Interesting points re vehicle versus domestic batteries. When I installed my solar about 5 years ago I didn’t get a battery because I was expecting to get an EV with vehicle to home/grid capability well before the battery paid for itself. If I was doing it today I would get a battery but mainly because V2G is being held back, probably because the national grid can’t handle it.
I was not aware that domestic use patterns would harm a car battery. Of course this may change as car battery tech is rapidly evolving. It seems to me that connecting all EVs to the grid would be a game changer as it would constitute a huge national power reservoir and avoid wasting surplus wind energy for example.
I have solar and also there are very cheap rates available overnight. If I had an EV 7kW would be plenty fast enough for me apart from a handful of times a year if I had a 80KwH ev battery giving around 300 miles of range.
To me the biggest deal would be that a national power reservoir of millions of EV batteries would mean we could close most or all of our fossil fuel power stations and have vastly improved energy security.
@MrFixit perhaps I should expand. Last year I had to rush down to London as my Dad was in his last moments in hospital. Thankfully he held on till I got there and passed away within the hour. So as you can imagine, I cant entertain the idea of having to wait hour(s) to reach enough charge to do the journey in an emergency.
@Simon-in-Suffolk Apparently on average, EV’s consume around 15 kWh on a motorway journey, so as you say doesn’t come close to what a most houses might use. Certainly not mine which uses ~4.5KWh per day. My original logic was more around having a 40+KWh battery on the drive, then having to pay what used to be very high costs in comparison for house batteries. With the reduction of battery costs, I think this solar-plug-in device makes a lot more sense for my use.
Hopefully the “forget” part is true for most people, but not so much for people on this discussion, who love a chart, an app and a tariff change to squeeze every last drop from their setup
Me neither. I previously assumed it would be the V2G inverter that would be designed for different profiles, and not the battery chemistry as Simon indicated.
Regarding the car, the question is how often another emergency is actually likely to occur. Not that often I suspect. We quickly got used to the idea of charging little and often on a long journey. You’d be surprised how much charge can be added when you stop for coffee and a wee.
If I’m rushing to a hospital, I would be doing it in one go. If I had stopped on my way to see my Dad, I probably wouldn’t have been there in time - people were saying he was hanging on for me. I still have family down in London. Eventually there will be less need, and the battery range will get better - so now with the new car, I don’t need to decide for a few years yet.
Sorry to hear about your father. Being able to say goodbye is an important part of the grieving process. Sadly, during COVID-19 many didn’t get that opportunity.
For an emergency dash there are super fast public chargers available that with the right car could get you a full charge in ~15 minutes.
I’m sorry to hear about your dad, as said above we know how important it is to say thank you and good bye.
As far as emergency travel… I think it’s about being prepared. If petrol rationing comes in again, which it conceivably might… we will be back to keeping 5 litre emergency Jerry cans in the boot. as my dad did with 1 gallon Jerry cans in the 70s.
It’s a mixture of different chemistry, battery cell design (I believe) and correspondingly different algorithms in the BMS.
In short domestic batteries are designed for daily deep discharge full charge with 100% trickle charge cycles… EVs it’s usually best not go to the extremes regularly including let it fully discharge… if not to shorten the EV battery life.
The chemistry difference also means domestic batteries are safer than EV batteries, but with an impact of reduced peak current draw compared to EV batteries.
I’ve been searching for the absolute simplest solution to add a battery and inverter, whilst retaining our current Octopus Go tariff. Solar isn’t an option for us currently, although that might change down the line. Our non-EV charging usage is 6-10kwh. Plus storage heaters from next winter. We charge our EV’s every other night on average.
It’s quite confusing for a non-teccy person like me. Fogstar batteries don’t seem to like Octopus for one thing. I just want the EV and storage heaters to charge at cheap rate and the rest of the house to run off a battery charged at cheap rate for the rest of the day. Cost is less important than simplicity.
Richard - please delete if this takes us off-topic.
Do you mean new storage heaters? Surely even if you think your house is not suitable for an ASHP an Aircon (aka Air to Air reversible heat pump) would be better at least for partial if not almost whole house heating. In our climate these operate at 5 fold input to output performance (COP) for much of the year with cooling in the summer. If you had 15kW that would draw 3kW of electricity. My 12kW ASHP uses about 15kWh/day on average over the October to March period. 20kWh of battery storage has been enough and our off peak usage is over 98%. Our house has EPC of C and is 300m2.
There are quite a few styles to the indoor units to make them blend. A listed building is a bit problematic because the conservation people live in the past even when you try to site them discretely.
Hi Mikey, from what you say, these new Plugin Solar systems (without the panels) may suit you. Not available until the summer, but they are just boxes that you plug in to any 3-pin socket in the house (no electrician required). In your scenario they would charge at night then feed your house with up to 800Watts during the day.
Phil - we’re moving to the house next door in November (hopefully). Their storage heaters are almost brand new, so it makes sense to stick with those - initially at least. An ASHP is therefore not in my (current) calculations, just a battery.
I believe they can easily be daisy chained, or in fact have them all over the house, but suspect the 800W is a limit no matter how many you have as they are linked together - although I’m not 100% sure on that. The final regulations will help clarify that when they come out soon.
Did you have to do anything to be able to set the battery reserve level ? The battery screen of the Solaredge app only shows the mode (time of use, manual etc) and the information sections for us, there’s nothing there for Backup Settings. I also don’t seem to be able to set it up get notifications if the BUI activates. We’re in the UK
I suppose my installer did what was needed. Even with him there the extra bit of the battery screen became visible.
You could raise a case with SolarEdge or ask your installer to do the same. I changed the 10% reserve he set to 0% as generally I discharge the last 20% just before it starts charging again on IOG.
Well, this was unexpected. EONNext are doing a Power-up thing tomorrow from 2-4pm whereby they will discount 20p per kWh used for anything above 1% of normal use. For me that means 2 hours of electricity for 1p per kWh.
I do realise of course a lot of you are on tariff that make have varied charge rates thought a day, but I’m on a fixed Tarif.
If only I had a battery, but chance to get washing machine, dishwasher, Hot Water and a bit of electrical heating enabled. In fact I’m expecting to see the In House Display show numbers it’s not seen in 7 years.
