Solar install less then a month ago, battery between 0% and 4%

matt_drummer

Alexin1970 said:

debitcardmayhem said:

Are you totally electric? Have you looked at the weekly reports from Givenergy they will help to see what is going where.

right now we mainly use electricity, radiators are still off . and majority of cooking is done via the Airfryer. The shower connected to the boiler and pump I guess it will consume a bit each day.

I am trying to get my bearing here, but still not sure why the battery level dropped from 100% to 0% in less then 12 hours, is that normal?

Yes, you used it all after the calibration process and you have never charged the battery since.

That 9.5kWh battery will provide you with about 8.5kWh of electricity as some is lost in the wires of your house and the inverter as heat.

You use 8.5kWh of electricity in less than 10 hours.

You have consumed all the solar generation in your house.

How do you think the battery will get charged?

You are not going to get any more `free' electricity than the panels generate, and if you use it all the battery will never charge.

Isn't it obvious?

Alexin1970

Qyburn said:

Alexin1970 said:

Hi, Thanks for that.

I am not sure about the exporting etc. as I don't have much knowledge , but with a battery level between 0% , 2% and 4% there is no much to export I believe. 

It's very likely your smart meter will be registering export even though you don't have the formalities in place. Ours did. Pressing buttons you should (or might) see a register "Total active export" or similar. Have look and see if that ever increases.

It could be. On the GivEnergy app it does show the Total amount exproted is 4.50kWh since the 21st August 2024.

matt_drummer

What was your reasoning behind getting a battery installed?

How did you envisage you would use it?

At the moment it is a total waste of money sitting there doing nothing!

matt_drummer

Reed_Richards said:

Alexin1970 said:

I checked through my Octopus app and the daily consumption is between 15.00 and 20.00 KkW, but it looks to me it is still the same after we installed the Solar panels, unless I am missing something.

And the battery between 0% and 4% is not reassuring either , now it is at 6%.

I know we do spend a bit in elecricity but my aim was to reduce the cost with solar panels , not paying for the solar install to make no difference at all with my electricity bills . I even got a bigger battery.

See the pic attached of the Power Graph for yesterday.

Your house seems to use over 500 W of power all the time, that would be over 12 kWh per day so the 15 to 20 kWh per day that the app tells you is not surprising.  But the peak output from your solar panels was under 1 kW.  That's perfectly possible on a day of solid cloud but very low if there was ever any direct sunlight on the panels.    

Something is missing from this graph though.

The house load doesn't appear.

It should follow the red line and then be reduced but the yellow line.

Your house load should be the import minus any solar generation. The battery is not going to show much as it is fully discharged.

Alexin1970

Reed_Richards said:

Alexin1970 said:

I checked through my Octopus app and the daily consumption is between 15.00 and 20.00 KkW, but it looks to me it is still the same after we installed the Solar panels, unless I am missing something.

And the battery between 0% and 4% is not reassuring either , now it is at 6%.

I know we do spend a bit in elecricity but my aim was to reduce the cost with solar panels , not paying for the solar install to make no difference at all with my electricity bills . I even got a bigger battery.

See the pic attached of the Power Graph for yesterday.

Your house seems to use over 500 W of power all the time, that would be over 12 kWh per day so the 15 to 20 kWh per day that the app tells you is not surprising.  But the peak output from your solar panels was under 1 kW.  That's perfectly possible on a day of solid cloud but very low if there was ever any direct sunlight on the panels.    

yesterday we did have a good part of the day that was sunny, overall the panels were getting the sunlight. So not really sure what is going on here .

see the picture of my roof at around 1pm

matt_drummer

That's a lot of trees.

Your graph shows what you generated, not much.

What was your total solar generation yesterday?

It's difficult to see what you are unsure about?

The panels don't work very well on your house by the looks of it, that's the main part of your problem.

Your peak power was only about 1kW and most of the time it was way below that.

Can you see that?

Qyburn

Alexin1970 said:

matt_drummer said:

The trees have nothing to do with it.

You didn't need two inverters, one correct one would have done the job.

The optimisers are a good idea though.

What they did mention to me, that if they were going to use Micro Inverters for each panel the cost will be higher, and the Solarhedge with optimizer will be on budget and do the same job.

Too late now, but why didn't they specify the Solaredge battery? Keep it all managed and monitored as one system.

Alexin1970

matt_drummer said:

Alexin1970 said:

debitcardmayhem said:

Are you totally electric? Have you looked at the weekly reports from Givenergy they will help to see what is going where.

right now we mainly use electricity, radiators are still off . and majority of cooking is done via the Airfryer. The shower connected to the boiler and pump I guess it will consume a bit each day.

I am trying to get my bearing here, but still not sure why the battery level dropped from 100% to 0% in less then 12 hours, is that normal?

Yes, you used it all after the calibration process and you have never charged the battery since.

That 9.5kWh battery will provide you with about 8.5kWh of electricity as some is lost in the wires of your house and the inverter as heat.

You use 8.5kWh of electricity in less than 10 hours.

You have consumed all the solar generation in your house.

How do you think the battery will get charged?

You are not going to get any more `free' electricity than the panels generate, and if you use it all the battery will never charge.

Isn't it obvious?

Not expecting that , but it looks like the panels might not be generating a lot afterall, I am not sure as we just had them installed a month ago with all those promises of generating tot solar energy but not sure if it is going to happen. If everything is working perfectly , fair enough but that is not is shown on the guidance for year 1 I was supplied.

Alexin1970

matt_drummer said:

Reed_Richards said:

Alexin1970 said:

I checked through my Octopus app and the daily consumption is between 15.00 and 20.00 KkW, but it looks to me it is still the same after we installed the Solar panels, unless I am missing something.

And the battery between 0% and 4% is not reassuring either , now it is at 6%.

I know we do spend a bit in elecricity but my aim was to reduce the cost with solar panels , not paying for the solar install to make no difference at all with my electricity bills . I even got a bigger battery.

See the pic attached of the Power Graph for yesterday.

Your house seems to use over 500 W of power all the time, that would be over 12 kWh per day so the 15 to 20 kWh per day that the app tells you is not surprising.  But the peak output from your solar panels was under 1 kW.  That's perfectly possible on a day of solid cloud but very low if there was ever any direct sunlight on the panels.    

Something is missing from this graph though.

The house load doesn't appear.

It should follow the red line and then be reduced but the yellow line.

Your house load should be the import minus any solar generation. The battery is not going to show much as it is fully discharged.

On the app there are lots of graphs available which will show different options.

noitsnotme

Alexin1970 said:

Reed_Richards said:

Alexin1970 said:

I checked through my Octopus app and the daily consumption is between 15.00 and 20.00 KkW, but it looks to me it is still the same after we installed the Solar panels, unless I am missing something.

And the battery between 0% and 4% is not reassuring either , now it is at 6%.

I know we do spend a bit in elecricity but my aim was to reduce the cost with solar panels , not paying for the solar install to make no difference at all with my electricity bills . I even got a bigger battery.

See the pic attached of the Power Graph for yesterday.

Your house seems to use over 500 W of power all the time, that would be over 12 kWh per day so the 15 to 20 kWh per day that the app tells you is not surprising.  But the peak output from your solar panels was under 1 kW.  That's perfectly possible on a day of solid cloud but very low if there was ever any direct sunlight on the panels.    

yesterday we did have a good part of the day that was sunny, overall the panels were getting the sunlight. So not really sure what is going on here .

see the picture of my roof at around 1pm

Is that a lot of shading on the panels?  They’re never going to produce much if you have a lot of shading at 1pm.