Other Any solar pv/battery ninjas in here?

Yes it'll be MCS certified

 

I'm looking to jump on the Solar bandwagon this year too. I have £8-9k to invest so hopefully I can get a semi decent system for that. We are currently paying around £300 per month just on Electric!

 

Combined with:

And the Iran war projected sending gas prices sky rocketing from July.

I've convinced my parents to get a little plug-in battery + solar setup.

£824 for Ecoflow Stream Max (1.9 kWh) with 2x 400w panels using ebay's £75 off voucher on ecoflow's official store, inc 10 years warranty.
+ about £100 for CT clamp sensor
= per day saving of ~50p guaranteed time-shift of 1.8 kWh to EV tariff overnight + whatever the DIY wall hang solar panels can generate.
= 3-4 years ROI using April 2026 prices, before UK domestic energy prices skyrockets.

With increasing cost of energy and shipping, I think getting solar + battery quotes in writing as soon as possible would be good idea. Even if you are on the fence. Because I think prices for everything will only go one way for next few years.

 

I spent ~£6k on a fully fitted 3.2 kWp Solar system about 6-7 years ago and without any major shift in behaviours (apart from turn on dishwasher/washing machine when sunny) I am fairly certain they've paid for themselves and the rest is now "gravy". I discounted batteries at the time as cost was still very high but home batteries are now a fraction of the price. Haven't bitten the bullet yet but the ROI on a battery install is probably similar 5-6 years assuming funded from savings rather than a loan. I would personally avoid taking on debt to fund these kind of things as they are wholly optional and the ROI isn't exactly stellar.

The best thing to assume is that its a "fun" or "nice" thing to do, and generating your own power gives a fuzzy warm feeling, rather than a purely good financial investment. It isn't a "bad" investment but there are better ways to save/make money.

 

Private pic is private

 

Not sure how I missed this but I hopped on the solar bandwagon in November,

14 X JA Solar 450W N-Type Bifacial Double Glass panel
2 X Hanchu LV 5.12kWh Batteries
1 X Hanchu HESS-HY-S-3.68K inverter

Using Octopus outgoing I'm getting good numbers, the Hanchu software integrates with Octopus but the Octopus side is rather meh.
Seems to focus on pump and dump where I prefer to have grid independence exporting excess to grid. Now the days are longer and we actually get some sunlight it's working well.

Planning on a 3rd battery going with a 9.4kWh battery as the heatpump munches power in the winter as you would expect.

Nice example of how its working. On March 21 it was pretty much all day.
PV output - 17.4kWh
Fed to grid 11.66kWh
Consumption 11.01kWh (combined from batteries which had charge from the day before)
From Grid 0.0kWh

Currently max generation at any time is slowly rising as the sun is high in the sky

I am looking at a DIY plug in unit to bolt to the garage roof, the garage is on the same circuit as the house so it will just reduce the load and export the excess as it won't see the battery system. Will be a nice little add in and will only be small two or three panels setup so maybe as much as 1200W.

 

Out of interest, what sort of consumption figure are we talking here?

Say 100 kWh per day gas usage, would that mean 30 kWh electricity usage for heating? So need to be looking at 40 kWh of battery!?

These panels are heavy! 22 kg for the ecoflow 400w panels I currently have sitting outside. Original plan was to mount it between ground and 1st floor windows, but now I'm not sure it is safely workable just using ladders.

 

If we take a bad winters day so from the numbers it looks like Jan 5th average outdoor temp was between 0c -3c
Just for the heatpump
Energy input = 28.77kWh
Heat output = 81.7kWh
COP 2.84

I can live with around 30kWh daily as I can get the batteries to top up on off peak when the costs are much lower an use that during peak.

Now that is pre solar, historic weather data shows mainly cloudy so likely very little generation that day. Also its a Monday which means the hot tank goes up to 60c not the normal 50c to nuke any nasties in the hot tank.

Yeah I know they weigh a fair bit, would be one of those two person jobs for sure! I'd rope someone in for a pack of cold beers probably! I do have a staging which should get me to close to the height of the garage.

 

Just looked and I can pick up 10kwh @ 5kwp libbi battery for circa £4k (not installed) which is much cheaper than when I last looked. Sorely tempted.

I don't think it is cost effective to size a battery to run a heat pump (unless I'm missing something). I looked at my gas usage and in Jan we're probably averaging 100kwh, even at a 4x CoP that is a big ass battery.

 

Similar here, ~100 kWh during coldest days. Heat pump efficiency drops as temperature drops, so it's a double whammy for consumption.

I agree it's not realistic to size battery for heat pump. But I am uniquely positioned having got Indra V2H (vehicl-2-home) kit on my wall, which works with Nissan Leaf to make car battery work like home battery. Our 12 years old first-gen Leaf is getting on a bit. So I am considering 40 kWh or 62 kWh versions. Sounds like more wide spread 40 kWh version will be just about sufficient when combined with 13 kWh house battery.

 

Just gone ahead with this...

13 x Aiko Neostar 3S 480W All Black ABC N-Type Mono panels with Fox ESS KH 10kW 1ph Hybrid inverter and 1 x Fox ESS EP12 Plus 11.52kWh Li-ion Battery w/ heating function. Includes MCS, G99 etc

10K all in including Scaffolding, also throwing in a small EPS with 2 13amp sockets for emergency use. We plan to add another battery and full EPS in the next 18-24 months when funds allow. Edit: we use around 9700Kwh per year!

 

Also revisiting this as we've saved up just about enough to pay the install outright now so had a quote for the following from a reputable Lincoln solar installer:

14x Aiko Neostar 2S+ 510W
Powerwall 3
Tesla Gateway (for failover powercut protection)
Solar Iboost+ (excess solar immersion heater for HW cylinder)
£12,561 all in.

Estimated to generate 5906kWh per annum, so should give us around 70% grid independence.

They still need to come and physically measure the roof and they think they may be able to up it to 16 panels, which if they can, would generate 6750kWh and would give us a net negative electricity bill over the year. If we then add a family EV to the home (assuming 75kW battery) then the annual bill including EV charging (40 miles per day) would be in the region of £60...

I'd be stupid not to!! Salary sacrifice EV - here we come then....

 

Worth get another quote or so before going ahead with these big projects.

If EV is on the cards, worth consider getting EV charge point installed at the same time, could possibly save a hundred or so and much neater cables by doing it at same time.

Solar immersion heater diversion can be easily fitted retrospectively, even DIY. It doesn't require re-wiring, essentially a wireless addition to the immersion heater switch. But with that kind of generation, it's worth having to maximise self-consumption.


On battery, I have Powerwall 3, it is locked to be cloud controlled. Tesla mothership controls everything. Make sure you are okay with that. Otherwise it's very nice hardware and the biggest name that is unlikely to disappear.

GivEnergy has recently entered administration. Their warranty just disappeared overnight and cloud access will become paid subscription. Thankfully their hardware have local access.

 

That was the best value of the quotes I received. It wasn’t the cheapest but the cheapest had mixed installation reviews and I’m not risking my roof’s integrity or water barrier to save £500.

Thanks for the tip about EV charger. I’ll likely just add that to the install then. It will all be on the same single stretch of garage wall as the consumer unit, powerwall and gateway anyway, so cabling wouldn’t be a factor but it might save me a bit of labour charge.

Happy with Tesla’s cloud control. I’m buying into them as they’re least at risk of folding and when they come to the UK as an energy supplier later this year, it should give Powerwall owners better control over export and such via their app.

Thanks for your comments. Helpful.

If anyone has any car charging brand recommendations, I’d gladly take a steer (ba-dum tish). I’m with Octopus and intend to remain with them but I noted that for their Intellgent Go tariffs, they specify certain chargers. I’m assuming this is related to API access with Octopus?

If I went for another brand (better/more reliable?) then would I be missing out on anything critical?

 

For battery, SigEnergy has stormed onto the market since my install, now very popular with installers. I think they have local access and good API integration with third party (eg. Octopus). I personally think gaining local control is better than prospect of letting someone else use my battery. But then I don't have SEG export tariff and a very small roof array.

On IOG integration. Octopus are due to change IOG trying to shut the gate on people abusing it. As part of their change, they are trying to get people to use car integration rather than charge point. So it will be more dependent on if your car works with IOG rather than charge point.
From my experience, for car integration, you'll need to make sure the charge point can operating in 100% dumb mode, allowing the car to pull power at any time without restriction. I went from a dumb PodPoint to Indra smart pro. With the latter, everytime I plug in, I have to press the Boost button on the charge point to ensure car can pull power as commanded by IOG. It was a total faff.

Zappi is a popular one. My parents got it installed and works well. It is flexible enough to both work with IOG and not need fiddling when the car is integrated with IOG. But the white one looks like a toilet seat

 

I’ve been watching a few of the Artisan Electrics vids on YT and they install and recommend SigEnergy routinely.

Thanks for the charger info. I’ll see what my proposed installer supplies from their range and then make a decision.

 

My installation date came through from OVO, all being done on Wednesday 20th May and Thursday the 21st. I will post pics with before and after. Also share some stats from the App

 

14x 480W panels
Fox P1G2 inverter
12kWh battery

At some point we'll add another battery as well I think, getting good numbers as is for the moment. Just waiting on the G99 so we can actually get paid to feed into the grid!

 

Me too, but they are going to soft cap my inverter to 3.6Kwh until the DNO/G99 completes. National grid are taking 8-10 weeks to respond at the moment according to OVO,