On-grid domestic battery storage

EVandPV

Another handy benefit I'm finding with the house batteries is they act as a buffer when charging the EV with surplus PV.
Our Pylons are almost full so I plugged the car into the Zappi.
We're only generating about 2kw at the moment as there's some light cloud and the house is using about 300watts so there's only just over the min 1.4kw the Zappi needs to charge the car.
 When the cloud thickens and pv output drops, the Zappi would normally stop charging but the Pylons are stepping in to provide the shortfall in power. 
So the car has been charging constantly for an hour and a half whereas without the Pylons, it would have started and stopped several times by now. 

mickyduck55

First import of electricity from the grid in 8 days.. the 10 kW shower and a poor day yesterday kicked me onto the grid.. not bad but still looking at a very long payback period.  I have imported 105kW since Feb 13th

Solarchaser

The 10kw showers are driving me mad. 
Due to only working some days I'm usually able to have a shower mid morning when solar +batts make it free,  wife and kids wait till sun has went down, so always importing when showers are running.

Solar has been so strong this month that one of my battery banks hasn't got below 40% all month, which makes the annoyance of having to buy leccy sooo much worse.

I need a water tank /thermal store and thermostatic showers.
I really can't spend more on my projects this year.... but I REALLY want to!

Edited to add thats the "parallel" system been in for just over a month. And the combined battery discharge is 450kwh, since I'm still on octopus standard tariff of 16p/kwh its saved me around £65.... this is assuming ~10% loss in power conversion.

EVandPV

Our electric is oven is a pain too, especially the grill.
The grill heats up with intermittent bursts of power and the Lux battery controller can't keep up with it.
By the time the Lux starts discharging to meet the power drawn by the grill, the grill has stopped drawing power so the discharge from batteries ends up getting exported.
Then the batteries stop discharging and the grill starts drawing power again so we're now importing leccy, and so on.
Pain in the you know what !

mickyduck55

Solarchaser said:

The 10kw showers are driving me mad. 
Due to only working some days I'm usually able to have a shower mid morning when solar +batts make it free,  wife and kids wait till sun has went down, so always importing when showers are running.

Solar has been so strong this month that one of my battery banks hasn't got below 40% all month, which makes the annoyance of having to buy leccy sooo much worse.

I need a water tank /thermal store and thermostatic showers.
I really can't spend more on my projects this year.... but I REALLY want to!

Edited to add thats the "parallel" system been in for just over a month. And the combined battery discharge is 450kwh, since I'm still on octopus standard tariff of 16p/kwh its saved me around £65.... this is assuming ~10% loss in power conversion.

I have a water tank with a power shower and Solic 2000 but the OH always uses the Electric 10 K one as she prefers it and its instant so no running off a load of water before its hot... then of course its the hair drier toaster kettle ete .. all way before the sun starts to shine LOL

mickyduck55

EVandPV said:

Our electric is oven is a pain too, especially the grill.
The grill heats up with intermittent bursts of power and the Lux battery controller can't keep up with it.
By the time the Lux starts discharging to meet the power drawn by the grill, the grill has stopped drawing power so the discharge from batteries ends up getting exported.
Then the batteries stop discharging and the grill starts drawing power again so we're now importing leccy, and so on.
Pain in the you know what !

My oven and microwave are the same but overall I have imported 105 kW Used 696 kW and exported 151kW.. so doing OK.  My sons system not quite so good even though he has 6 kWH array his orientation is not as good so by about 3 pm he is getting very little so he is on the batteries a few hours before me... on a good day at this time of year Im still generating over 1 kWh at 6 pm.  The high base load in the evening is my plasma TV uses about 450w.. I almost wish it would break so I could buy a nice OLED but you can buy an awful lot of electricity for £1000 !

EVandPV

mickyduck55 said:

on a good day at this time of year Im still generating over 1 kWh at 6 pm.

Yeah, likewise and our batteries don't start discharging until 8pm at the moment.
Getting a decent charge in the car too once the Pylons are full in the afternoon.

Exiled_Tyke

EVandPV said:

Our electric is oven is a pain too, especially the grill.
The grill heats up with intermittent bursts of power and the Lux battery controller can't keep up with it.
By the time the Lux starts discharging to meet the power drawn by the grill, the grill has stopped drawing power so the discharge from batteries ends up getting exported.
Then the batteries stop discharging and the grill starts drawing power again so we're now importing leccy, and so on.
Pain in the you know what !

My Solax system copes pretty well with adjusting quickly to demand changes. Although I have noticed that on sunny days when using high power appliances that cut in and out, the BMS doesn't bother recharging in small bursts - it's as if it doesn't want the 'stress' of handling large swings in charge/discharge activity.    

At this time of year I too start discharging at about 8pm. We don't tend to eat until after 8pm so the oven draws from the battery (6.3kWh) which then gets fully depleted (well to 10%) in the small hours of the morning. Most days I'm buying around 1Kwh to cover the base load before the panels kick in again 

EVandPV

Exiled_Tyke said:

At this time of year I too start discharging at about 8pm. We don't tend to eat until after 8pm so the oven draws from the battery (6.3kWh) which then gets fully depleted (well to 10%) in the small hours of the morning. Most days I'm buying around 1Kwh to cover the base load before the panels kick in again 

With 7.2kwh, 70% is about enough to get us through from 8pm until the pv takes over the next morning.
If it's been cloudy, I sometimes need a wee grid charge boost during the Octopus Go cheap rate period.
The weather's been great recently though, we've only imported 4.9kwh this week.

Solarchaser

mickyduck55 said:

Solarchaser said:

The 10kw showers are driving me mad. 
Due to only working some days I'm usually able to have a shower mid morning when solar +batts make it free,  wife and kids wait till sun has went down, so always importing when showers are running.

Solar has been so strong this month that one of my battery banks hasn't got below 40% all month, which makes the annoyance of having to buy leccy sooo much worse.

I need a water tank /thermal store and thermostatic showers.
I really can't spend more on my projects this year.... but I REALLY want to!

Edited to add thats the "parallel" system been in for just over a month. And the combined battery discharge is 450kwh, since I'm still on octopus standard tariff of 16p/kwh its saved me around £65.... this is assuming ~10% loss in power conversion.

I have a water tank with a power shower and Solic 2000 but the OH always uses the Electric 10 K one as she prefers it and its instant so no running off a load of water before its hot... then of course its the hair drier toaster kettle ete .. all way before the sun starts to shine LOL

Yeah I plan to remove both showers at once so she doesn't have that option.

I'm surprised you have to run off a load of water though.
Takes our showers about ten seconds of running to stabilise, i thought with a tank it would be less, not more.

I am planning the tank to be less than 2 meters away from the showers right enough.