Immersun and other such devices

GreenBo

I think I've fried my brain looking into this stuff.

I'm convinced that some kind of solution to best use my export kW from my solar is a good thing. Whether I use something like Immersun or my Smappee to trigger something to take the excess and use it/store it/heat it/charge an EV or whatever.

But what I've given myself a headache about is how this type of technology works. Let's say my home has just gone past that threshold and is exporting 100W and rising. But surely as soon as the Immersun/Smappee or whatever see's that and kicks off the immersion heater or EV charger, which, let's say uses 1000W. My home will be importing 900W from the grid and only 100W will be contributed by my solar. Do these things only trigger once the export goes over a certain threshold that means that all or most will be covered by my export e.g. only switch the immersion on when export goes over 900W. And what's to stop these things switching on and off constantly on a partially cloudy day and blowing the heating element in the immersion up after a few weeks?

My brain hurts, I need a paracetamol.:(

EricMears

GreenBo wrote: »

I think I've fried my brain looking into this stuff.

I'm convinced that some kind of solution to best use my export kW from my solar is a good thing. Whether I use something like Immersun or my Smappee to trigger something to take the excess and use it/store it/heat it/charge an EV or whatever.

But what I've given myself a headache about is how this type of technology works. Let's say my home has just gone past that threshold and is exporting 100W and rising. But surely as soon as the Immersun/Smappee or whatever see's that and kicks off the immersion heater or EV charger, which, let's say uses 1000W. My home will be importing 900W from the grid and only 100W will be contributed by my solar. Do these things only trigger once the export goes over a certain threshold that means that all or most will be covered by my export e.g. only switch the immersion on when export goes over 900W. And what's to stop these things switching on and off constantly on a partially cloudy day and blowing the heating element in the immersion up after a few weeks?

My brain hurts, I need a paracetamol.:(

A point you seem to have missed is that such devices don't just switch your immersion heater on - they actually throttle back the power supplied to it such that the immersion uses all - but not more than - the spare power.

GreenBo

EricMears wrote: »

A point you seem to have missed is that such devices don't just switch your immersion heater on - they actually throttle back the power supplied to it such that the immersion uses all - but not more than - the spare power.

Thanks Eric. I'm an idiot. I completely missed that fact, of course that's how they work. :T