So now I have a solar PV system how do I make the most of it???

jackieblack

lanstrom wrote: »

I asked Tescos to do me a quote. They said they only do them Mon-Fri (9am-5pm). I tried to explain that I am at work during those hours as I have to earn the money to pay for the panels but she said that those are the ONLY times available as they don't do quotes outside those hours. I told her I am at the house at 5.15pm but she wouldn't budge.

If they can't be bothered to do evening quotes then I wont be using them ... thats for sure ! There's no way I am booking a day off just to get a quote.

They were similarly useless with me last year.
I had a 'survey' done for another provider and the chap who came told me that he also did 'surveys' for other providers including Tesco. He said that I could ring Tesco, tell them I'd already had the survey done by him and ask for a quote based on the survey already done. Which I did.
Several weeks later, having chased the quote several times, I eventually received a quote, for a 10 panel system, instead of the 12 panels everyone else had quoted for. I gave up.

If they're that cr*p before they get your money, when they're trying to sell something, it doesn't bode well for their after-sales service IMO!

BTW, they're still sending me letters trying to sell their solar panels, despite the fact I've told them 3 times that I had them installed 8 months ago, by someone else, and asking them to take me off their mailing list!

celerity

June update for our 3.91kWp system, I was surprised we did so well given all the rain... :

Predicted (kWh) : 392.509
Actual (kWh) : 559.889
% : 142.6%

Monthly and realtime stats here (although not quite as in-depth as free juice's, who is an inspiration to us all ).


/\dam

John_Pierpoint

jackieblack wrote: »

They were similarly useless with me last year.
I had a 'survey' done for another provider and the chap who came told me that he also did 'surveys' for other providers including Tesco. He said that I could ring Tesco, tell them I'd already had the survey done by him and ask for a quote based on the survey already done. Which I did.
Several weeks later, having chased the quote several times, I eventually received a quote, for a 10 panel system, instead of the 12 panels everyone else had quoted for. I gave up.

If they're that cr*p before they get your money, when they're trying to sell something, it doesn't bode well for their after-sales service IMO!

BTW, they're still sending me letters trying to sell their solar panels, despite the fact I've told them 3 times that I had them installed 8 months ago, by someone else, and asking them to take me off their mailing list!

Did the "Mark Group" give you a quote in their own name or just as another of their alter ego's ?

How did the quotes vary - call them A B C - if you feel confidentiality is an issue?

Was there a "deal - clincher" that made you choose one over the other(s) ?.

free_juice?

Cardew wrote: »

Your spreadsheets are amazing, a mine of information - and a great advert for the functionality of Excel!

The data certainly demonstrates how the generated output can vary within minutes.

Thank you sir. :beer:

The graphs are all produced by an Excel sheet. I literally input a keypress (Control A) and the sheet extracts the day's data from the logger, processes it and dumps it in a folder which my ftp program monitors for changes, so it is all uploaded automatically. Literally Control A, wait five seconds, job done.

The downloadable Excel sheet is crude by comparison, the interesting one was done by a talented friend. Anyone with a SMA datalogger would be able to use it, just change the IP address.

The HTML is mine but life is too short to learn Excel too.

jackieblack

John_Pierpoint wrote: »

Did the "Mark Group" give you a quote in their own name or just as another of their alter ego's ?

How did the quotes vary - call them A B C - if you feel confidentiality is an issue?

Was there a "deal - clincher" that made you choose one over the other(s) ?.

Mark Group 'surveyor' were quoting for E-On, I don't think, at the time (last summer), that they were selling direct, at least no-one ever mentioned it if they were.

The quotes were all within about £1000 of each other, between about £12,800 and about £13750 IIRC. The chaepest quote came from a company who didn't send a 'surveyor' out, just took all their info from Google earth and they weren't very helpful when I had a couple of queries so I wrote them off.

The 'deal-clincher'? - I ended up going with E-On because they were far and away the most helpful. I had loads of questions. 'My' advisor answered all my questions and if she didn't know the answer she told me so and went and found out instead of trying to fob me off with a load of waffle like some others had. I was never made to feel like I was being a bother, however many questions (some of them probably quite stupid) I asked.
They also price matched the quote I'd had from one of their main competitors. (Not the cheapest quote I'd had, but the next cheapest.) This reduced their price by just over £500 IIRC.

The weak link in the chain, for me, was with the Mark Group, any hassles I had came from them, but again my E-On advisor was right on top of it and got things sorted out for me when I was getting nowhere myself.

Having said that, the two lads from the Mark Group who came and did the install were great, no complaints at all.
The scaffolders on the other hand (sub-contracted)....... where's the eye-rolling smiley when you need one, (we nick-named them Dumb and Dumber )

digitaltoast

free_juice? wrote: »

Thank you sir. :beer:

The graphs are all produced by an Excel sheet. I literally input a keypress (Control A) and the sheet extracts the day's data from the logger, processes it and dumps it in a folder which my ftp program monitors for changes, so it is all uploaded automatically. Literally Control A, wait five seconds, job done.

I'm impressed, and you've also done the one thing no-one else who was challenged would do, and that's provide the actual data.

Just one tiny little thing for future reference - .jpg is a photo format, not a graphics format. Exporting as an optimised 16 colour .png makes the image nearly 4x smaller in file size (17k as opposed to 64k), but more importantly makes the text much crisper. Should be an option to choose that in Excel.

But that's just an observation, not a complaint. And thanks for posting.

thenudeone

lanstrom wrote: »

If I had a system I would love an hour by hour brakedown of what I was producing

I have a Fronius IG TL invertor which has a USB port and will record generation (measured in Watt-seconds) in a csv format onto a USB stick at optional intervals of 5-30 (?) minutes. It will even save data to a buffer when you remove the stick to copy data off it.
The files can be opened directly in excel although you'd need some basic spreadsheet skills to turn it into a graph, or more advanced skills to summarise by hour or by day.

First week of operation: 118kWh!! very pleased

free_juice?

digitaltoast wrote: »

Just one tiny little thing for future reference - .jpg is a photo format, not a graphics format. Exporting as an optimised 16 colour .png makes the image nearly 4x smaller in file size (17k as opposed to 64k), but more importantly makes the text much crisper. Should be an option to choose that in Excel.

Thanks. I'll get my 'talented friend' to check it out. I was concerned about the space occupied by the files even though my allocated webspace is in theory unlimited.

My local folder of thumbnail images shows the whole year. It indicates I've only seen 32 sunny days this year. :mad:

Edit 2/7/11... All my website graphs have been converted to png with file size savings rather greater than digitaltoast predicted. Many thanks DT. I have also added a page which allows every day this year to be displayed in a single view in graphical form. It demonstates just how few truly sunny days we get.

Rosemary_Jane

Hi, I've recently had a system installed; described on this thread

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/755261

It's a 3.96kWp system, mounted horizontally.

25-end of May (7 days); 113.72kWh
June (30 days): 552.51kWh

highest day 28.12kWh; but the lowest (on the 5th June) was only 2.95!!!

happy so far, averaging 18.417kWh a day in June.

Really glad to have found these threads.

Can anyone tell me how long the FIT providers generally take to process the applications? TIA

Rosemary

[Deleted User]

Jon_Tiffany wrote: »

There is something very important you need to understand about how the monitor works. The monitor measures the electrical current in the wires. This current can flow in either direction. When you are importing its measuring what you are taking in from the grid. When you are exporting it measures what you are putting back into the grid.

The key thing is that the monitor can not tell the difference between importing and exporting.

If the energy monitors are not sensitive to the phase of the current as you say then they are measuring the apparent power and NOT the true power. This seems highly unlikely as is would defeat much of the point of the monitor.

Apparent power = VI = product of voltage and current in VA.

True power = VIcosφ = rate at which energy is moved in Watts. The energy is what you're paying for.