High energy use smallholder

Marccarno

Hi all. I have a small holding in the mountains of Wales and a very old house (over 250 years) plus a ‘granny flat’. Our electric consumption is very high (last year around £3,500). Since Xmas we moved to a smart meter and so I can see that we are consuming approx 46kWh per day (and yes that’s for Jan-Mar so colder months). With the price uplift I could conceivably be seeing £5k this year. So, to me the financial case for investing in a significant Solar solution seems compelling. I roughly figured a 10kWh system (with batteries) as a ballpark and started looking up solar installers. Nobody seems interested! Anyone explain to me why installers don’t want to tackle this size? I’m seeing lots of people offering 5.6-ish kWH solutions but is there something about larger systems that would put an installer off? Alternatively, does anyone have any suggestions on companies and/ways to approach the challenge? Absolutely any thoughts gratefully received! 

Reed_Richards

If your 46 kWh per day is used mostly for heating then that is actually quite modest usage but you need to think very hard about why winter is cold.  The answer is because we get very much less solar radiation in winter, which is when you need the heating.  Solar is a very bad match to heating requirements because you get very little solar energy in winter when you need it for heating and much more than you can use in summer.    

Robin9

Have you land or a source of water ?  Is Ground Source a possible solution but you need a deep pocket.

QrizB

Marccarno said:

Anyone explain to me why installers don’t want to tackle this size?

I can't explain it, I would expect installers to be happy with any system from 1kWp to 1000kWp.

What responses have you got from your installers? Is it that they're booked up and don't have the capacity to fit an array of any size? Or have they specifically offered you a smaller array? If so, what reasons have they given?

Marccarno

Hi - and apologies, I haven’t figured out how to do individual answers to comments yet! So to those who have already replied…

@Reed_Richards - no, the cost doesn’t include heating, but the kitchen is full electric. I have no gas service up here (nor water, I have my own borehole)

@Robin9 - I have about 10acres but no consistent water source

@QrizB, it’s strange - I’ve gone to most through the portal on their websites. They ask some questions (location, size of house, consumption) … then nothing. I’ve emailed 3 asking if they have any comment/view on the info I’ve given them and received no reply. The only exception is a company called Project Solar U.K., who said they didn’t want to give a rough estimate but want to send a sales-rep who will visit next week (but I have not been impressed with them as all the contact seems very ‘high pressure selling’ in format, it’s have a distinct impression they want to send someone round to agree/sign a proposal immediately and I’m too cautious to take that approach

hope these answers help clarify things a little 🙂

QrizB

I suspect most solar installers have more work than they can deal with. I had almost as little success trying to find an installer this time last year!

And be *very* careful with Project Solar, it seems they have quite a poor reputation on this forum.

Reed_Richards

Marccarno said:

@Reed_Richards - no, the cost doesn’t include heating, but the kitchen is full electric. I have no gas service up here (nor water, I have my own borehole)

So where is this 46 kWh per day going?  Is your rate of use constant throughout the day and night?  Or do you use most electricity in the middle of the day when the sun is at its brightest (which is the ideal situation for solar panels).  Do you have any reason to think your electricity usage might diminish (or increase) in summer?    

Hexane

A lot of installers, especially the big firms with dedicated sales teams, want to stay within 3.6kW export so that they don't have to bother filling out a DNO application for more, so they will offer a "one size fits all" 5.6kW (or so) system with a 3.6kW inverter and then add batteries to increase the overall cost to make it worth their while.

If you're in North Wales you could try contacting Red Electrical in Chorley, they have plenty of experience in fitting 10kWp (and larger) systems. They tend to be very busy though so you might end up having to find a similar small installer locally.

silverwhistle

QrizB said:

And be *very* careful with Project Solar, it seems they have quite a poor reputation on this forum.

I think 'quite' must be English understatement..

silverwhistle

If you have 10 acres, have you looked in to small windmills? They aren't practical in a suburban context, although there are plenty of small ones down our local marina, but on a windy Welsh hillside..?

Marccarno

Firstly, thank you all for the comment, some brilliant advice and insight which I really appreciate. Couple of specifics…

thanks to @Reed_Richards for making me pause and really think about where I’m consuming all this power (hint - I completely overlooked the panel heaters in the ‘granny flat’ assuming that the wood burner solved heating there) and the importance of spending time analysing my current consumption (installed smart meter in December which is helping there).

Cheers @Hexane for the Chorley suggestion - I’ll definitely be contacting them.

Good point @silverwhistle and a fair question (wind). I did look into it 10 years ago and had a company do an initial survey, unfortunately the lay of the land is such that there is only one place where a medium size wind turbine would work and Scottish Power gave me a £200k estimate for running cables ‘up the mountain’ which kind of killed that idea 🙂

all together I think the advice has hugely brought to life the realities I need to consider (still determined though, not least because I’m shifting to an EV car this Summer!) - thank you all!