Staggeringly inexpensive solar upgrade :-)

NedS

BarelySentientAI said:

born_again said:

wrf12345 said:

The cost of "free" solar plus battery versus the cost of not doing a nuclear plant or two would be an interesting calculation for our servants in government. There is also a good case for spreading "power plants" over as wide an area as possible for security in case of war.

Would be the best way forward. More than happy to lend my roof. Same with all council owned car parks, hospital car parks. Which they have done at our local one. Amazing. It powers the hospital most of the time.
Simple & cheap idea's are the best.
Imagine the votes that could be won by giving people free solar & batteries to reduce costs to the householder & provide excess back to the network. 😍

Everyone is happy when they get given things that other people are paying for.

Many would then expect to be paid for the excess that they dumped on the network or complain if they weren't, and then move on to complaining about paying for a grid that they think they have less need of.

Changes are worth thinking about, of course, but it's not as simple or cheap as people make out

I'm in agreement with @BarelySentientAI - I agree we do need to look at ways of doing things differently, but things are not as cheap or simple as they may first appear.

At the moment, if you have solar and export what you don't use, it's consumed by your neighbours who are otherwise importing from the grid. None of the excess solar you export makes it back past your local sub-station onto the wider grid.

That works fine at the moment whilst one in ten houses have solar, and it's the reason that all solar installs must seek permission and notify the DNO when they are installed - the DNO keeps a record of the amount of approved export capacity in the area and ensure it does not exceed local demand.

So what happens if every house connected to the local sub-station has solar, and now there is excess generation on a sunny Wednesday afternoon in excess of the local demand? New sub-station required? Locally installed battery storage load-balancing facility? Our existing infrastructure just isn't designed or capable of dealing with such a situation, so your cheap and easy solution turns out to be far more complex and a lot more expensive than you envisaged.

I worry once rooftop solar reaches a critical mass, there will be huge waiting times for grid connection, like there currently is for large utility scale solar and wind projects - some of them waiting for 5 years for a grid connection.

We have a similar situation locally with Fibre internet. Our local BT OpenReach cabinet has connections for 512 properties, but only space for 128 fibre connections. The first 128 properties that request fibre get it, after that anyone else will have to wait for OpenReach to come and upgrade the cabinet. The same thing may happen with solar installs - yes you can have solar, but you will need to wait until we can upgrade your local substation before you can connect it to the grid.

bob2302

I wonder what the future is for solar; presumably at the moment it's valuable because it reduces summer gas consumption (and could displace some biomass).

Something is going to have to power heat pumps in the winter, and it's not going to be solar. It seems like there is a possibility that demand for solar exports might get squeezed out between excess summer generation and generally falling gas usage.

silverwhistle

It's not really going to be the widespread issue you fear, I think. Diversity, the widespread adoption of EVs, the experience of people who have learnt how to benefit from their own PV by changing usage patterns, household automation, intelligent charging and so forth will all help mop up peaks. When you consider that a charging EV will mop up the production of a couple of roofs and household battery installation rising in parallel we should be ok in most cases. New estates are a different issue of course.

My own automation is being at home, Mk1 eyeball, hot water heating using surplus PV and manual switching for the rest, but even here I have a towel rail I can switch remotely using an app, and an EV ready to soak up electricity when it is in abundance.

silverwhistle

Netexporter said:

I'm not talking about PVslates/tiles. I know they are expensive.

On another forum I am on a self-builder commented that they were actually cheaper than the real slates his local planner wanted for preference. Their costs could no doubt come down dramatically with wider acceptance.

I see new builds with a couple of panels where there is space for more: considering there will be the cost of a low powered inverter come what may the savings on a few more panels really is penny pinching. But as we have seen with the Grenfell enquiry the whole building trade is not known for foresight, honesty or doing anything they aren't forced to do or think they can get away with given the lack of regulation and enforcement of what there is.

NedS

silverwhistle said:

I see new builds with a couple of panels where there is space for more: considering there will be the cost of a low powered inverter come what may the savings on a few more panels really is penny pinching. But as we have seen with the Grenfell enquiry the whole building trade is not known for foresight, honesty or doing anything they aren't forced to do or think they can get away with given the lack of regulation and enforcement of what there is.

I agree. I would like to see planning regulations require a minimum amount of solar per bedroom on all new builds. Maybe some simple formula like 1kWp per bedroom and 1kWp per bathroom. All new properties should require heat pumps as standard and come fitted with an EV charging point. May as well specify a 5kW battery too for good measure. There is no reason all this cannot be standard in all new homes.

BarelySentientAI

NedS said:

silverwhistle said:

I see new builds with a couple of panels where there is space for more: considering there will be the cost of a low powered inverter come what may the savings on a few more panels really is penny pinching. But as we have seen with the Grenfell enquiry the whole building trade is not known for foresight, honesty or doing anything they aren't forced to do or think they can get away with given the lack of regulation and enforcement of what there is.

I agree. I would like to see planning regulations require a minimum amount of solar per bedroom on all new builds. Maybe some simple formula like 1kWp per bedroom and 1kWp per bathroom. All new properties should require heat pumps as standard and come fitted with an EV charging point. May as well specify a 5kW battery too for good measure. There is no reason all this cannot be standard in all new homes.

There is no reason it cannot be, but several reasons that it should not be.

Planning standards should be exactly that, a standard to meet.  They should not favour one particular technology over others.

If there is more than one way of meeting a standard, then they should all be acceptable.

bob2302

silverwhistle said:

It's not really going to be the widespread issue you fear, I think. Diversity, the widespread adoption of EVs, the experience of people who have learnt how to benefit from their own PV by changing usage patterns, household automation, intelligent charging and so forth will all help mop up peaks. When you consider that a charging EV will mop up the production of a couple of roofs and household battery installation rising in parallel we should be ok in most cases. New estates are a different issue of course.

There's a number of problems with this, but the chief one is that none of it allows solar to power the rising number of EVs and heat pumps in the winter. And whatever does will be competing with solar in the summer.



 

mmmmikey

[Deleted User] said:

mmmmikey said:

Just enjoying a real money-saving coup of the type that doesn't happen very often so I thought I'd share it hear on the off chance anyone is considering an upgrade to their solar system....

The background to this is that I'm currently ordering the materials to put a new roof on my shed/workshop/garden building which I want to do before having an upgraded electrical supply run there. I was considering making provision for putting a couple of secondhand solar panels from a previous campervan on the roof, and one thing lead to another and I discovered how cheap solar panels are at the moment.

To cut a long story short, I've just ordered six 410W panels at a total cost of £306.38 delievered - a real bargain in itself.

But to make things even better, I can use them for covering the workshop roof. Instead of an EPDM membrane (£197.99) on top of plywood (£135.00) I'll cover the roof with solar panels (£306.38) on top of cheapo roofing felt (£57.00). I have an existing hybrid off-grid inverter and 3kWh battery which will need to be relocated but because of the wiring to be done to the workshop anyway, the cost of that should be minimal - no more the £50 at most.

So net cost to me a staggeringly low £80 or so for a 2.46kWp array.

The system is off-grid and will generate a bit more than I can use in the summer months (although rather than waste any spare I'll probably use it for air conditioning in the conservatory). I estimate the panels will generate about 1200kWh per year, if I use 800kWh of it, that represents a cost saving to me of £120 per annum

So a solar upgrade project which should pay for itself in less than a year - wow! Sounds too good to be true, I'll let you know the catch if/when I find it

Hi,

Where did you get your solar panels from?

I'm planning a new project 😀

Hi - I bought them online from City Plumbing, Wickes also have them but were slightly more expensive at the time. The panels I chose were the Longi 410WP - I was constrained by my inverter otherwise I probably would have bought the higher output ones.