Solar Panel Quote

frozen_wastes

So yesterday was the “go live” date.  My system is now connected to the grid and generating.

So some basic facts.
3kwh generated for today, 1.8kwh exported.  It’s been a day of cloudy but bright in the morning, and “just cloudy” in the afternoon.  No sunshine, and my neighbours larch tree is displaying perfect timing by dumping all its pine needles.  They are accumulating in the bottom corner of a few panels.

Solar edge monitoring account hasn’t been setup yet, and the MCS certificate hasn’t been issued yet.  I hope to get both the MCS and the Electrical Installation/ Minor Works certificate too.  

So the deal with solar edge inverters is that the installer sets up your solar edge account.  The installer enters all the relevant details before the solar edge portal sends an email to the owner to complete account setup (includes a map of your solar panel orientation)  This doesn’t interfere with generation, but certain config options are only available through that portal.  One of those options is to set the operating mode for the HW controller,  Hence why I exported 2kwh today.

But for now, I’ll probably be heading over to the generation thread.

GGSid

frozen_wastes said:

So yesterday was the “go live” date.  My system is now connected to the grid and generating.

So some basic facts.
3kwh generated for today, 1.8kwh exported.  It’s been a day of cloudy but bright in the morning, and “just cloudy” in the afternoon.  No sunshine, and my neighbours larch tree is displaying perfect timing by dumping all its pine needles.  They are accumulating in the bottom corner of a few panels.

Solar edge monitoring account hasn’t been setup yet, and the MCS certificate hasn’t been issued yet.  I hope to get both the MCS and the Electrical Installation/ Minor Works certificate too.  

So the deal with solar edge inverters is that the installer sets up your solar edge account.  The installer enters all the relevant details before the solar edge portal sends an email to the owner to complete account setup (includes a map of your solar panel orientation)  This doesn’t interfere with generation, but certain config options are only available through that portal.  One of those options is to set the operating mode for the HW controller,  Hence why I exported 2kwh today.

But for now, I’ll probably be heading over to the generation thread.

 Congrats looks great. 

GGSid

Question...
How many days per year do you expect to get enough (sun) solar to heat DHW? 
I know the answers will be different for everyone. How many days in a year would you get 3 hours of sun to work with.
I am trying to work out how to heat my DHW without dinosaur juice among other things. If I were to go ahead with solar (considering it) I have space for about 7kWp. Using a diverter I'd need maybe 3-4 hours x 3kWh to heat my DHW. How often would that be likely to happen? 

Coastalwatch

How larger a system can you fit and what part of the country are you in might be a good starting point?

For our 8.85 kWp system here in Suffolk, from beginning Nov to end of Feb, then according to pvgis we ave from 7.5 kWh's in Dec to 9.5 kWh's in Feb. In terms of output exceeding 10 kWh's/day for each of those months last winter it was Nov 15, Dec 12, Jan 10 and Feb 15. But I'd expect you may need an iboost or similar to in order to make the most every available kWh.

If you are limited to a 4kWp system it's unlikely you'll have any such days in those months. But I've just opted for Octopus Go which has a four hour overnight slot form 00.30 to 04.30 at 5p/kWh especially for heating dhw and the EV. So perhaps an option to consider there.

GGSid

Coastalwatch said:

How larger a system can you fit and what part of the country are you in might be a good starting point?

For our 8.85 kWp system here in Suffolk, from beginning Nov to end of Feb, then according to pvgis we ave from 7.5 kWh's in Dec to 9.5 kWh's in Feb. In terms of output exceeding 10 kWh's/day for each of those months last winter it was Nov 15, Dec 12, Jan 10 and Feb 15. But I'd expect you may need an iboost or similar to in order to make the most every available kWh.

If you are limited to a 4kWp system it's unlikely you'll have any such days in those months. But I've just opted for Octopus Go which has a four hour overnight slot form 00.30 to 04.30 at 5p/kWh especially for heating dhw and the EV. So perhaps an option to consider there.

Oh yes location is important... not a million miles from Suffolk as it happens, we're over the border in Cambs so fairly similar.
As mentioned we can (realistically) get ~7kWp on the roof. 
We're also in Octopus Go for charging our EV so we could top up at 5p/kWh pretty easily.  
We're looking at getting a solar diverter, and maybe a zappi as well, though as the car is often in use when the sun shines the zappi doesn't look like it wins us very much.
So fundamentally in the winter it's a pretty rare event that we'd heat all our water with solar. 

ASavvyBuyer

Coastalwatch said:

If you are limited to a 4kWp system it's unlikely you'll have any such days in those months. But I've just opted for Octopus Go which has a four hour overnight slot form 00.30 to 04.30 at 5p/kWh especially for heating dhw and the EV. So perhaps an option to consider there.

Similar here, we have a 4kWp system and don't get enough during the winter months, but are on the Octopus Go Faster tariff of 5p/kWh from 02:30-06:30 so use that for DHW. As most gas boiler are not very efficient when just heating water, it works out cheaper to use the cheap rate on Go Faster during the winter and is usually a lower carbon alternative.

GGSid

ASavvyBuyer said:

Coastalwatch said:

If you are limited to a 4kWp system it's unlikely you'll have any such days in those months. But I've just opted for Octopus Go which has a four hour overnight slot form 00.30 to 04.30 at 5p/kWh especially for heating dhw and the EV. So perhaps an option to consider there.

Similar here, we have a 4kWp system and don't get enough during the winter months, but are on the Octopus Go Faster tariff of 5p/kWh from 02:30-06:30 so use that for DHW. As most gas boiler are not very efficient when just heating water, it works out cheaper to use the cheap rate on Go Faster during the winter and is usually a lower carbon alternative.

How do I get on Go Faster? 02;30 to 06:30 would be more convenient than 00:30 to 04:30.

ASavvyBuyer

GGSid said:

ASavvyBuyer said:

Coastalwatch said:

If you are limited to a 4kWp system it's unlikely you'll have any such days in those months. But I've just opted for Octopus Go which has a four hour overnight slot form 00.30 to 04.30 at 5p/kWh especially for heating dhw and the EV. So perhaps an option to consider there.

Similar here, we have a 4kWp system and don't get enough during the winter months, but are on the Octopus Go Faster tariff of 5p/kWh from 02:30-06:30 so use that for DHW. As most gas boiler are not very efficient when just heating water, it works out cheaper to use the cheap rate on Go Faster during the winter and is usually a lower carbon alternative.

How do I get on Go Faster? 02;30 to 06:30 would be more convenient than 00:30 to 04:30.

If you go to the Octopus website and check through all the tariffs, you will see all the variations of Go Faster listed. There are loads of them, but you have to scroll down past all the Business tariffs.

https://octopus.energy/tariffs/ (Screen shot below of just some of them)

However, unlike Go & Agile, there does not appear to be a webpage with a link to just select it.

But if you email Octopus (and I suggest using the smart@octopus.energy email address rather than the hello email) and ask to switch to the one you want, then they should be able to switch you to it. That's what we did.

Remember though, if you do switch to either Go, a variation of Go Faster or Agile and decide it is not for you, then you can't switch back to one of them again for at least 30 days. This was done to stop people causing issues switching every few days between the tariffs.

PS. The 3 hour versions are 4.5p/kWh, 4 hour versions are 5p/kWh and the 5 hour versions 5.5p/kWh for the off peak period chosen.

frozen_wastes

So today is a "reference day".  Meaning negligible quantities of cloud.
I generated 7.32KWh, or 0.82 O's.  
One interesting feature of the solaredge portal is the ability to "replay" the performance of the system.  Last week I identified this on a sunny early afternoon.  Two underperforming solar panels on the sunny side of the roof.

So these two panels were part of the string on the shady side of the roof.  Three things:
1.  Even though they have optimisers, doesn't mean that they have limits.  In this case, the difference in output between shade and light is strong enough to really peg back these two sunny panels.
2.  I queried this with my installer, and he replied that this configuration is what the SolarEdge design tool recommended.  That recommendation didn't sit easy with him either, so he came back and rewired those two panels into the same string as everything else on that part of the roof.
3.  So this poor performing configuration above would never have been identified without the solar edge monitoring platform.

So now I have a reference day, and those two panels are performing much better!  This below is essentially my "late November signature"

In the middle of the day, that large dip in output is caused by a large tree obstructing the view.  The suns elevation rises above that tree from 21st March - 21st September.   With tree shade, the dappled sunlight is much reduced in intensity.  Interestingly enough, on bright cloudy days I get more output at this time of the day.

Overall my site isn't ideal for sun, but it's a good reference for partially shaded site in Aberdeenshire.  Even so, it's *almost* sufficient today to run two washing machine loads, a dishwasher load, and recharge my hot water cylinder.  I think that's a pretty good performance.   The two facing solar arrays work in late Autumn not to increase the peak output, but instead they work to stretch out the length of day that you can get some appreciable output.

I'll be looking forward to reviewing performance in mid December.  That'll be the lowest output scenario - it's uphill all the way from there!

Right now the weekly consumption figures show that about 30% of my electricity consumption is from the solar panels.  It's been a mixed week (at least two particularly dark days), and my annual calculations for payback were based on assumption that annual  metered electricity consumption would reduce by 50%. I've got a feeling that I'll be exceeding those savings by a lot. 

The other thing to note is that export quantities are rather small - to the extent that a large battery wouldn't be much use to help shift daytime surplusses to nighttime.  This is part of my strategy of using sunny days to do my dishes and laundry - much cheaper to do that than invest in a battery.

I hope this is a useful reference for anyone else who's considering solar panels.  If you live in England - then you'll perform far better at this time of year.

AntonyTewks

What hot water diverter do you have? Did you say the SE one? How you getting on with it? I don't find mind the most eager when just left on the auto setting. If I set a schedule it works well and comes on for a while matching excess well but if just auto it only does a few short jabs through the day