On-grid domestic battery storage

chamelion

mickyduck55 said:

chamelion said:

p.s. cheapest i've found pylontechs: LINK
£724.80 delivered. 


"discounts available for 8+ batts" - anybody around london area that would want to pool? I could do with an additional 2 but ideally wanted the £700 sweet spot. 

That is a good price the 3.5 are still over 1K though... Im around London do you know what the bulk price is?

Checking! Will revert back.

chamelion

mickyduck55 said:

chamelion said:

p.s. cheapest i've found pylontechs: LINK
£724.80 delivered. 


"discounts available for 8+ batts" - anybody around london area that would want to pool? I could do with an additional 2 but ideally wanted the £700 sweet spot. 

That is a good price the 3.5 are still over 1K though... Im around London do you know what the bulk price is?

1 batt = £724.80, becomes £795.60 after shipping (eek, hadn't seen that). 
8 batts = £5,723 all in = 715 per battery, shipped. 

EVandPV

chamelion said:

EVandPV said:

If your thinking of going the Lux route, probably best to contact their UK supplier direct.
Not sure what name they're going by this week   but you could try here for starters ....... https://www.pvpro.co.uk/battery-storage/lux/
They also do a parallel Lux system that can put out about 7kw.
I bought our Lux from them and they also put me in touch with a guy who fits them who's price was pretty reasonable.

gawsh. is this thinkrenewables aka homeswitch now? 

Yeah they seem to go by a different name every week !
Jake seems to be the main guy to speak to.
About the pylontechs, if you keep a search running on ebay, you can get some good deals from time to time.
I started off with two 2.4kwh modules that I haggled down to £700 each.
A couple of months later, I picked up a 3rd for £600. It was 2nd hand but on checking when it came, it still had 100% state of health.

Dave_Fowler

Dave_Fowler said:

EVandPV said:

Dave_Fowler said:

I'm getting quotes for a retro-fit battery system to operate with my solar panels.

So far I've had a quote of £5700 inc VAT for a Sofar ME3000SP inverter with 4 x 2.4kWh Pylontech batteries fully fitted and installed.

I have a problem that I've two solar panel systems. One system is on the house and the other on the garage and workshop which is out in the garden.  The one on the house is connected directly (via the usual inverter, switches and generation meter) to the house consumer unit.  The one on the garage and workshop is connected to a consumer unit in the garage.  It has its own generation meter etc.  Whilst I can connect a CT clamp to measure the generation of the house system, the cable from the garage and workshop to the house carries the nett current of the garage system and power consumption.  A CT clamp on this cable will have little meaning.

I raised this problem when asking for quotes.  When speaking to the company that has given this first quote they told me the Sofar inverter will still operate correctly even if there are no clamps on the generation cables.  It would just measure the power to grid and use that to decide what power to take to charge the batteries. The only downside would be that the monitoring system app would give strange results. The Sofar installation manual makes no reference to this mode of operation.
Has anyone had experience of this set-up?

TIA
Dave F

Here's a realistic price minus the install costs ........ https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/265036733302?ul_noapp=true

As others have said, £2k for installation is OTT.
I agree with Solarchaser about the Lux being a better inverter.

I have now received four quotes; one more to go.  Excluding one for the Tesla Powerwall (£8,300) and the Powervault (£7,020) they range in price from over £8,000 to £4,500 for a 9.6kWh Pylontech system.  So if the eBay price of £3,897 for the basic parts is considered reasonable at today's prices then £4,500 including installation does not seem too bad - certainly better than the first quote of £5,700 in my original forum post. I realise Tesla and Powervault are quite different systems and can output much more power than the 3kW of the Pylontech systems quoted.  None of the potential suppliers have mentioned the Lux inverter; they are all quoting for the Sofar or Solis inverters.  None of them seemed interested when I mentioned the Lux.

My original question about using the Sofar inverter without CT clamps on the PV output has been answered by Sofar.  They say there is no problem if the standard firmware is changed to a different set of firmware which they have developed just for this situation.

Dave F

Now there's been a spanner thrown in the works! The final quote has come in just under £200 more (£4695) for a system made by Givenergy.  I spoke to the installers and they said that the Sofar inverter had a reputation of being a little unreliable as is the Solis.  He also said the Sofar monitoring app was poor.  I suppose he would rate down the systems being offered by other companies and promote the system he was selling.  However, reading up some more on the Givenergy site, it says the system is already integrated in to Octopus Agile which is the tariff I'm on.

Has anyone any experience of the Givenergy company and their customer service?

Dave F

EVandPV

Not trying to push you towards Lux Dave but something else to consider now you mention your on Agile is the fact that Lux also have a system now with built in Agile integration ...... https://www.biggreenbeard.co.uk/lux-power-pod-2/
https://homeenergygroup.co.uk/home-energy-quantum-plus-power-pod/
The basic Lux inverters can also be controlled by a piece of open source code called Octolux which does pretty much the same thing.
https://github.com/celsworth/octolux

Dave_Fowler

EVandPV said:

Not trying to push you towards Lux Dave but something else to consider now you mention your on Agile is the fact that Lux also have a system now with built in Agile integration ...... https://www.biggreenbeard.co.uk/lux-power-pod-2/
https://homeenergygroup.co.uk/home-energy-quantum-plus-power-pod/
The basic Lux inverters can also be controlled by a piece of open source code called Octolux which does pretty much the same thing.
https://github.com/celsworth/octolux

Thank you for the two links to the companies.  I have sent off for requests for quotes.  One of them has a price 'from £6,000' on their website. Let's see what the quotes are.  I had a look through the Navitron site for comments about the Givenergy system and found that it was not recommended by the forumites.

EVandPV

Dave_Fowler said:

EVandPV said:

Not trying to push you towards Lux Dave but something else to consider now you mention your on Agile is the fact that Lux also have a system now with built in Agile integration ...... https://www.biggreenbeard.co.uk/lux-power-pod-2/
https://homeenergygroup.co.uk/home-energy-quantum-plus-power-pod/
The basic Lux inverters can also be controlled by a piece of open source code called Octolux which does pretty much the same thing.
https://github.com/celsworth/octolux

Thank you for the two links to the companies.  I have sent off for requests for quotes.  One of them has a price 'from £6,000' on their website. Let's see what the quotes are.  

Yeah I'm sure they'll add a premium for the Agile integration.
Like I say, you can do the same with the basic Lux AC inverter and a bit of tinkering (which won't affect the warranty).

Solarchaser

Dave_Fowler said:

Dave_Fowler said:

EVandPV said:

Dave_Fowler said:

I'm getting quotes for a retro-fit battery system to operate with my solar panels.

So far I've had a quote of £5700 inc VAT for a Sofar ME3000SP inverter with 4 x 2.4kWh Pylontech batteries fully fitted and installed.

I have a problem that I've two solar panel systems. One system is on the house and the other on the garage and workshop which is out in the garden.  The one on the house is connected directly (via the usual inverter, switches and generation meter) to the house consumer unit.  The one on the garage and workshop is connected to a consumer unit in the garage.  It has its own generation meter etc.  Whilst I can connect a CT clamp to measure the generation of the house system, the cable from the garage and workshop to the house carries the nett current of the garage system and power consumption.  A CT clamp on this cable will have little meaning.

I raised this problem when asking for quotes.  When speaking to the company that has given this first quote they told me the Sofar inverter will still operate correctly even if there are no clamps on the generation cables.  It would just measure the power to grid and use that to decide what power to take to charge the batteries. The only downside would be that the monitoring system app would give strange results. The Sofar installation manual makes no reference to this mode of operation.
Has anyone had experience of this set-up?

TIA
Dave F

Here's a realistic price minus the install costs ........ https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/265036733302?ul_noapp=true

As others have said, £2k for installation is OTT.
I agree with Solarchaser about the Lux being a better inverter.

I have now received four quotes; one more to go.  Excluding one for the Tesla Powerwall (£8,300) and the Powervault (£7,020) they range in price from over £8,000 to £4,500 for a 9.6kWh Pylontech system.  So if the eBay price of £3,897 for the basic parts is considered reasonable at today's prices then £4,500 including installation does not seem too bad - certainly better than the first quote of £5,700 in my original forum post. I realise Tesla and Powervault are quite different systems and can output much more power than the 3kW of the Pylontech systems quoted.  None of the potential suppliers have mentioned the Lux inverter; they are all quoting for the Sofar or Solis inverters.  None of them seemed interested when I mentioned the Lux.

My original question about using the Sofar inverter without CT clamps on the PV output has been answered by Sofar.  They say there is no problem if the standard firmware is changed to a different set of firmware which they have developed just for this situation.

Dave F

Now there's been a spanner thrown in the works! The final quote has come in just under £200 more (£4695) for a system made by Givenergy.  I spoke to the installers and they said that the Sofar inverter had a reputation of being a little unreliable as is the Solis.  He also said the Sofar monitoring app was poor.  I suppose he would rate down the systems being offered by other companies and promote the system he was selling.  However, reading up some more on the Givenergy site, it says the system is already integrated in to Octopus Agile which is the tariff I'm on.

Has anyone any experience of the Givenergy company and their customer service?

Dave F

Just to say, I've never seen a post calling sofar unreliable,  I certainly had no issues with mine, and there are several users of this forum who use sofar also. So with that in mind, I'd personally bodyswerve that particular salesman.
The app is poor though, its basically just a log of what's happened. 
Whereas with the lux, you can change charge settings and times of use etc.

I moved to the lux to use in parallel as that covers around 7kw of usage vs 3kw for the sofar.

As far as installation goes, I did all mine myself, if you are OK with electrics it really is straightforward,  the only questions are where to fit the inverter/batteries and how you get wiring to them.

chamelion

chamelion said:

mickyduck55 said:

chamelion said:

p.s. cheapest i've found pylontechs: LINK
£724.80 delivered. 


"discounts available for 8+ batts" - anybody around london area that would want to pool? I could do with an additional 2 but ideally wanted the £700 sweet spot. 

That is a good price the 3.5 are still over 1K though... Im around London do you know what the bulk price is?

1 batt = £724.80, becomes £795.60 after shipping (eek, hadn't seen that). 
8 batts = £5,723 all in = 715 per battery, shipped. 

anyone interested in this, london area / easy driving distance away? 
in case you don't want to keep stalking ebay...
I'd love to pick up 2...

Starfrog

First post and just want to see if people have some tips etc for my setup. I had my first solar array installed last Friday its 12 JA Solar 455w panels giving me 5460kw. They use Enphase microinvertors IQ 7+ and go to the enphase envoy and the LuxPowertek AC ESS 3.6k, with a AOBOET Batteries 2x2400kw (which are basically pylontech as they look exactly the same). 
It was mean to be a Luxpowertek Octopus Agile system for nearly another £1000 from the standard lux and I did ask them to install that setup but there was a mix up and after I signed off on the install and everything and charged me the lower rate they called to ask if I wanted to the Agile setup which I had to say I wanted straight away. As im not on octopus just now and on BULB I said it was okay but then he said I had to select that its agile NOW or I couldn't use it going forward but I was thinking if I already have the Luxpower installed surely it should be able to work with the octopus agile unless they where going to swap out the brand new unit they installed on Friday ? anyway I dont have a smart meter at the moment so its not going to benefit me until I switch over to Octopus.  I read that theres a script that could be used to do more or less what the costly pre setup lux agile box does ? one thing that ive noticed is that on the lux power monitor webpage it looks like I am producing around 30 / 40w all the time during the evening and at night ? which seems strange !! surely its wrong ? but the house says if it needs 100w then it comes from both the solar and the feeding grid so 40 from pv and 60 from grid which is strange when its 10 o'clock at night time ? obviously when the battery is charged then it provides input too. So what should I be looking for and any tips to get the most out of my system and to make sure that the batteries are charged only by solar and not the grid during the middle of the day which is what it looks like its doing.  Thanks