Solar panel Newbie, don’t have a clue on prices

Reed_Richards

shibli said:

Hi Reed, I too have a set up that includes batteries and an iboost, I am curious in how you fill your hot water cylinder as I struggle to fill it with hot water on a daily basis, and usually every other day use my boiler for 30mins  top up. How much Kwh are using for the cylinder?  Is your water hot to touch or warm? Thats the only part I am some what disappointed with. 

I allow my hot water cylinder to get as hot as I can without triggering the safety cut-out on the device that measures cylinder temperature for my boiler (actually it's a heat pump but that is by-the-by).  This temperature is about 75 C at the point where this thermostat is mounted.  75 C would be scalding hot but there is a blending valve on the cylinder output which gives me much cooler hot water, probably about 45 C.  There are only two of us and we take showers and wash the dishes and our hands with the hot water.  Effectively you only heat the water you use from cold and the amount we use each day is much less than the volume of the cylinder.  But if we had more people in the house the situation might well be different. 

shibli

Reed_Richards said:

shibli said:

Hi Reed, I too have a set up that includes batteries and an iboost, I am curious in how you fill your hot water cylinder as I struggle to fill it with hot water on a daily basis, and usually every other day use my boiler for 30mins  top up. How much Kwh are using for the cylinder?  Is your water hot to touch or warm? Thats the only part I am some what disappointed with. 

I allow my hot water cylinder to get as hot as I can without triggering the safety cut-out on the device that measures cylinder temperature for my boiler (actually it's a heat pump but that is by-the-by).  This temperature is about 75 C at the point where this thermostat is mounted.  75 C would be scalding hot but there is a blending valve on the cylinder output which gives me much cooler hot water, probably about 45 C.  There are only two of us and we take showers and wash the dishes and our hands with the hot water.  Effectively you only heat the water you use from cold and the amount we use each day is much less than the volume of the cylinder.  But if we had more people in the house the situation might well be different. 

Thanks, you must also generate significant amount of solar to have a decent amount of hot water plus excess. How many arrays do you have ?

Waywardmike

Looks like we have very similar setups @shibli, Like you there are many days when I have to 'top up' the hot water, even on these sunny days.  Not going to lie, it surprised me.  

I was kicking myself that I didn't get a second 6.5kWh battery installed, but looking at my export over the last couple of months there would be only a handful of days that I would have completely charged both and had hot water.

We're a family of four, and the wife likes long hot baths which doesn't help, she goes Wild Swimming almost daily so there's no chance of changing that.  If there was just two of us I think things would be different.

lucylou32

94JDH said:

lucylou32 said:

94JDH said:

Are they Rosemary tiles? If they are they are notorious for breaking, especially if relatively old.

I’ve just googled to see what they look like, and yes, I think so, plain and clay… but, Google also said, they cost less then £1 each… so is £360 really a good price to replace 12? Surely it wouldn’t take a whole day to replace 12 and even so, £360 as a day rate seems high. 

I wouldn't be surprised if they break alot more - how old is the roof? Mine was installed in 1935, having worked on them for the family business when at school/college holidays I decided not to disturb them and use the two flat roof areas at the bottom of the garden on an East/West split.
Many people have them installed on these types of tiles but I didn't want to push my luck and my other option gives better coverage.

The original half of the roof is around 50yr old, the new half of the roof is around 6yrs old. 

QrizB

shibli said:

Reed_Richards said:

shibli said:

Hi Reed, I too have a set up that includes batteries and an iboost, I am curious in how you fill your hot water cylinder as I struggle to fill it with hot water on a daily basis, and usually every other day use my boiler for 30mins  top up. How much Kwh are using for the cylinder?  Is your water hot to touch or warm? Thats the only part I am some what disappointed with. 

I allow my hot water cylinder to get as hot as I can without triggering the safety cut-out on the device that measures cylinder temperature for my boiler (actually it's a heat pump but that is by-the-by).  This temperature is about 75 C at the point where this thermostat is mounted.  75 C would be scalding hot but there is a blending valve on the cylinder output which gives me much cooler hot water, probably about 45 C.  There are only two of us and we take showers and wash the dishes and our hands with the hot water.  Effectively you only heat the water you use from cold and the amount we use each day is much less than the volume of the cylinder.  But if we had more people in the house the situation might well be different. 

Thanks, you must also generate significant amount of solar to have a decent amount of hot water plus excess. How many arrays do you have ?

and

Waywardmike said:

Looks like we have very similar setups @shibli, Like you there are many days when I have to 'top up' the hot water, even on these sunny days.  Not going to lie, it surprised me. 

I think Reed_Richards has an 8kWp array, twice the size that either of you do. It follows that he will have much more surplus power that he can divert to heat water (or sell to the grid).

ggmf

@shibli maybe post some of the graphs from the Growatt web reporting you are recording (I think you have that?), the energy trend graph, the Battery SOC graph and the MPPT graphs.

Reed_Richards

QrizB said:

I think Reed_Richards has an 8kWp array, twice the size that either of you do. It follows that he will have much more surplus power that he can divert to heat water (or sell to the grid).

I wish.  I have a single array comprising two rows of 8x 300 W panels so 4.8 kWp.  This array faces more or less due south.  I have a 6.5 kW battery which reached a minimum of 41% charge at about 06:30 this morning after a sunny day yesterday.