Spare Solar - SOLiC 200 or Solar iboost - Thoughts?

QrizB

JKenH said:

For a short while I was without my IBoost and found it very difficult to align my water heating with clear blue skies. An awful lot of the time (even on nice sunny days we often have fair weather cloud scudding over)  being able to find an hours slot when you can just leave your immersion heater to draw 3kw without any import is pretty tricky.

RR has a battery, which is why he's not too worried about finding a clear period of 3kW generation.

I don't even have 3kWp of solar PV, but I've turned down the power on my immersion to around 1kW. I can find that much for 5-6 hours on a clear February day. The immersion only heats the top 90 litres of my tank (a 27" immersion heater in the top of a 16" dia tank) so 6kWh is enough to take it from 10C to 65C.

I have as of today ‘saved’ 4977kwh over 3.5 years using my IBoost. The alternative would have been to heat my water on Economy7 and later Octopus Go/Go Faster. From next month I am expecting it will be costing me 8.25p/kWh to heat it on Go Faster. 

That's pretty good going. I can see me heating water on Go from April, too, particularly if the weather forecast is bad!

JKenH

QrizB said:

JKenH said:

For a short while I was without my IBoost and found it very difficult to align my water heating with clear blue skies. An awful lot of the time (even on nice sunny days we often have fair weather cloud scudding over)  being able to find an hours slot when you can just leave your immersion heater to draw 3kw without any import is pretty tricky.

RR has a battery, which is why he's not too worried about finding a clear period of 3kW generation.

I don't even have 3kWp of solar PV, but I've turned down the power on my immersion to around 1kW. I can find that much for 5-6 hours on a clear February day. The immersion only heats the top 90 litres of my tank (a 27" immersion heater in the top of a 16" dia tank) so 6kWh is enough to take it from 10C to 65C.

I have as of today ‘saved’ 4977kwh over 3.5 years using my IBoost. The alternative would have been to heat my water on Economy7 and later Octopus Go/Go Faster. From next month I am expecting it will be costing me 8.25p/kWh to heat it on Go Faster. 

That's pretty good going. I can see me heating water on Go from April, too, particularly if the weather forecast is bad!

Missed the bit about the battery, sorry. I am interested in how you went about turning your immersion heater down. When my IBoost was out of commission I was considering installing 1kw heaters as an alternative.

QrizB

JKenH said:

QrizB said:

JKenH said:

For a short while I was without my IBoost and found it very difficult to align my water heating with clear blue skies. An awful lot of the time (even on nice sunny days we often have fair weather cloud scudding over)  being able to find an hours slot when you can just leave your immersion heater to draw 3kw without any import is pretty tricky.

RR has a battery, which is why he's not too worried about finding a clear period of 3kW generation.

I don't even have 3kWp of solar PV, but I've turned down the power on my immersion to around 1kW. I can find that much for 5-6 hours on a clear February day. The immersion only heats the top 90 litres of my tank (a 27" immersion heater in the top of a 16" dia tank) so 6kWh is enough to take it from 10C to 65C.

I have as of today ‘saved’ 4977kwh over 3.5 years using my IBoost. The alternative would have been to heat my water on Economy7 and later Octopus Go/Go Faster. From next month I am expecting it will be costing me 8.25p/kWh to heat it on Go Faster. 

That's pretty good going. I can see me heating water on Go from April, too, particularly if the weather forecast is bad!

Missed the bit about the battery, sorry. I am interested in how you went about turning your immersion heater down. When my IBoost was out of commission I was considering installing 1kw heaters as an alternative.

It's not particularly elegant; I've got one of these modules:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/284585393050

They claim to be good for 4kW but they're fused at 10A so don't try running it flat out (BT,DT). Mine adjusts from a minimum of about 300W, with the pointer vertical it's roughly 1500W, and I don't often go beyond that.

Mine doesn't have the fan but it does run quite warm so, if I was to buy another, I would get the fanned version (it adds £4 or so to the price).

There are also versions with fancy cases that have higher standards of electrical safety!

ggmf

Again many thanks for the responses, I'll probably start with the wi-fi immersion controller solution to start with. I can keep an eye on the generation and the battery status, then when appropriate, give the immersion a boost (or 2!). 

Reed_Richards

QrizB said:

RR has a battery, which is why he's not too worried about finding a clear period of 3kW generation.

Thanks, you beat me to replying.  I should have mentioned explicitly that I have a battery.

QrizB said:

There are also versions with fancy cases that have higher standards of electrical safety!

I have been looking for something like this but I really want a box where the wire goes into an earthed metal case so it isn't possible to poke the contacts no matter how hard you try.  I have not found anything yet that fits the bill.  

QrizB

Reed_Richards said:

QrizB said:

RR has a battery, which is why he's not too worried about finding a clear period of 3kW generation.

Thanks, you beat me to replying.  I should have mentioned explicitly that I have a battery.

QrizB said:

There are also versions with fancy cases that have higher standards of electrical safety!

I have been looking for something like this but I really want a box where the wire goes into an earthed metal case so it isn't possible to poke the contacts no matter how hard you try.  I have not found anything yet that fits the bill.  

I've not looked very hard but there's this sort of thing (you'd need to put a 13A plug on your immersion):

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/143957644618

or

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/265421283531

(Just examples, not recommendations - I haven't bought either model.)

Reed_Richards

QrizB said:

....you'd need to put a 13A plug on your immersion):

It seems to be a bit uncertain whether this is allowed under the Wiring Regulations.  It's certainly not normal practice.

Magnitio

I purchased a 1.5kw immersion heater which is controlled using a TP-Link smart plug. This allows scheduling the immersion and override to turn off when there is excessive consumption from other sources that might take power requirements over 5kw.

QrizB

Magnitio said:

I purchased a 1.5kw immersion heater which is controlled using a TP-Link smart plug.

Good to see some love for smart devices!

I went with Zigbee since it lets me mix & match devices in one place, with one app. However Zigbee devices do seem to be slightly more expensive, and slightly less common, than their wifi equivalents.

What I need now is a cheap Zigbee current sensor so I can tell my immersion to switch on when export exceeds eg. 1kW and turn off if it changes to import

ggmf

Deliberated to long on the Timeguard Wi-Fi Controller, was £44 yesterday, went to order this morning and it had jumped to £53 so I left it, now dropped to £48.01 order placed!