Plug in solar

flaneurs_lobster

In any case these are interesting times for the hobbiest and I can't wait for the legislation to finally come out and to see all the people coming on and sharing their savings, their installs and asking questions.

It's going to be worse than "Colin the Carrot Day" down at Aldi when these things go legit and they announce it as their weekly Specialbuy……

Ildhund

I wonder how soon some enterprising Chinaman will come up with something like a half-umbrella-shaped PV panel array guaranteed always to present a surface with optimum attitude/azimuth.

tfhnota

The recent advert for the plug-in inverter from ecoflow (circa £100) suggested it can be connected to their battery banks so there may have been an update and it may be capable of dc charging batteries efficiently (given that you will not be paid for export low efficiency is better than nowt, though).

Newbie_John

Regarding that 2kWh battery..

I agree that you can't use 25p/kWh benchmark - maybe in optimistic/simple case scenario. Anyone who wants to save money should consider ToU first. Also, government is all about lowering electricity prices - can we really be sure that we expect 25p for the next 10 years? It really needs to be looked at from pessimistic case and anything else is just a bonus. So I'd go with even lower 15p rate for 10 year calculations.

Another thing is missed saving opportunity, £300 could make £13 in a saving account, that's £130 over 10 years.

So 2kWh (1.6kWh useable power), assumed we fill it up for 150 days a year - that's 240kWh. At price 25p = £60, at price 15p = £36. Deduct lost interests and that's £47 and £23.

After 10 years it will save between £230-£470, minus cost of £300 battery we end up between loss of £70 or gain of £170.

tfhnota

You can buy a lot of alcohol with a few hundred quid but won't last long if you want to wine and dine someone (what a world, I had to think about the "someone" to get it gender neutral… but on the other hand, anything goes these days).

QrizB

In its first full week, my Ecoflow system (Stream Ultra plus four 450-watt panels) generated about 35kWh. It was a week of clouds with sunny spells and occasional showers, so not a "perfect" week by any measure.

I'm happy with this!

lohr500

According to the figures in the App, between 9th and 16 May I got 24.8kWh out of my new PIS setup.
That's with two nominal 400w panels. Perhaps we had more sun in our area over this period than you @QrizB

So I'm happy as well!!

We've got 16 hours of free electricity today from the last EDF Sunday saver, so I am charging up the Powerwall battery now, rather than on last night's off-peak rate.

Also using the immersion to boost the hot water this afternoon, rather than oil and SWMBO is maxing out the clothes washing after our return from a two week trip to Germany in the campervan.

prowla

My thoughts are that the plug-in unit should approx cover the cost of the standing charge per month.

I might get one just on that basis.

lohr500

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82001613#Comment_82001613

I guess it boils down to what tariff you are on and the expected annual generation.

The PVGIS model suggests +/-680kWh p.a from my 800W setup.

The EDF SVT for my area has a unit cost of 23.85p per kwH and a daily s.c. of 64.39p

680kWh x .2385 = £162.18
365 x .6439 = £235.02

So in a perfect world the PIS system would only cover 69% of the annual standing charge.

But with no battery storage it would be difficult to consume 100% of the energy generated by a PIS system as there would be times when some of the 680kWh p.a. output exceeded the house demand.

QrizB

Perhaps we had more sun in our area over this period than you

Yes, this past week hasn't been great here.

Here's the output plot from my main grid-tied Inverter for the month to date:

I would expect this system to make more than 16kWh on a "full sun" day at this time of year; I had several of those in April but haven't had one yet this month.

The 13th was the best day last week but even that was only 80% of a "full sun" day.