edf battery offer

01642 · 12 August 2019 at 4:20PM

Hi does anyone know much about this what invertor do you get with the deal and what does the " With Grid Services " mean if my area had a power cut do I get to use it or will be used up by the grid for everyone within minutes. What about when I have charged it up and the its gone dull outside will I find that the grid has used it all up most days or am I confused how it works as it says under "Will I notice anything different when EDF Energy is accessing my battery for grid services?" "You may notice the battery charging when the sun isn’t shining or discharging when your house is not consuming a lot of electricity." well if the suns not shining whos paying to charge the battery up if its not my solar panels or is it simply the case if they use 100% of the battery when full it will be 100% fully recharged for free when the grid is on less demand.

Reed_Richards · 12 August 2019 at 6:29PM

I don't know about EDF but you often don't get to use your battery in the event of a power cut with a 'normal' system. I think this is to prevent injury to someone who might be repairing a power cable downstream of your house and does not want your side of the mains cable to still be live. My inverter has a so-called "backup" output. Anything wired in to the backup output will keep running from the battery in the event of a mains power failure but I had to change some house wiring to make use of this.

markin · 12 August 2019 at 9:12PM

4th post down, but basically its minute to minute for frequency, not drain at peak and charge at night.

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.php?p=75690539&highlight=powervault+edf

pile-o-stone · 13 August 2019 at 9:16AM

Is this the offer where you get a reduced price on a Powervault battery? Has anyone taken up this offer and if so can you report back if it is any good?

01642 · 13 August 2019 at 9:47AM

Yes it is, and thanks for every ones help

michaels · 13 August 2019 at 9:19PM

Can you combine the edf frequency response payment with another suppliers export tariff? (Although you can't have both the octopus export deal and their EV tariff)

mmmmikey · 13 August 2019 at 9:56PM

michaels wrote: »

Can you combine the edf frequency response payment with another suppliers export tariff? (Although you can't have both the octopus export deal and their EV tariff)

Yes - the EDF contract is completely separate and you can potentially have an energy contract with one supplier, a FIT contract with someone else and the grid services contract with EDF. Note that export payments can be "carved off" from your FIT contract so you get export payments from your energy provider instead of getting export payments with the rest of your FIT payment. Simple answer - the EDF grid services contract has no bearing on your other contracts.

I've had a PowerVault with the EDF contract for a few months now which I'm very happy with - I'll provide more detailed feedback tomorrow.

michaels · 13 August 2019 at 10:09PM

Thanks. Shame the max size is the 8kwh rather than the 13.

01642 · 14 August 2019 at 8:30AM

Is the free invertor you get any good, what power is it and how much warranty I know you don't need to use it can be kept in case your normal one breaks. When the grid calls for power from your battery when its at a shortage if your i boost is connected wont this be able to stop it sensing that power is leaving the home.

mmmmikey · 14 August 2019 at 9:53AM

01642 wrote: »

Is the free invertor you get any good, what power is it and how much warranty I know you don't need to use it can be kept in case your normal one breaks. When the grid calls for power from your battery when its at a shortage if your i boost is connected wont this be able to stop it sensing that power is leaving the home.

Hi

Inverter specs ar on the website, and I can confirm that the inverter easily delivers 3kW to power my kettle, etc. With it's associated circuitry it is the heart of the system and you do need to use it to get the power out of the batteries. That is, it is an essential component and the battery system won't work without it. The option you have is to ditch the inverter that comes with the solar panels and connect the solar panels directly to the inverter in the battery system instead, but you can't do this the other way round (i.e. ditch the battery inverter and share the solar inverter).

There are pros and cons for connecting the solar panels to the battery inverter or continuing to use the inverter you've already got for the panels, but the simplest thing to do is just to leave your solar system as it is using it's own inverter and keep the battery system separate, using it's own inverter.

I can't remember what the warranty is on the inverter - maybe someone else could answer that.

In theory, you're right about the iBoost - when the circuitry in the PowerVault tells it to start exporting to the grid, you would expect the iBoost to see this and start using the power to heat the water. But unfortunately there's a catch in that if you have the iBoost activated, under certain conditions it will start to use battery power to heat the water, draining the battery. So for me this is an either/or situation - you can either have the PowerVault in Normal mode ready to deliver power and switch off the immersion heater, or you can put the PowerVault into Only Charge mode and switch on the immersion heater.

This is very easy for me to control manually because I'm mostly about during the day and my hot water cylinder has enough capacity to last a few days if I forget.

Also, in my case, I'm about to switch to metered exports and I'm on an Economy 7 tarriff. This means that I can just dump the immersion controller (Solic in my case rather than iBoost) as there's no advantage in using it - I'll get as much from the additional export payments as I'll spend on off peak electricty heating the water. I suspect that most people will find themselves in this situation sooner or later as smart meters take hold and it becomes beneficial to swicth to time of use tarriffs and/or metered export, but that's really just speculation on my part and you need to make your own judgement on this. I'm sure there are plenty of people who have a different view!

Having said that, although it's not a big issue for me, for some people this will be a deal-breaker. Worth noting that this issue is probably common to all battery systems and not specific to PowerVault. Also, it's the battery system that's the issue - you can't get round this by opting out of the Grid Services contract.

On a more positive note, I know that the techies at PowerVault have recently got an iBoost so they can play about with the settings and see if they can find a solution. I'm not sure how they got on with this- mayber someone who's talking to them at the moment could ask.

Hope this answers your questions, Mike

michaels · 14 August 2019 at 10:08AM

Thanks again for more info.

If you put the battery and PV onto the same invertor then how does that work with your fit and generation meter. Does this meter do net metering?

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