Solar Panel Quotes - Are they more expensive in SE England? 10 November 2022 at 12:08PM in Green & ethical MoneySaving 36 replies 1.4K views

Solarchaser

4400 is a fairly low user, and as working from home, you will naturally consume more of your solar generation. 

I think with this in mind you will struggle to make batteries pay you back.

My advice would be to drop the battery and hybrid inverter and go for normal solar.

You have a normal gas use, and could probably turn off your boiler for 6 months of the year (assuming you have a hot water tank) by using the diverter.
You would have to work put whether you would be better to use gas and export for seg, or use the solar to heat and have less export.

I suspect that electric prices will fall, and so will seg, whereas gas prices are likely to keep increasing... and in this case, a diverter will be a worthwhile investment, but I could be wrong.

Growatt is quite a well known... cheaper end of the scale inverter.

Will it do the job... probably. 
But it will be slow, slow to charge, slow to switch to discharge, slow to balance the house and somewhat unpredictable. 

dave64k

Thanks Solarchaser. 

Wondering if spending more on the inverter and leaving the battery for now might make sense as already suggested on this thread?

As an aside the LR pricing on their website is a bit confusing as the Growatt Inverter and Battery cost £3760 if bought separately or £4600 if bought as a 'bundle'.

Cheers

Dave

Solarchaser

There are certainly plenty of other makes out there... with a better name

Officer_Dibble

As for the pricing, are we on 2 different LRs here? There's Light Renewables of Maidstone and LR-renewables of Essex. I don't think they're related.

I don't recognise any of the problems Solarchaser's suggesting with the SPH3600 so far - perhaps I've been lucky. Slightly slow to switch sometimes, but we're talking pennies a day. Certainly not "unpredictable" - it seems to do exactly what it's told. The problems are likely to come further down the line with the worthless warranty, but it looks like some other manufacturers aren't great on that score either.

At current export rates, the battery probably doesn't make sense financially. At the rates (and lower battery prices) when I had mine installed 9 months ago it was marginal but just about made sense. How about a hybrid inverter but no battery for now, so if batteries are half the price in 3 years time it's a quick and easy addition?

dave64k

Thanks OD

I have been thinking a bit more about the battery and maybe starting simple with just the inverter is the way to go for now

My base load through the day seems to hover at about 0.4kWh and the other usage adds another probably only another 4-5kWh through the day. A lot of that will be in daylight hours too

I don't know what actual output you get from a 4.9kW system but I will get quite a few 15p's to make up for units used in the dark hours?

Cheers

Dave

QrizB

dave64k said:

I don't know what actual output you get from a 4.9kW system ...

Your installer should give you a forecast based on your system.

If the didn't, or if you don't trust it, you can get a reasonable idea from PVGIS:
https://re.jrc.ec.europa.eu/pvg_tools/en/

dave64k

Thanks QrizB

Had a quick look and this is what I got

dave64k

That sort says 5000kWh generated across 12 months which covers my annual usage. Just figuring out the 15p going into the grid vs the 35p I will be taking out of the grid when the PV goes dark. Anyone got a little app for that 

Screwdriva

dave64k said:

Thanks OD

I have been thinking a bit more about the battery and maybe starting simple with just the inverter is the way to go for now

My base load through the day seems to hover at about 0.4kWh and the other usage adds another probably only another 4-5kWh through the day. A lot of that will be in daylight hours too

I don't know what actual output you get from a 4.9kW system but I will get quite a few 15p's to make up for units used in the dark hours?

Cheers

Dave

This is the path I went down and recommend for those with low to moderate consumption. The SolarEdge inverter will take a battery, should you decide to get one at a later date.

QrizB

dave64k said:

That sort says 5000kWh generated across 12 months which covers my annual usage. Just figuring out the 15p going into the grid vs the 35p I will be taking out of the grid when the PV goes dark. Anyone got a little app for that 

I don't have an app for that, but ...

My base load through the day seems to hover at about 0.4kWh and the other usage adds another probably only another 4-5kWh through the day. A lot of that will be in daylight hours too

... if you're going to use (say) 3kWh/day during daylight hours, that's 90kWh/month, 1080kWh/yr. If you generate 5000kWh/yr that's 1000 x 35p plus 4000 x 15p = £950 a year. of benefit you'll get from the system.