Renewables: "talking 'bout my generation"

SavingFish

Martyn1981 wrote: »

Hiya. I'm not an electrician, and not sure I'm understanding type 1 correctly, but is that legal in the UK? It looks like the PV is feeding into the mains, but I thought PV in the UK had to be hard wired into the consumer unit.

Please be gentle, I'm way out of my depth here!

Mart.

I'm not an electrician either, just a consumer who found that monitoring everything properly was not as easy as they had hoped (mainly due to not being able to put a clamp on the twin-core AC cable).

I know that the PV array can be wired to its own mini consumer unit if the main consumer unit is not up to modern regulations, but maybe the mini unit has to run through the main consumer unit anyway?

EricMears

Martyn1981 wrote: »

Hiya. I'm not an electrician, and not sure I'm understanding type 1 correctly, but is that legal in the UK? It looks like the PV is feeding into the mains, but I thought PV in the UK had to be hard wired into the consumer unit.

Please be gentle, I'm way out of my depth here!

Mart.

The diagram is very simplified and could well be missing out the isolator that has to be fitted to the inverter.

I don't think there's any requirement to connect the inverter to the existing consumer unit - just a requirement to be able to isolate it which is usually easiest & cheapest to wire up from a spare way in an existing consumer unit. Just referring to "the consumer unit" is also a bit misleading : a house isn't limited to one CU (I've actually got three but that certainly isn't a record) and you'd always be able to choose which one you want to use (or add an extra one)

Markj1110

A better day yesterday, 0.77 O's.

ajbell

Just passed 1.1 O's for TODAY so far. Brilliant day.

ajbell

Now 7kWh and water tank hot and everything fully charged.
Exporting 2.5 kW as we speak, hate exporting.

Oscargrouch

Today...1.68 O's... that's getting nearer the mark for a December day....

tunnel

1.2 o's(ssw only)
Can't be a$$ed to go check the others

pinnks

Interesting point about monitoring. The immerSUN self-detects current flow direction, both for the immerSUN itself and when you put the second clamp on to detect generation.

As far as twin and earth cable is concerned you can always put the clamp in a place where the outer casing has been removed, e.g. inside a switch casing if there is room. Or you could presumably make an opening into the casing in an appropriate place and, if necessary put that in an empty box to retain the overall shielding. At the end of the day, two insulated cores are just as safe as a twin and earth cable. You would of course need to be cognisant of wiring regs...

Merlin139

0.76 O's

2 low peaks!

pinnks

1.5 Os here - lovely day but the neighbour's roof gets in the way at this time of year. Must suggest he removes it and replaces it with a flat one - would still look fine , surely???