Solar pv and pre payment meters?

theboylard · 9 October 2014 at 8:07PM

I'm dying here so I come to the forum for help, so I can get to my sickbed!

A good friend lives in a housing association house.
The house is mostly empty during the day.
She had a wood burning stove installed 2 years ago which provides her hot water and heating.
Last year the HA contacted her and asked if she would like to join their trial group for solar pv.
She heard "savings" and said yes.
The panels were installed last November, dunno about inverter but the export meter is a L&G E470, which might explain why she's never had to give an export reading, current reading is 3199.25.

She is with BG and is on pre-payment (Talexus) as a result of whatever.

She is convinced she is not seeing any benefit from the panels, which may well be the case, but I suspect something ain't right?

So, oh people who aren't coughing up a lung with a temperature measured in 4 figures kelvin, can we say whether solar pv and prepay is doable?

I also vaguely recall something about Ofgem kicking suppliers re prepayment lock in?

But then I'm not thinking straight so may be talking complete hairy avocados?

Ta velly muchly to all...

jimjames · 9 October 2014 at 9:02PM

If they're not her panels then she won't get any FIT payments.

The only benefit will be using electricity during the day when it's sunny which might be somewhere around £100 per year saving if you can maximise it I believe.

If house is empty during the day then unless she has appliances on timers to come on during the day she will see virtually no savings at all. I don't think it makes any difference whether it's prepay or not, the key is using electricity when the panels are generating, if you don't and aren't on FIT then you'll see very little benefit.

You can see on the graph here how the output varies from morning to evening.

http://uk-solarpanels.blogspot.co.uk/p/daily-performance.html

The maximum output on a sunny summer day is between around 11am and 3pm. In winter the output is about 1/4 of what you'd get on a summer day.

http://uk-solarpanels.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/solar-panel-generate-winter-sunny.html

Ectophile · 9 October 2014 at 9:20PM

3199 kWh in a year sounds OK, so the panels are working fine. The problem is that anything the panels are generating above what the household is using are just exported to the grid. As theboylard says, the HA will be pocketing the FIT payments for themselves (which is not unreasonable if they paid for the panels).

If you can't get the FIT, then the only real use for solar panels is so you can run appliances during the day for free.

It doesn't sound like it's a problem here, but if the prepayment meter ever runs empty, and the power is shut off, then the inverter will shut down too, as a safety measure.

DonGriffin · 14 October 2014 at 8:29AM

theboylard wrote: »

I'm dying here so I come to the forum for help, so I can get to my sickbed!

A good friend lives in a housing association house.
The house is mostly empty during the day.
She had a wood burning stove installed 2 years ago which provides her hot water and heating.
Last year the HA contacted her and asked if she would like to join their trial group for solar pv.
She heard "savings" and said yes.
The panels were installed last November, dunno about inverter but the export meter is a L&G E470, which might explain why she's never had to give an export reading, current reading is 3199.25.

She is with BG and is on pre-payment (Talexus) as a result of whatever.

She is convinced she is not seeing any benefit from the panels, which may well be the case, but I suspect something ain't right?

So, oh people who aren't coughing up a lung with a temperature measured in 4 figures kelvin, can we say whether solar pv and prepay is doable?

I also vaguely recall something about Ofgem kicking suppliers re prepayment lock in?

But then I'm not thinking straight so may be talking complete hairy avocados?

Ta velly muchly to all...

Not sure she will get the payments or not.. My friend is in similar situation and she is getting nothing till now..

ed110220 · 14 October 2014 at 9:39AM

DonGriffin wrote: »

Not sure she will get the payments or not.. My friend is in similar situation and she is getting nothing till now..

Can't imagine why she would get any payments if the housing association has paid for the system - almost certain the FIT will go to them, which seems logical.

If she's out during the day the solar PV will only be powering items on during the day such as fridge etc. Typically these don't use too much electricity so I expect the savings will be small.

Say her dual fuel bill is £1000/year, is she going to notice an electricity saving of probably less than £100? Probably not, especially with price increases, variation in use from one year to the next etc.

If I were in her situation I would get some cheap timers for items that use a relatively large amounts of electricity and set them to run during the day - washing machine, dishwasher etc.

Ed

theboylard · 14 October 2014 at 10:36PM

Cheers Ed.

I'd already told her to put stuff on timers.
She'd caught me when I wasn't at my best, so could have been a little bit easier on her!

That 3199.25 kWh.... since install November 2013... is from 8 panels!!
She's about 15 miles from me, I think that is bloody impressive from a sub 3kwp system?

Martyn1981 · 15 October 2014 at 7:06AM

theboylard wrote: »

Cheers Ed.

I'd already told her to put stuff on timers.
She'd caught me when I wasn't at my best, so could have been a little bit easier on her!

That 3199.25 kWh.... since install November 2013... is from 8 panels!!
She's about 15 miles from me, I think that is bloody impressive from a sub 3kwp system?

Sorry to be negative, but something just doesn't sound right there. If regular panels then that's 2kWp, and there's no way that could have generated 3.2MWh in a year.

Is it definitely a year (not 2)? Could there be more panels, or more powerful panels? Could the TGM have already been used (before) and did not start at zero?

I have tried to get to that number, some folk with ideal(ish) installs have had generation of around 1,100kWh/kWp in the past, so assuming 333Wp panels and a really good year, we get closer, but I think I'm clutching at a few too many straws!

Mart.

theboylard · 16 October 2014 at 12:29AM

Martyn1981 wrote: »

Sorry to be negative, but something just doesn't sound right there. If regular panels then that's 2kWp, and there's no way that could have generated 3.2MWh in a year.

Is it definitely a year (not 2)? Could there be more panels, or more powerful panels? Could the TGM have already been used (before) and did not start at zero?

I have tried to get to that number, some folk with ideal(ish) installs have had generation of around 1,100kWh/kWp in the past, so assuming 333Wp panels and a really good year, we get closer, but I think I'm clutching at a few too many straws!

Mart.

Be as negative as you like, that's why I posted it - it seems too good to be true?
I'm trying to find the time to get round there, but everyone seems to want a piece of me and I'm struggling!

She did let me know that she's gone on to normal billing and is now on 12p a unit, instead of the rip off rate they had her on.

ed110220 · 16 October 2014 at 9:18AM

theboylard wrote: »

Be as negative as you like, that's why I posted it - it seems too good to be true?
I'm trying to find the time to get round there, but everyone seems to want a piece of me and I'm struggling!

She did let me know that she's gone on to normal billing and is now on 12p a unit, instead of the rip off rate they had her on.

It seems unlikely but not impossible. According to PVGIS the highest annual generation in the mainland UK seems to be on the south coast around Brighton at 1060 kWh/kWp if you feed the default settings in (facing south, 35 degree slope, 14% system losses).

So if she has eight 333W panels that's 3090 kWh.

... but I would be surprised if a housing association had installed 333W panels as they are much more expensive per watt, so they'd get a better use of their money out of installing the cheaper 250W panels on more houses.

Ed

jimjames · 17 October 2014 at 9:30PM

theboylard wrote: »

Cheers Ed.

I'd already told her to put stuff on timers.
She'd caught me when I wasn't at my best, so could have been a little bit easier on her!

That 3199.25 kWh.... since install November 2013... is from 8 panels!!
She's about 15 miles from me, I think that is bloody impressive from a sub 3kwp system?

We get around the maximum possible from our panels. Based on the posts here I don't think others get much better kWh per kWp.

3199 kWh would be about a year's generation from our 3kWp panels and that's good going. The best you can generally expect is just over 1000kWh per kWp of panels.

You can see how much ours generate over the year to give an idea of the month by month variation and yearly changes although those are much less significant.

http://solar-panels-review.321web.co.uk/yearly-solar-panel-stats.php

Solar pv and pre payment meters?

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