What happens when you GO electric - Solar panels, batteries, EVs & heat pump ?
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- Опубликовано: 26 окт 2024
- So much solar with such small bills it could make you cry
Being efficient , using less energy and generating your own electricity can lead to a great result. Add in a smart low cost electricity tariff and some Intelligence to optimise your usage and the result can be more than just low bills but zero bills
All my stats for all my energy systems.
It's been a good month
Links & Referral codes
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Own a share of a wind farm rippleenergy.c...
OCTOPUS energy referral link....
share ** £50 credit each **
🐙🔌share.octopus....
Actual referral code for telling Octopus "pink-rose-718"
⚡Instavolt App referral : £5 free charging each
⚡driver.emsp.in...
My aircon installer:
Graham Durrant
Ignite heating and cooling
Email: info@igniteheatingandcooling.co.uk
System / Components
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Solar config
PV Ja Solar 9.2kwp
14X280w (3.68kw Solis)
8X300w (2.0kw Solaredge)
4x450w Solis string 1
3x370w (2.5kw) Solis string 2
6 x 410w Trina new garden PV
Myenergi Zappi 1, Eddi and Hub
Battery:
Victron Multiplus II 48/5000
5 x Pylontech Us3000C
EVs:
Mini Electric Cooper SE Level 3 in Midnight black
ESoul First Edition 64kwh in Neptune Blue
Nice one Nigel. I'd be interested to see how you plan to game the Flux tariff. I had an excellent experience with it last summer and exported lots, had negative bills as a result. However, you have to keep an eye on the weather and plan ahead. And come autumn you will (maybe) need to move back to one of the Go products because the import becomes dominant. It took Octopus several weeks to switch me from Flux to Go which incurred expense due to the importing I did whilst waiting for the switch.
Ashp going in today and I'll be staying on IO for the ease of use. No planning required just import overnight and export during the day.
Good luck with it.
Ive heard similar issues about switching . Supposed to be instant but for some they ,Ake you reapply for export all over . Not ideal
Just on your words about washing the cars with captured rain water, i use a small jet washer attached to my water butt, works well and doesn't seem to use much water. Im not sure if your old oil tank was plastic or metal, but if you had kept it and found a way of catching rain water, and been able to use rain water to flush toilets?...Although water is not too expensive, by using rain water for waste disposal would mean that fresh water is not being wasted, i can understand it would be a hassle to plumb....great vid as always👍
I'd love a rain water flushing toilet
We use rainwater to flush our 2 downstairs toilets, saves £££ as it also means reduced sewage charge too as its less metered..
Crazy paying for purified water then flushing it down the loo!
@@MikeGleesonazelectrics yeah, good point... id forgot about the reduced sewage bill, cos its worked out on the metered fresh water.
How do you get a good pressure of rain water flowing to your toilet?...do u have pumps, or a high tank and gravity feed?
@@EVPuzzle maybe your channel should branch off into eco plumbing as well as solar😉
Hi Nigel, I’m on Flux here in Wroxham, export rate between 4-7pm is down to 25.85 pence now and standing charge for import is now 47.85 pence so not as good as it was
I guess they're all going to reduce some time this year, which is good, I just hope the difference between import and export remains healthy
Our 5.9kwh south facing array did 797kwh in Bristol in May, not bad but not as good as previous years. Our main energy drain is our old seventies storage Electicaire warm air vented system in the winter months which amazingly still works but uses 30kwh+ overnight to keep the bricks warm. Am trying to work out how much an air to air heat pump (air con) would save us but from what I can see the more powerful systems we would beed use 10-12kwh per hour and that's peak tariff so not sure we'd save that much. I know you have a Toshiba from your other vids, may I ask how much that consumes roughly per hour, and if it heats just one room or the whole house? Your channel is the best source of info on all this in the UK imho
That's kind of you to say. My Toshiba system is in 3 rooms but designed to heat the house with doors open. Guest rooms and bathrooms are separately heated as doors are closed mostly .
Wattage can drop to 300w with just one unit on, then 400 or 600w with three on but that's after the house it at temp . When it first come on it'll pull almost 2kw then quickly reduce to 1.2kw.
If temps go below zero it uses more
@@EVPuzzle ah brill, thanks for the info. That's far less than I expected and would save a bomb compared to my 30kw per night storage heater!
Coming to the end of autumn here in Adelaide, South Australia. Been quite dry this May so solar generation has been quite good. Generated just over 1 mwh for the month.
Generated 579 kwh from the 6.3 kw north facing panels on the house and 506 kw from the 6.5 kw east west panels on the shed.
Total generation is 1.08 mwh.
Wow that's really comparable to ours .What's your consumption like?
@@EVPuzzle My consumption varies quite a bit from 10 kwh a day to 25 kwh a day.
I am on a time of use plan where the super off peak rate is A$.08c kwh between 12-6 am, so during those hours I use the grid to recharge the battery and EV, so when the expensive rate kicks in at 6 am, everything's is charged for the morning.
My 6.8kWh array in the North West UK generated 668kWh in May 2023 but only 575kWh this May, a 14% decrease.
Last year I wasn't charging the batteries overnight so export was 219kWh whereas now I top up overnight my export figure is 431kWh, a 95% increase!
My 15p export tariff has just been renewed for another year so I'm a happy energy user. The only change I'm considering is setting up a couple of hours of export per day now that the longevity of battery life is believed to be better than first thought.
I'm the same , battery use is fine even though 50p gains seem unnecessary but over a month it does seem to help
Hi Nigel, another interesting update, I too now import overnight to heat water via eddi & export during the day on intelligent octopus go, I just wish my energi would make it possible to switch eddi on & off on a timer similar to boost setting, as I have to switch it on manually at about 21.00 hrs this time of year & switch it off again when I get up to avoid wasting solar into the tank, sometimes when I get up solar has put a kw plus extra into the tank which I don’t need, would rather send that to the grid, cheers Eric.
Just completed our first full month on Solar with battery, just south of Norwich. It took 3 weeks to get an Export MPAN, so we only went onto export tariff on 13th May (15p kWh), and on 14th May moved to Intelligent Octopus Flux.
Really pleased with out 6kWp and 9.5kW battery system, and generated 784kWh, exporting 565kWh, changing our usual monthly electric expense from £100 to an income of £100.
Just getting my heat around HA.
While IOF seems to be a little odd in it's battery charging schedule, and only exporting battery to 20% (so it could be more profitable for me to manage on that tariff), it does seem to make a good amount if you generate more than you use. by 50% or so. It's better to just export without using that battery as you then have no additional losses, and can reclaim the units later if you need them.
I've heard others saying the Givenergy scheduling with octopus isn't perfect , some being drained too much . I'm not a fan of giving up control 😬 completely
Hi Nigel, we too have had worst May for solar since starting in 2011. 7.56kWh split over E/W roof. Our electricity use was 837 kWh 97% at night rate! Exported 418kWh, as battery is filling up on cheap 7.5p and exporting at 15p! EV used 234.16kWh for charging the EV and 48.01 for ASHP as I realised the MyEnergi Eddi needed 6kWh of power to heat the DHW but 1-2 for the ASHP, so use will be higher this year.
I am just looking at the open energy monitor for my ASHP. I have also upped my energy use with Ripple Energy and have been able to add to my holdings in the new wind farm. This will also help to reduce my electricity bill for the next 30 years!
Open energy monitor is what John Tisbury uses on his heat pump I think . Very detailed data . Jealous of hot water heating via ashp. I need a separate heat pump just for that purpose. I hear those are now starting to appear .
@@EVPuzzle It is crazy how different the Tesla Powerwall is behaving now that we are being paid double for export. The ASHP figures made me question the use of my Eddi when I looked at the figures. Home assistant now helps out and if Eddi is activated it pauses Eddi and turns on the ASHP for the DHW.
It is unfortunate when you like collecting the data as it makes us need things like the Open Energy Monitor. My Midea ASHP has a crazy app that only gives round numbers and even though heating is off, it seems to be showing heating when it was doing DHW!
My 7kW array in Cambridgeshire has generated 773kWh, it has indeed been just a fairly good month. My new Eddi is performing well, with the gas being turned of in April.
Even if gas is a cheap heating resource it must feel really good turning it off, just as I've removed my oil tank
Hi Nigel. Greetings from South Africa.Just discovered your channel. Very interesting! Super interested in how you’ve gathered all the data on your system and room temperatures. Would like to do something similar in the house we’re renovating. And guidance/direction would be much appreciated.
Thanks
Ade
Welcome to the channel👋
Hope this helps ...
Aqara ZigBee sensors - Measures temp and humidity sends to
Sonoff ZigBee usb hub - receives data from sensors
Home Assistant Blue box - stores data in a database for display plus automation
Spalding South Lincs return for May matches everyone else. Our 5.4 array produced 552.4, in comparison last year, when we first added the new panels to get our current arrays we generated 598.3. Our original 3 kw array produced 358.9 this year and 389.6 last year. The difference , the cloud and rain. Our rain gauge collected 89.6 mm this year against 18.75 last year. Looking back at those figures we had a number of 15-26 mm days of rainfall this May, more heat in the atmosphere gives more water capacity in the clouds, climate change in action, ditto the overall temperatures last month. Production wise 2021 was comparable with only 351.9 produced by the original 3 kw array.
Our homes consumption was 320 kw with only 3.2 kw coming from the grid. Of that grid draw 2.1 was an Octopus Intelligent smart charge to the car. Octopus stated in an email to me that in accordance with its t&c’s I had to do at least one a month or they would move me to another tariff. I pointed out that it was ridiculous for me to have to import energy I didn’t need just to stay on a tariff that’s suits us, but they were adamant I had to do a smart charge. It’s more of an irritation than anything so I did as I was told with the smallest charge I could.
Our best days production was 29.8 kw on the 19th, the worst 2.7 on the 3rd. We exported 230 kw and through the Zappi or Granny chargers put 138.6 into the EV.
Thanks for your stats, they always make interesting and thought provoking viewing, even if your decisions don’t tarry with our own all the time. Just goes to show that we are all individuals with different objectives and view points but all working to achieve our own aims in a collective way, may be politicians could learn from that approach. ( and pigs might fly)
Totally agree about politicians. It's a sad state of affairs .
I'm curious and jealous of your historical weather watching and rainfall. That would be very useful for correlation against solar data . Hmmm weather station input into home assistant 🤔🤔
@@EVPuzzle I have always had an interest with the weather. We started with an old barometer and temperature gauge outside and took temperatures. Then we added a rain gauge. The as we got fed up going outside in the cold we bought a weather station with an external and indoor sensor. Somewhere amongst that we started recording what the general weather was, clouds, sun, wind direction rain etc during the day. The relationship with solar production is obvious on a day to day basis but the aggregated figures give a better indication of trends that more or less correspond with solar production.
Next step is a more expensive weather station with an automatically recording of daily rainfall with automatic emptying and a wind gauge. Haven’t found one yet, there are some out there but of variable quality.
Hi Nigel. Very cloudy May here in South Yorkshire. We generated 616 kWh compared to 768 kWh for the same month last year. 6.5kw array split 50:50, east/west.
That's a sizable drop 😯 fingers crossed for better weather in June especially as we're coming north on our hols 🤭
Great that you've got a friend now after your previous "Billy nomates" comment.
TimandKat's green walk have a video with a rule of thumb on whether it is worth switching to a different Ocotpus tariff.
I'm not sure your battery set up would be compatible with the "Intelligent Octopus Flux" offering - this was Givenergy only (to start with at least). We were using Flux before that and if you've got plenty of solar it is possibly worth it, but you miss out on the super cheap overnight EV pricing.
Just flux not intelligent flux, when did I say billynomates🤷
@@EVPuzzle gosh now you are asking - I'm sure you made such a comment (maybe last year?). Don't you keep scripts/transcripts? 😆
Interested to see your flux conclusions. I decided that flux worked really well for battery only owners but once you chucked an EV into the mix the lack of 7.5p/kwh made it more expensive even with the better export rate. The crossover point depends on your mileage.
Juggling numbers is definitely how it's going to go , some up some down. Wouldn't want to guess which way the scales go
Ditto here @villagevidiot100 I need someone like Nigel to to some geekery and find the optimal setup and cheat codes 😃
@@chrischild3667 hopefully my example will help determine what's best for yourself . Hoping to get it sorted by end of Saturday
Low generation here in Hampshire too only just covered my consumption costs + standing charge. Down from last year
Reassuring so many experienced the same poor May.
At least it was better than April
Been on Octopus Flux tariff since mid March 2024 cannot have Octopus Intelligent Go as no EV as yet. 7.38pKw ground mounted south facing array. For May 2024 generated 962.7 kWhs exported 721.01 kWhs and imported 6.4 kWhs.
Flux export rates in South West 14.84p and 24.52p will be going down again from 1st July when the price cap is lowered. Have battery set to discharge down to 50% between 4pm-7pm. Export per Octopus bill £134.80 - import £1.78 - standing charge £19.22 = £113.80 credit.
That's a useful comparison , thanks 👍
Just gone past our 1 yr anniversary in April here in north Hampshire so first comparative data yoy - East/West set up produced 1221kWh in 2023 and only 1012 kWh this year. That is a reduction of 17% though I have noticed how dirty the panels have started to look in the past month - should I get them cleaned and will it help much ?
Very comparable to my system .
Dirty panels won't be the cause of the 17% drop. We're all seeing a drop in may it seems
But
Cleaning panels will still be important if rain showers aren't clearing it. You don't want the build up to form lichen which will be really hard to remove .
I've been looking at options . £210-£250 for a clean 🫧 or £750-£900 to buy my own professional pole system .
Hi Nigel. How do you control your low rate export? (6:15) Do you use a HA automation or is it through your victron?
Combination of both . Home assistant automates it using modbus calls to my victron inverter changing grid set point as needed. A few battery systems allow this fine control but not many , it's one of the reasons I chose Victron
Rainwater is great to wash cars with, no streaks.
I tend to use hard water then rinse with rain water
@@EVPuzzle Same here, prefect solution. My car hasn't complained yet!
A bit conservative with the forced export?
Yes , I'm playing at it really , easing in gently
@@EVPuzzle Great. Thanks for sharing!
Hello Nigel, how come your 100% sure your imported electricity is "green"? Are you connected to the national grid or some local small renewables grid in your area? Cheers Sam
I trust octopus . If they say they buy 100% 💚 green , it's a green as it can get .
Loads of solar farms and wind turbines in Norfolk but sadly a far power station too so until that's gone, it'll never be perfect
@@EVPuzzleBy buying green, are we hogging the green and forcing others to buy non-green? At least until 2030, when we have a 95/100% non-fossil grid?
@EVPuzzle I see. The is grid is one network in England so it would be interesting if they could guarantee electron flow from the "green" source to your house. I can assume on a windless night sizewell and Yarmouth ccgt will be feeding your house.
A relative (in Bristol) has had solar since 2018 and this May was the worst one by a fair way.
May only figures starting 2018
471 / 476 / 626 (!!) / 455 / 456 / 533 / 400 this past May ... = 88% of the previous worst month and 74% of the average.
Yea covid year May best ever month..
Reassuring everybody not to rush out cleaning your panels , it's just the weather 😉 Seeing the potential from sunnier years is really encouraging though but I guess it's the UK, it won't be glorious every year 😞
@@MikeGleesonazelectrics the year the world stood still...massively reduced transport pollution. Reduced industrial pollution too, really clear blue skies and fantastic sunrises and sunsets which when all joined up must have resulted in a higher solar penetration through less layers of airborne filth. Even the lack of background traffic noise pollution let you hear better, except of course when the saucepans were given a severe beating...
What are your kWh costs of charging/discharging the battery (total expected lifetime capacity / cost of installation of battery)? I assume your 7.5p per kWh doesn't include this.
Very difficult to put a number to this. The expected life of these batteries just keeps increasing now that the boffins have the benefit of time and hindsight to gauge how they perform. Realistically, one could expect them to be at 80% of original capacity after 15 years (from the latest indications) so, at around a thousand quid a throw, each battery is going to have to earn around 67 quid per annum to pay for themselves. If you were only charging them from solar I'd say that it would probably not be do-able, but using the grid to charge is probably within reach. My off-grid system with 10 of the Pylontech US3000C batteries has a payback time of 7.5 years based on historical energy consumption.
For me... if I charge the batteries off the grid at 7.5p... it ends up costing about 8.5p when finally consumed... so there's defo a 'round-trip' cost to be factored in.
Negligible per kWh but to be honest I don't agree with confusing capital costs with monthly costs and revenues. I could estimate 20 years life but I might be dead by then so it's really irrelevant .
@@EVPuzzle Fair enough. My models include the cost of capital and depreciation (easier for solar panels but harder to calculate for batteries at the moment). Each to his own.
@@Qosmio1955 Yep. It is tricky. I believe that batteries will still be useful for at least a decade but battery warranties are much shorter. Car batteries seem to last really, really well and house batteries appear to have a gentler charge/discharge profile. Time will tell.
For comparison. All data from myenergi so not 100% accurate. Solar gen 1.61mwh, consumed solar 747kwh, exported solar 862kwh. Grid import 193kwh. 15.6kw solar pv split North, East, South, West. 17.7kw givenergy batteries. Norwich area. Volvo XC40 recharge twin and Vauxhall Corsa E. ASHP, 100% electric household. Import cost £15.86 Export income £136.52 not including standing charge. Going to switch to your maximise income model for June. Also installed solis data dongles so next month I will have accurate data!
That sounds familiar 🤣👍🫡