simple.
So far this April we are about £30 negative on the fuel bill, which I never expected to happen so early in the year.
While the sun is great, we do need some rain for the poor plants. Parts of the country have had loads of rain, but it’s pretty much missed us. So the water butt is almost empty.
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Not having G99, I have to leave space on the battery to absorb solar I can’t export. Today’s peak was over 6kWh, but the afternoon was cloudy.
SolarEdge have a pause battery mode that can be scheduled, which means that everything not used is exported upto the 3.68kW limit. This helps until the Solar exceeds the export and home needs (0.3kW base load approximately). It’s new so this is the first year of having better management of the system.
I see Octopus now support V2G with Wallbox. This might be an option for the winter, but it does require G99, which is unlikely for me.
Phil
Yes, the G99 makes everything much easier. The system just exports anything not being used and there is no need to keep space for excess.
Even before I switched to Intelligent GO I had to ensure the Zappi was not in an ECO mode as it would interpret exporting to the grid as solar excess and divert to the EV! Now I use Stop mode on the Zappi unless I want to charge overnight. I can use the car to forbid charging at certain times, which were 4-7pm with Flux.
How have you sorted it out?
Phil