With the recent, and the impending rise in electricity prices I've thinking more and more about fitting solar panels at home. A neighbour of mine recently had 5KW installed at a cost of £7K, he has been generating around 24KW per day and pumps his surplus int the grid for which he receives a measely 3p/KW. I looked at the system he has and priced it up using the same components and to build a 3.2KW system the costs are:- 8 X JA Solar 405W panels £1341 1 X Solax dual MPPT controller £450 Isolators, meter and cables £288 Rails and brackets £450 So for around £2500 I can build one myself using quality components. I've taken the plunge and ordered it yesterday. I'm mounting the panels on the flat roof of an outbuilding and I'm currently building a frame from some old marquee poles which I'll bolt to the roof at an angle of 35 degrees facing due south. The 240v AC from the inverter will be connected into my consumer unit by a qualified electrician and the system checked over so I can get a safety certificate. I'm banking on it producing around 10 - 12 KW per day, as I'm not pumping any back I need to use as much as possible so I need to be smart about using it. I'll use an immersion during the day for hot water and dishwasher, showers etc. At 30p a KWH I'm hoping to save around £80 - £90 per month and when it goes up in October around £100 per month so a pretty quick payback. Anyone else on here done something similiar?
Not personally but I have a customer with a similar system that blew me away when he explained it all to me. Basically his Solar feeds into a controller that feeds his house and a battery storage, which holds about 8kw I think. He had told his provider that he has battery Solar. So for a four hour window in the middle of the night he gets electricity for 5p a kw. It’s with Bulb I think. So when he clicks back over to full price, his power is first drawn from the batteries, then from the solar, only when both of those are exhausted does he pull any full price power from the grid. When I saw him last month he reckoned he’d pulled virtually no full price power from the grid since Apr and if there is any surplus power from the solar then they trickle charge the batteries so they don’t need to top up as much from the 5p mains window anyway.
If you're doing a proper home build you should scrap the sending it back to the grid rubbish in favour of a few old forklift batteries and some inverters. Have a chat with my friend Dougal, he's the man https://www.resourceliving.org/
I installed my own 4.6 kw system and added battery storage (14 kwh). The whole thing cost me about £4k.
That's what I was thinking - I have no interest in exporting back to the grid - I'd rather do a discrete stand-alone system and keep quiet about it, but could that work without storage batteries if its not connected to export back to the grid? Oh, and good luck @Fruitcake - please keep us updated on it.
I guess it could work if you're drawing on power at the time it's produced but that would mean always being there to switch stuff on and off. No biggie I guess if it's just an immersion although any surplus could be stored for a DC lighting circuit perhaps. Be a shame to waste it
So what effect does it have on the performance of the solar panel if it is sat in the blazing sun at midday, but with nowhere to export or store its generated electricity - does it go into meltdown? It must have a detrimental effect on the viability/longevity of the panel?
If you want to feed back into the grid you may have get permission from the grid and have a installers MCS certificate Other wise unless your at home during the day running everything I can’t see the point
I need to tell them that I'm connecting a microgenerator to my supply, permission is not required as it's below the level where it's needed. The kit is all MCS approved and I can get MCS certification for the install for £385 and then sell the surplus which is an option. Currently I use around 20KWH per day and we're at home all day so it should cover the cost of water heating, electric showers, washing machine, dishwasher etc. The rest is spread over a 24 hr period such as freezers, pond pumps, cooking etc.
No not yet, if it all works and does what it should that is an upgrade I'd consider. At the moment it'd double the price but if it works and the unit price does get siily from the grid I can aleays add it later.
I think if you are at home all day to get the benefits then it’s a brilliant idea cos I think we all know that the electricity price is only going one way for the next year or so and I don’t think that’s downwards.
Yes, but there was already a 1KW system when I bought the house, I just replaced it with a larger system + storage. When my batteries are full the rest goes to the grid and for that I get paid about 5p a kw/h
It's all the future if you can afford the outlay.. A mate has 2 leccy cars that are charged from his solar panels..
It will certainly be my next big purchase for the house, minimum 10kw of solar though. And 20-30kwh of batteries. May do a smaller system on the summerhouse(shed) roof first Sent from my Pixel 6 Pro using Tapatalk
Although £2500 is a lot of money, it's cheap for solar and should payback in a relatively short timescale. I'm just putting in 3.2KW to see how it goes, I've overspec'd the frame and cabling so I can always add more panels or batteries if it all works out.
High prices for electric means your payback is sooner.. we have a 4kw solar installation on the roof of the studio, I’m working at home pretty much all the time now so can make sure we do all of the dishwasher, laundry etc when we’re generating our own power. The zappi charger is also excellent as it allows us to divert the solar directly into the electric car if we want. We use the electric car for 90% of our journeys as a family so zero road tax and virtually zero electric costs for this. Car has only needed grid charging maybe twice since May, and that is off peak/overnight, other than that it just runs on sunshine throughout the summer we looked at batteries but I can’t make the maths work. If we didn’t have the elec car it would probably be different. winter is a different matter though, even on bright winter days you’ll find the panels won’t give you much unfortunately. as above, the feed-in tariff is rubbish so you’ll really want to try and use/capture everything you generate
