When we had our house built twenty years ago we wanted solar panels, but the extra cost was just too much then. Now they seem much more popular are prices drop. As we have the funds now I looked into it again. We get our electricity and gas from Octopus Energy who are very into renewables and they offered a package that looked attractive. They could install panels and a battery that could supply most of the electricity we need whilst paying us for what we feed to the grid.
It has all taken longer than expected though. We had a surveyor come to check out the house. We had hoped that the battery could go in the utility room, but it needs a fair bit of space, so he said it could go outside. He had some concerns as it needs to be off the ground and with our house being timber frame it would need some sturdy mounting to hang it off the wall. It was also suggested that we upgrade to twenty panels rather than the original fourteen as we have a big roof and that could pay for itself quicker. Before Christmas the scaffolding was put up and a team arrived to do the install. They decided that it was not viable to hang the battery on the wall and we would need to make a platform for it, so they went and the scaffolding was taken down.
We were given a new date in May as they seem to be busy. I bought a load of concrete and we built the platform. This is mainly to avoid the battery sitting in water if it should flood, but that is fairly unlikely anyway. A new install date popped up in February, so we told them to go ahead.
This time it all went fairly smoothly, but there were some hitches. Firstly the wrong fixings for the panel were sent, so the panels could not go up. Then the weather was not great. Working on a roof in rain and wind is not safe and they ended up taking an extra day, but it is all done now.
They did a neat job with the battery and inverter attached to some marine plywood that was screwed to the wall. The cable from the panels goes into the attic for a short stretch and then down the wall in some conduit. There are various switches to isolate things with warning stickers saying some will be live in daylight. We are just putting up a small shed over these units. They are weatherproof, but I would rather they were covered to provide extra protection and also to keep them out of sight.
As soon as things were all connected up we started generating power. Modern panels are fairly efficient and we get something even when it is cloudy. The panels are on the west side, so we get less in the morning before the sun can hit them directly, but it can be enough to power the house.
We have 8kW of panels, a 5kW inverter and a 9.5kWh battery. The latter are from GivEnergy. They have an app that lets me monitor things. On a sunny morning we are charging up the battery and not drawing anything from the grid. A full battery can last us all day. There is also a web dashboard that provides even more data. You can configure it to charge the battery from the grid or feed out at specific times. We get cheaper electricity at night, so I can use that to top up the battery if it gets low so that we have enough power until the sun comes out.
GivEnergy have an API so you can extract the data yourself. I will be looking at doing some scripts for that so that I can generate some charts.
We also got an electric car this year. That is an MG4 which can do 270 miles on a charge. Obviously that will need a lot of electricity and so we do need to draw from the grid for that, but we can use solar for some of it. I will do a report on the car soon, but as our son is the main user I have not driven it much. I recommend checking out @planetauto who do nice videos about various cars and have done several on the MG4.
I expect some people will wonder if all this makes financial sense. Octopus estimate that our system will pay for itself in eleven years. That will depend on various factors of course. Energy prices have gone up a lot in the last few years. Our tariff charges 31p/kWh, but we get four hours at 9p/kWh each night to charge the car and house battery. There is also a 41p/day standing charge. They are sorting our the feed-in tariff that will give us 8p/kWh. We could already be earning from that and apart from the car we do not really need the grid power for the house. In summer I expect the battery to get fully charged in a couple of hours and we could be feeding several kilowatts to the grid for the rest of the day. What we get from that could cover the cost of charging up the car most of the time. It will be tricky to directly compare with our previous usage as we did not have the car before.
I will be looking to optimise our usage. When we have surplus power I can use it to heat our water rather than using gas. I will need to get an automated switch to control that. I played with Home Assistant previous and will probably use it again for this. Of course I will be posting about that.
It is very satisfying to be getting free power. I can try to answer any questions you may have.
Shine on!
Very cool. Glad your solar panels are finally up and you already seeing the benefit. Summer is really gonna level up the solar panel power generation so it will be cool to see how much you can sell back and save on costs for those rainy days....
!PIZZA
I'm already happy as it is saving us money and reducing our impact.
Really a win win!
That's so cool man, I was always really interested in solar, and potentially small turbines that could be mounted on a shed roof.
Can I ask how much the 20 panels cost you? Also, that's a great idea to use the charge during the day, and night metre to charge it up at night if need be.
This whole system was about £16k, which seems a lot, but it will pay for itself over about 11 years. We could have had less panels, but they reckon having more will shorten the payback time. Having the battery means we don't use any grid power some days. I just used some battery power to heat up the water. I think some people have a battery and no panels so they can take advantage of off-peak prices.
Did they talk to you about cleaning and maintaining them? It might not be the case for your ones, but I watched a video and a guy showed that when he put his hand on the panel, or even a leaf the efficiency dropped a lot, so he stressed that they need to be cleaned to get their full potential.
It's cool that they work even in cloudy whether, so you'll really notice it when the good weather comes in.
It is a fair bit of an investment, but the money that you'll save makes it well worth it.
Cleaning wasn't mentioned, but I will look into it. Some window cleaners have really long poles, so I expect they could do them. Dust and bird crap could build up. I expect there are forums for solar owners. I posted in a Hive solar community, but it's not very active.
Yeah a squegy on a pole should do the job. It's well worth checking it out yourself anyway man, your ones being newer may not have the same issues, the video I saw was from a few years back.
Our electricity is fairly expensive. The last crowd we were with was about 50+ a week with the charges and all, but we're with another crowd now and are being charged about 400 every 3 months. It would be great being able to cut that bill down a bit though.
The prices are way up on a few years back. This gives us some independence from price rises. It's worth looking into.
Geek! I would do the same 😀
It's our idea of fun :) I know a guy who posts charts from his system on Mastodon. I could do the same on Hive, but would set up a separate account for that.
A tokenless, free to use API I hope?
I assume it's free, but it may need to token to access my data. I'm a little annoyed that I can't get free access to Coingecko data now. I'm not a heavy user, so not up for paying.
I used the Coingecko API ages ago when it was free, I don't use that script anymore. It was very easy to access and use before.
It started saying I had exceeded my limit when I tried to generate some price charts, so I gave up on it.
You can now connect your solar panels to scrful virtual energy plant and earn SCR token
https://hive.blog/hive-127466/@chrisaiki/buy-a-piece-of-the-largest-renewable-energy-virtual-plant-with-scrful-io
I'm having a look. Can't see how I would connect my panels.
You have to check to compatibility of your inverter here
https://docs.srcful.io/energy-gateway/compatible-inverter/
Buy an energy gateway for about $100 on the website
Get your incentive to participate
https://docs.srcful.io/tokenomics/distribution
You will also need a Solana wallet to get your token when launch.
My inverter is not on the list, so I guess that's a way off. I'm being paid for what I generate anyway. It's not clear what I could make from this scheme, so I'll pass for now.
I will be joining you next month hopefully being fully off the grid and expect it to pay for itself within 24-30 months. We have sun most days compared to the UK so it is slightly different and I am looking forward to this happening.
We are still on the grid for now, but this will cut the running costs a lot. Good luck with your system.
That's exciting to hear. Glad you got it sorted eventually. I'd loveto be less reliant on the grid but solar panels are are no no for us since our house is listed. I'll forward to seeing some of the figures after you've been jusing it for a while.
Not everyone can have them, but it seems a good option for us. It's not just to save money as I think more solar is generally a good thing.
I like the idea of getting that data out and fiddling with it.
Sweet bloomin setup though, I didn't realise the battery was only that size. I can't wait to get solar
The battery is quite compact, but needs a little ventilation space around it if indoors. Some have it in a garage. We've got the little shed over it now.
They did a neat job overall and I'm happy with it.
This investment comes out free without any risks and a lot of benefits. Like you said it is so satisfying to get free power in the house.
We have our house installed with solar plates but only the half part because sometimes the weather can be cloudy and rainy for more than a week so a battery won't last more than a day.
We might get something making power from the rainy weather too in future, might be, haha
We only have panels on the west side, but they can charge the battery even when it is cloudy or even raining. Unless we charge the car we hardly need the grid power. How many panels do you have and how big is the battery?
Even if it is stormy they charge it?
We have 8 for now. My father has plans to increase but my mother advices we shouldn't be fully dependent on them.
Well, to be honest I am not sure about the battery capacity... It has the size of a rectangle box
We have mains electricity too so we will be fine when the weather is really bad and the days are short. The panels and battery will pay for themselves over several years anyway. The economics may be different for you.
As I already said, these are the best things to invest in. No more of those expensive papers with huge amounts written on them. Thanks to the solar system
Installing the solar panels is a sound idea as it apparently helps you save more on electricity costs and get efficient electric power. I would be looking to do same as the electricity prices in my area is through the roof. Thanks for writing and have a great day.
This must be very expensive because the solar panel is really big but the good thing is that you were able to get it after many years of wanting to buy
Yes, it is expensive. You could buy a nice car for that money, but the car would never earn you anything.
Excelente es una energía limpia la mejor que podemos tener , energía del futuro..que ya es presente.
The cool part it's that if it take 11 years to reimburse it self now, it will take way less in the future because the price of energy is very likely to continue increasing
We had our solar system installed 1,5 years ago. No battery though as I decided to try the option they give you to pay for whatever you throw to the grid.
The market went very high last year and now prices are moderate. I plan to set up a complete off-grid system in our property in Portugal and maybe end up adding batteries to what we already have at home.
I may also try a windmill to complement the solar panels in Portugal as we are rural and there are no regulations there.
Our final goal is to try off-grid also here at home. My recommendation to anyone is to start getting into renewables, even if it is a small system, once you try, all you want to do is to grow in that direction, plus new panels and tech keeps coming to the market.
$PIZZA slices delivered:
@mimismartypants(1/5) tipped @steevc
Nice one!