Nice people thread part 4 - sugar and spice and all things

sss555s

LydiaJ wrote: »

I wish. It came in handy paying for Christmas, though.

I always like things where you pay out but reap the rewards as time goes on or in the future and Solar was very attractive for that.

Now it's not a consideration with the new FiT's but it looks like you timed it well and made a good decision :T

John_Pierpoint

silvercar wrote: »

Random question. Listening on the news about power cuts in Scotland and wondered if those with solar panels can use them in a power cut. I would guess that it should be possible, but then wondered how that works. If you are generating your own power, you should be able to use it, but what happens when its cloudy? If the power input is low, does your washing machine spin slowly, your lights dim etc?

and do you still get the FITs?

The panels on your roof simply make electricity at a slightly higher pressure (voltage) than the stuff in the mains. So if you don't turn on anything in your house, the electricity goes backwards into the mains. Tghe panels have their own generation meter and so you get paid for every kWh (unit) produced.

There is a safety device that disconnects your panels turns, when there is a power cut because the guys mending the wires don't want a nasty shock from a direction they were not expecting.

If you try to use more juice than the panels are producing then the extra comes in from the mains as per normal.

PasturesNew

StevieJ wrote: »

Try this.

http://www.tvguide.co.uk/

I tried that ... for the last half an hour. It's a nightmare, I don't understand it. It's unreadable (white on black, small font) and I registered and it's just a tiny mass of loads of channels that I can't read (due to font/colours).

LydiaJ

sss555s wrote: »

I always like things where you pay out but reap the rewards as time goes on or in the future and Solar was very attractive for that.

Now it's not a consideration with the new FiT's but it looks like you timed it well and made a good decision :T

Yes, it's working out very well for me. This is not, however, because I'm some kind of financial genius with my finger on the pulse of alternative investments. My brother got solar PV in 2010 and was already earning money from it by the time I bought my house in Jan 2011. When I told him what I was buying, he told me I had an ideal roof for solar PV and should look into it. I did get several quotes from different companies and look into which might be the best panels and inverter to get, though.

I can't remember if I mentioned it at the time, but I was a little unsure of how my neighbour would react - he tends not to like things that spoil the look of our little crescent of a road, and is, well, a late-adopter of technology generally. However, it turns out he's v keen to be green, so he didn't mind at all, and ended up getting some solar PV too, and then following it up with solar thermal for hot water and air source heat pump for heating too. I'm sticking with mains gas for hot water & heating, although I have put some money into upgrading the insulation of my walls, whereas my neighbour just accepts that the design of the house means that his upstairs will always be cold.

lir and fir are considering ASHP for their place, so when they were here I tried to take them next door to introduce them to my neighbour and get him to show them his ASHP - and in particular so they could listen to whether it makes much of a noise or not. But sadly he was out when they were here.

silvercar

LydiaJ wrote: »

No, and no. The inverters are designed to shut down completely if the grid goes down. Otherwise they would be feeding power into the grid, which would get stepped up to some insanely high voltage as it went backwards through the substations, and then fry the poor bloke trying to fix the problem. The only way you can use your own generating capability (whether it's solar or wind or whatever) in a power cut is if it's not designed to connect to the grid at all.

They could have designed them with a lead that you disconnect when you don't want to feed back to the grid.

PasturesNew

My olds always had completely separate money. They earnt their money, they kept/saved their money.... thing was, in their wills they left their money to each other.... and the deceased old would be mortified that their life's savings were now going to be handed over to pay for care home fees.

If my remaining old keeps plodding along, that'll be goodbye to £250k .... and what's doubly annoying is that people who are being paid for by the Govt get charged less than people who are paying. Most homes are full of people not paying a bean and the Council pay about £150-300/week less than private payers.

It'd seem fairer if we were paying the same as the Council pay.

LydiaJ

silvercar wrote: »

They could have designed them with a lead that you disconnect when you don't want to feed back to the grid.

That would actually be quite hard to do. If you want the panels to run your appliances, they need to be connected to the appliances, natch. But the appliances have to be connected to the grid so they will still run when it's dark. You could in theory design a system that would disconnect your house from the grid whenever the grid was down, leaving the panels still supplying the appliances. However, the appliances aren't designed to work on a variable voltage supply, and things might go wrong - exactly what might go wrong would depend on what appliances you had. (Although the inverter is designed to produce a constant voltage output, it would drop if you tried to take more power than the panels were producing.) In any case, if I were the person who was going to be inside the substation behind the "danger of death" signs working on 400,000V systems, I'd rather trust something that would shut down people's inverters directly rather than switch their houses away from the grid.

sss555s

LydiaJ wrote: »

That would actually be quite hard to do. If you want the panels to run your appliances, they need to be connected to the appliances, natch. But the appliances have to be connected to the grid so they will still run when it's dark. You could in theory design a system that would disconnect your house from the grid whenever the grid was down, leaving the panels still supplying the appliances. However, the appliances aren't designed to work on a variable voltage supply, and things might go wrong - exactly what might go wrong would depend on what appliances you had. In any case, if I were the person who was going to be inside the substation behind the "danger of death" signs working on 400,000V systems, I'd rather trust something that would shut down people's inverters directly rather than switch their houses away from the grid.

That's what I was thinking ......


:A

LydiaJ

PasturesNew wrote: »

My olds always had completely separate money. They earnt their money, they kept/saved their money.... thing was, in their wills they left their money to each other.... and the deceased old would be mortified that their life's savings were now going to be handed over to pay for care home fees.

If my remaining old keeps plodding along, that'll be goodbye to £250k .... and what's doubly annoying is that people who are being paid for by the Govt get charged less than people who are paying. Most homes are full of people not paying a bean and the Council pay about £150-300/week less than private payers.

It'd seem fairer if we were paying the same as the Council pay.

How frustrating. What's the latest on finding a home for your remaining old, with the special feature required? And is the old still as unaware of what's going on, or is she understanding anything a bit more now?

silvercar

I thought beneficiaries could rewrite wills within 2 years of death, if they all agreed.