Two days in now (well 47.5 hours) and the first 24 hours brought 60kWh generation. We used nearly all of that (surplus on car charging). We have 8.2 kWp and the highest generation we have seen is about 5.7kW (oops edited to add the graph shows a peak just at 7kW for a few minutes today). Today has been less generative with a total of 103kWh in the first 47.5 hours
Yesterday afternoon when the system was showing an export of around 3kW I was charging my wife’s car at about 3.5kW and the import meter (in the in laws’ kitchen) was showing a small draw
Clearly we are going to have more than we know what to do with in the summer months. No idea where we will be in the winter - a big drop in generation from the cloudy spells today
The car charger and wind generation are completely invisible to the system which means that when it says “export”, but I have a car charging, we are actually (more or less) using it. It has occurred to me that the system will prevent us from benefiting from wind generation as it it thinks it is importing that - so it would use battery instead
But I think we are best getting the split done asap and then getting everything properly integrated
Having Solar Panels is mostly a “feast or famine” situation. Hopefully the latest panels are better in the winter, but currently I can hardly make a dent on using my generated power. I get comfort though as it means I am generating clean fuel for many of the neighbours.
I took a while to get my head around “won’t have enough in the winter will have too much in the summer” thing. Such an obvious thing but lots of other starters seem to make the same “mistake”. As we have the wind as well I am hoping we will be unable to use most of both but need the wind to be integrated first
The battery does help overcome this with the help of an EV. I don’t mind exporting 11kWhs at 36p/kWh. Equally in winter importing 20kWhs in the night. The Apps could be better to though. V2H would be better still.
I have just looked at the meter in the farmhouse and we have imported about 70kWh since Saturday lunchtime (more than I was expecting). But the meter that measures what has been used to charge the cars is showing 134 kWh used in the same period, so that is 64 saved from the solar and we have used around 50-60 in the house in the same period too. So in two days and around 50-60 per day saved so with our hideous tariff that is £40-£50 saved. Now that is the peak saving we will ever achieve (won’t be able to get as much in the cars I don’t think) but a good start and couldn’t have asked for more
An interesting and unexpected side benefit of the solar panels is that they are reducing the solar gain through the roof into the loft. I was in the loft study yesterday for a business zoom meeting from 2pm to 3.30, and normally it would be fairly unbearable with outside temperatures in the high 20s but it was more than acceptable. Also a usable space today after several days of day long sun. So that’s nice!
Generation still going well (though of course it’s peak generation weather) with another 50+ kWh generated today. The batteries were full by 9am today but I put my wife’s car on to charge and got a good 20kWh in that from solar and then added another 15 or so to my car (plus hopefully some wind)
Our panels are mounted on a concrete sectional garage which used to be very hot for most of the day in the summer. Not a great problem but we do have a fridge and freezer in there.
Now it’s cool for most of the day which must be beneficial for energy consumption.
I noticed the invertor is getting pretty toasty now it’s working at near maximum capacity.
If you don’t charge the cars are you able to live off Solar and battery and wind turbine? Ie. do you import over night?
Have you tried just charging the cars with excess solar that would be exported otherwise?
Not sure what make your inverter and battery is, but are you able to see whether all the solar is used? If it isn’t there is a mismatch between the Solar and the inverter output a bit like a cloud passing in front of the sun rather than the bell jar kind of curve. Yours may be different because you have two roof pitches.
20x Jinko Tiger Neo 54c 420w All Black Mono Solar Panels
1x Solis 8kw Dual Phase Inverter
LUX 3600ACS inverter
Eddi Immersion Controller
2x Harvi Wireless CT Clamp
3x 4.8kw Pylontech Batteries
The wind generation and car usage are not monitored within the above - going to get that sorted once the supply is split (needs to be done before winter so the system can import wind and also do the car more properly)
At the moment my car is charging at 20amps which is 4.something kW. The house system monitor tells me I am currently exporting more than that so I am charging on surplus solar. I can control the car’s charging speed from the car app (though doesn’t always work reliably). If I get it wrong then I will be importing a bit. I have an Indra charger so it can be set up to import excess solar / wind only but not done yet (they haven’t responded to my recent emails) so doing a bit of approximation myself to use surplus solar as much as possible. And with wind generation not being measured I have no idea how much of that (if any) is being used at the moment.
But the current solar generation is more than enough to run the house completely (house batteries full by 09.30 every day at the moment - our house consumption is less than 50% of generation) - not sure precisely where the cross over will be but at some point there won’t be enough solar to run the house and I will be wanting to tap wind again
That’s my best answer to your questions! Not sure if it quite answers you
Looks as though the LUX 3600ACS inverter deals with the battery and the grid. Not sure about the dual phase inverter (panels and turbines?). It’s good it all works together.
One thing to note is that the Zappi 2 needs to have a wired CT clamp to the grid under recent changes to regulations. I think Indra is the same. I guess Indra and MyEnergi have something to think hard about!
So the list provided is for the solar system only - the turbine inverter is I think probably in the turbine mast / nacelle set up 150m from the house, then split three ways and channelled into each home’s phase this side of the meter
I wish I had gone for a Zappi now but I had to wait 6 weeks for a quote appointment whereas I could get an Indra (from a different supplier) within 7 days. there has however been some fuss with Zappis not being updatable if made before a certain date which is causing owners problems - don’t know if that would have affected me.
Once the split at source is done we can get the turbine monitoring sorted and also the Indra integration, including any CT clamps required. My bro in law is dragging his feet a bit to avoid paying a full standing charge instead of one third of one - but it won’t be too bad for me without it until maybe September ish. This winter I def want it sorted
Maybe he needs to see that having his own meter will save mo ey on a better tariff. Flux is for people with renewable generation. Don’t know what the turbine tariff gives you but 22p/kWh minimum is good. Flux doesn’t penalise day time use except from 4-7pm.
The other alternative is to have three import/exports meters costing £60 each plus labour. You would need a three phase smart meter. The DNO might want the phases fairly well balanced, but that applies now anyhow.
We are getting a lot less than that for wind exports (4.25p but we get 10x as much for generation) - the problem comes if it is in my interest to ditch the deemed export on the wind but it isn’t in the others’ if they are on a different tariff, or are on a tariff they struggle to get payment for exports. But at 4.25p it must be possible to do better though of course that is deemed 50% export and benefit eroded a bit if not expecting as much
I thought an update was in order. As a reminder we don’t have the wind turbine generation measured in the house system. Nor is the car charger able to be set to take surplus generation yet. But by tweaking the charge speed of my car against what the in house apps show as being generated and exported, I have been trying to maximise car charging from solar and wind. Not perfect by any means but the results from mid 10 June to yesterday evening are pretty interesting all the same.
[We haven’t emptied the batteries at all yet - so solar is mostly powering the house, even though a few days have been poor generation (23.7 kWh yesterday is the worst so far) ]
In that period (I have made rough adjustments to exclude the first 19 hours from commissioning to when I first looked at the meters) we have generated about 510 kWh (per app), imported 116kWh (per house meter), used about 220 kWh in the house (per app), but put 323 kWh into the EVs (per meter on the charger). The app says we have exported about 260 kWh but a lot of that will have ended up in the cars.
I haven’t checked the wind turbine to see what that has done as using any of that is a bit of a fluke these days (also known as didn’t get a torch out to read it yesterday as I couldn’t be bothered ), but total saved by the solar must be over 300 kWh allowing for a bit of wind that we have lost by not having that integrated. And total used / saved from solar and wind combined is: total consumption of 543 kWh (house and car) less import of 116 kWh. Or 427 kWh. Current tariff (business tariff for the farm) is about 40p so saved £171.
This morning I spotted that the SolarEdge battery mode selection had been enabled for my installation! It claims to do lots of optimisation, but I’m not sure it will cut things as finely as I do. However, it gives me a ‘get out of jail’ card if the Solar is so little that I empty the battery if I continue selling to the grid at 36p/kWh during the 4-7pm slot - it did this last Tuesday but I only needed to draw 2kWh from the grid to get through to sunny Wednesday!
So I switched to Time of Use mode at 6-45pm and it stopped exporting with 52% left. That would normally be quite safe to get through to sunrise. I successfully reverted to the installer’s settings.
However, I need to heat the DHW and I have set another trap by setting the EV to charge at 1.6kW between 2-5am tomorrow. Now I know that this can be done off the battery just! I don’t mind if it charges off the grid at 1.6kW as the Zappi has under Supply Grid a limit to the charge rate, which at 1.6kW is handy for avoiding importing from the grid on a sunny day. It’s a pain having to switch it to faster charging and then slower again etc. though, but the installer’s settings didn’t allow summer use of my Flux cheap rate because the inverter would try to maximise self use to the point of destruction! So this will be another positive if it shows some optimisation.
Now TOU also claims to use its knowledge of my consumption and the sunshine outlook to decide when to export and to maximise my export earning. Now this would literally be incredible because it doesn’t ask for my tariff details for import or export! However, it will be interesting to see what it does as it has irked me that I have to wait for the batteries to be fully charged before it exports especially on a very sunny day when my export limit of 3.68kW means it could waste more than 2kW with a full battery an no EV to charge.
), but total saved by the solar must be over 300 kWh allowing for a bit of wind that we have lost by not having that integrated. And total used / saved from solar and wind combined is: total consumption of 543 kWh (house and car) less import of 116 kWh. Or 427 kWh. Current tariff (business tariff for the farm) is about 40p so saved £171.