How are you using your appliances with solar?

70sbudgie

No, Go isn't better for me, because I don't get such a good export rate if I am on Go. Flux gives me a significantly better export rate and a moderately better import rate.

My calculations were based on last year's import/export data, but I also looked at it on a month by month basis. February to September inclusive, Flux would have cost me less, even with my consumption aimed at E7 optimisation - ie increased import between midnight and 2am when the Flux cheap rate starts.

I've only got one day of Flux data so far and as I didn't charge my car, or run the dishwasher in the cheap rate, it is at the high end of my anticipated £/kWhr range. But my import averaged 33.8p/kWhr and my export averaged 22.9p/kWhr. Compared to the last 28 days (on E7 and outgoing agile) at 28.6p/kWhr import and 11.4p/kWhr export. Literally twice the average export with Flux. 

I am hoping that a relatively small amount of effort to tweak my consumption habits will make a big difference to these figures moving forward.

powerful_Rogue

SuzeQStan said:

@powerful_Rogue -

really sorry for my ignorance just trying to get my head round it all. 

- if you sell back export to grid 4-7pm what do you do for energy between 4pm & whatever time you go to bed? I appreciate your are ‘saving’ high usage activities like washing machine/dishwasher for the cheaper hours.

Suppose with the inverter limit and your large capacity there would be leftover enough to last you?

newbie here to it all - want to know what to do for best with the system we have got. 

We don’t have a EV - just a charging hybrid & no high speed charger. 

No worries at all. I'll use today as an example.

2am-5am - I charged my batteries to 100%

5am-7am - Very small amount used from the batteries

7am-8am - Batteries fully charged again, started exporting.

8am-6pm - Batteries remained fully charged, exported excess solar to the grid

6pm onwards the weather has been awful, so been relying on the batteries. Currently 2234hrs and still on 78% battery.

I don't set my batteries to discharge to the grid between 4pm-7pm. I know some people do, however I just rely on any excess solar to go back then. Today I exported 15.1kWh back to the grid, probably only 1kWh of that was at the premium rate.

waqasahmed

powerful_Rogue said:

SuzeQStan said:

@powerful_Rogue -

really sorry for my ignorance just trying to get my head round it all. 

- if you sell back export to grid 4-7pm what do you do for energy between 4pm & whatever time you go to bed? I appreciate your are ‘saving’ high usage activities like washing machine/dishwasher for the cheaper hours.

Suppose with the inverter limit and your large capacity there would be leftover enough to last you?

newbie here to it all - want to know what to do for best with the system we have got. 

We don’t have a EV - just a charging hybrid & no high speed charger. 

No worries at all. I'll use today as an example.

2am-5am - I charged my batteries to 100%

5am-7am - Very small amount used from the batteries

7am-8am - Batteries fully charged again, started exporting.

8am-6pm - Batteries remained fully charged, exported excess solar to the grid

6pm onwards the weather has been awful, so been relying on the batteries. Currently 2234hrs and still on 78% battery.

I don't set my batteries to discharge to the grid between 4pm-7pm. I know some people do, however I just rely on any excess solar to go back then. Today I exported 15.1kWh back to the grid, probably only 1kWh of that was at the premium rate.

I'd hazard a guess that by not discharging the battery deliberately, you're increasing the life of the battery too 

powerful_Rogue

waqasahmed said:

powerful_Rogue said:

SuzeQStan said:

@powerful_Rogue -

really sorry for my ignorance just trying to get my head round it all. 

- if you sell back export to grid 4-7pm what do you do for energy between 4pm & whatever time you go to bed? I appreciate your are ‘saving’ high usage activities like washing machine/dishwasher for the cheaper hours.

Suppose with the inverter limit and your large capacity there would be leftover enough to last you?

newbie here to it all - want to know what to do for best with the system we have got. 

We don’t have a EV - just a charging hybrid & no high speed charger. 

No worries at all. I'll use today as an example.

2am-5am - I charged my batteries to 100%

5am-7am - Very small amount used from the batteries

7am-8am - Batteries fully charged again, started exporting.

8am-6pm - Batteries remained fully charged, exported excess solar to the grid

6pm onwards the weather has been awful, so been relying on the batteries. Currently 2234hrs and still on 78% battery.

I don't set my batteries to discharge to the grid between 4pm-7pm. I know some people do, however I just rely on any excess solar to go back then. Today I exported 15.1kWh back to the grid, probably only 1kWh of that was at the premium rate.

I'd hazard a guess that by not discharging the battery deliberately, you're increasing the life of the battery too 

Exactly this as well.

EcoScruples

Our biggest change since having solar PV and batteries is using the slow cooker for the Sunday meal. Now the pork, beef or chicken always gets cooked for free using sunshine and helps avoid that peak usage in the evening.

SuzeQStan

@EcoScruples - are you glad you went with the large battery? I couldn’t get OH to agree to it as it was double the cost of the one we got. 

No one likes to talk money as there will always be someone who paid less/more etc but personally I think that the price of something is what you were happy to pay - so bearing that in mind we paid just under 10k for our system all in and benefitted from getting the battery VAT free as it was purchased all in with the panels etc. Out of that amount the battery came to £3500.

the install company we went with was right in the middle of the quotes we got and had recommendations from friends of ours and to be fair they were good.

we both work from home with historic high leccy consumption due to nature of our jobs - and since we had this installed in March we have generated/consumed 570/499kwh.

Based on spreadsheet we are looking at return of investment anywhere from year 8-10. EDIT - this is based on our average leccy usage prior to energy crisis.

OP - our biggest change with solar has been that we have gone back to the way we used to use energy prior to the crisis. Life feels ‘normal’ and I don’t worry about what leccy we use anymore.

EcoScruples

We were originally going to have a 5kw battery but the 0 VAT made sense at the time.
It was expensive, 55% of the cost of our total install (£5.5k for the 10kw battery set) but it feels right still, especially with Flux popping up. My payback is looking like about 8 years so that fine.

Our main limiting factor is the inverter output so we try to limit what we have running at the same time so we don't exceed the 3.68kw output.
Works fine, sometimes the oven and the microwave etc push it over but it's for minutes rather than hours.

Single make coffee machines have been used instead of boiling kettles,
Using a 1kw kettle also negates the over 3.68kw load.

Be nice to hear anyone else's little cheat codes for reducing peak energy consumption.

SuzeQStan

Interesting about the smaller kettle - my mum in law has one of those because they are lighter to lift but bit of a PITA when you have a house load to brew for. But I might think again after your comment above about not exceeding inverter limit. 

I wonder why special permissions needed for greater capacity inverters.

im a bit obsessed with the growwat app - I know it gets bad reviews but so far so good for me. I do peep at it regular when doing laundry / dishwasher etc.  

Not really a hack but by closely watching the app I’ve found I can run the washing & tumble dryer at the same time long as I start the dryer 20 minutes after the wash starts once it’s heated the water sufficiently and stay within inverter limit.

Alnat1

I've not gone for a tiny kettle but I have moved down from a 3kW one to a 2kW one. Still 1.7L so not a problem if visitors turn up.
If you're only boiling enough water for a couple of mugs you don't really notice it's slower.

SuzeQStan

do you do you recommend Flux @Alnat1?

we only joined octopus this month and so far they haven’t managed to read our 1 year old smets2 smart meters 😒.