Of course a solar diverter to immersion is effectively adding another form of energy storage.
To get around the 2.4KW of energy being used by the washing machine to heat the water, I pause it just after starting when its about to fill up, then open the drawer and pour in 12 litres of hot water from the tap. This means it generally wont use more than 400Watts. Yes it’s a bit of a faff but it means you don’t have to then worry about someone else plugging in a kettle at the same time. And of course th diverter will re-heat your water tank.
Most of our washing is done at 20c, with only my work T-shirts needing 40c. I’ve just started using a different product, so will try 20c for that at the next wash.
Our system is being installed today and has just been switched on.
It’s rather satisfying to see the smart meter displaying 0 consumption whilst everything keeps on running. I thnk this could become the new obsession.
The electrician also gets a thumbs up. When he was looking over the current setup I explained the dedicated radial for the Hifi and he nodded with approval and invited himself in for a listen rather than laughing in my face.
About ten days in I’m now resisting looking at the phone every five minutes to see the generation stats as the sun rises.
I think I’ve still looked at my phone at least 100 times today to see what’s going on and have done a fair amount of laundry/tumble drying/immersion heater use.
Still: Generation: 16.2kWh, Feed In 6.9kWh so far.
With the battery it’s a question of when I start drawing power from the mains during the evening (at around 00:30-04:30 some things like car charging and immersion heating happen). Seeing data like this certainly helps justify the spend! And on that day I used 16kWh of self-generated and exported almost 12kWh.
What’s the going rate in the UK at the moment for installation costs? Just had our “Solar Together” quote in from the council and it’s coming in at 10.3k for a 16 panel 6.2kwh recommendation. Increasing that to 14.7k if we add a 4.4kwh battery
We had a similar Solar Edge system of 16 panels quoted at £10,240 with zero VAT. That was in March for installation at the end of January. In about a month he will start by contacting the DNO. It is up to £20,388 with the 13.5kWh Tesla Powerwall. Who know what the real price will be.
Solar Edge have now released their own 10kWh Battery that works through the inverter. In March it was not available.
I am in the process of switching to Octopus at the moment. @Bluesfan has the Octopus Tesla tariff. I’m not sure if this will be available to me with the turmoil in the energy market. They are still working on how to adapt their interesting tariffs for the government support scheme. Now we don’t know what will be in place from next April. It will probably be GO or the other EV tariff where they control the EV charging.
Our Air Source Heat Pump is the biggest uncertainty because if we have a long cold (-8C) spell it will be running at 2kW or more for a lot longer. Typically it heats the upstairs in the morning 5.45-7.15 ish using 1.5kWh at 40C out of the pump with super sized radiators. On colder days in the evening and sometimes in the afternoon like 11-12 October max of 7.8kWh/ day for heating (6) and hot water (1.5-1.8 per day). I will put the water temperature up when it is not able to reach 20C. We are using significantly less than the cost equivalent amount of gas this October. I don’t think it is sensible to size the battery storage for the worse case. But I think when the average temperature is no lower than 8C we will have enough from Solar and an overnight battery charge apart from December and January. We may need the heat pump going in the cheap overnight period as well. We use the wood burner downstairs and may need to run it all day when it gets cold. At the moment it hasn’t dropped below 20c even on cold nights. Our house is 300m2.
UK feed in rates vary quite widely. I’ve seen as little as a penny quoted and as much as 15p (or 24p with Tesla’s powerwall). Generally they seem to sit around the 5p mark.
Sadly, for me, there’s an exclusion for the 15p rate with the incoming tariff I have but I might think about changing that.
In April 23 we will have a whole 12 months of solar data , so waiting for then to redo the numbers and see if we should change provider ( we last changed in June 22) , and hopefully markets to settle down a bit by then.
It will be the new obsession, but that’s no bad thing! The more info you get, the more you will begin to understand how to get maximum benefit from the sun, not just for electricity, but for heat also. Now that we are retired, we leave the curtains open at night on floor to ceiling East facing windows in our kitchen/living area. When we get out of bed at c.9.30, the sun oftentimes has that area heated to 20 degrees or more, even when temperatures outside are well under 10 degrees. With our thermostat set to 19 daytime and 19.5 night, often the heating doesn’t fire up at all, or maybe at most an hour late in the evening.
The sun is the giver of all life on earth. We humans need enough for our health. If you garden you realise that plants that don’t get enough don’t develop to their full potential and too much for some has it’s problems.
So had a couple of other quotes in and the most favourable is £14300 for a 16 panel 6.6kW array and a 6.5kWh battery, all fitted including bird protection. Still seems pricey but I guess the market has driven that recently
Ours was only a small 7 panel system, 2.8kw, no battery and cost £3875. We had the advantage of a single story garage so no scaffolding required.
I’m in the process of running a 30m ethernet cable to the garage to get internet to the building so we can install a dongle that will web enable the invertor to allow for me to obsess even more over what’s going on!
