Good to hear about your results. I kad a 7.7 kW system consisting of 19-405w Q-Cell panels with Enphase micro inverters installed in December 2023, and flipped the switch the first week of January. Was not impressed with my January and February results, so I found 4 additional panels, mincro inverters and a racking system through facebook marketplace, ebay and Amazon for another $1200 and plan to install them myself. But as luck would have it, since about mid February, I've been producing more than I need and am currently banking the solar credits for next fall and winter. I'm still going to install the panels and go with a mini-split heat pump system to cut into my propane heating bill. My system will pay for itself too in about 6-7 years. A wise investment if you ask me.
Sounds great! Yeah January and February generation tends to be pretty miserable, but certainly on the up from now onwards. By summer you will definitely have way more than enough. 😃
Thx for your help I just switched to octopus with your code this afternoon 😊 I will get install next month 4.6kw solar panel (10x460w) Givenergy 5kw inverter Gen3 + 9.5kw bat
Thanks David. Really appreciate that! 👍 good luck with the install. The beauty of a winter install is that you see the worst of the generation early on and things only get better from then into spring and summer. 😄
Have really enjoyed your videos this year. I’m on a similar journey. Got my Tesla last month and a 6kwp solar and GE AIO and EV charger coming early in the new year. Went for AIO as also getting a heat pump. Not far up the road from you so it’s great seeing your results! I’m fortunate that I have a big south facing roof, so that where all my panels are going. Can’t wait for it all to get going!
Nice update. Regrets (1) - not knowing that planning would take six months for our ground mounted system so missed out from March 2023 to August 2023 (2)- not knowing that you could export units during saving sessions so only fully participated in the last three sessions earned 46176 Octoplus points = £57.72. Having a 6Kwh inverter helps. You will definately need more battery storage if you get a heat pump. Have had to import during the day time four times in December as the 20Kwhs of battery storage was not enough to cover all usage. Will be getting an EV in the future and will be looking at models that allow V2G.
Thank you! Wow! I hadn’t really thought about the planning for a ground mounted system. 6 months is crazy. Saying that my DNO approval took long enough. 😂 £57 is a great return from just 3 sessions. Thanks for the info on the heat pump. V2G is definitely something I will look into in ‘24 as well.
Another great video Dan and a special thanks for sharing your excellent spreadsheet, which I am now populating with my own data. This is my 1st winter with a heat pump and I have found that I need a lot of battery storage for the winter months. In Dec, my heat pump eats 12-20 kWh daily but it keeps the house really comfortable. If you keep on IO for winter, your one 9.5 battery won't get you through the day with a Heat Pump on a single IO charge. You might have difficulty fully charging 2 batteries from one inverter. I have two 8.2 kWh batteries and am on Cosy. With the split times, on most winter days, I can get through the day on Cosy rates. Can't wait to get back onto Flux again once the sun reappears (I have 10 kWh panels on E/W/S). Keep up the videos, really informative and well delivered. Rob
Thanks Rob. Really appreciate the feedback! 12-20kWh sounds pretty reasonable for heating and glad to hear the heat pump is working out for you. Good luck with the spreadsheet, it hurts my brain some of the time. 😂
We have a south facing 3.6 kw solar Edge inverter array and tesla battery set up in Northumberland. For two thirds of the year we use no grid electric at all and the remaining third (winter) we charge the battery at night at cheap rate and that runs the house all day. We have been running this for over 3 years and it's worked perfectly
Have you done the maths to see if like Dan you'd be better off exporting all your solar and running off batteries filled up at off peak? Because currently(no pun intended 😂 ) you are using solar worth 7.5p when you could be exporting it at 15p?
Hi Dan im currently waiting on solar and battery install similar to yours, and planning to do exactly the same as you regards tariffs good to hear its working for you . Main difference would be no backup from the battery as power cuts are infrequent here and i have nearby relatives where i can hang out for a few hours. Id like to give up gas but thats not at all economically feasible for me to do so unfortunately. FWIW i did look at battery only and that would have worked also but given i can fold in the two installs at the same time i might as well do it together. Plus as you alluded to the longer i put it off the less time in this house getting the benefits. One big difference im getting the 5kW inverter so will get the benefits of that. Ive literally maxed out the panels i can get on the grounds that doing it later isn't a good financial option.
Heat pump for me is the last thing I will ever do (not never). There are other things that really need doing first which are easier to get done before I get there. Another battery will benefit straightaway and in my case would double my charge/discharge rate to 10KW and storage to 27KW and then fit the induction hob. This means that by the time the heat pump gets fitted, I dont have much in the way of bottlenecks to sustain the whole thing without drawing from the grid a peak times. Thanks for the video :)
Thanks for the comment. That certainly sounds like a sensible way to approach it. 27kW would likely be more than enough for me even with a heat pump most days. 👍
Thank you Dan for a very informed 12 months of videos. I had solar and a battery fitted this year and your videos helped me with the decision. Happy new year and all the best for 2024.
Only regret that the surveyor didn't discuss bird protection with me at all, just wrote "NO" on the instructions to the installers. I ended up buying 40metres of "hedgehog" gutter brush, wired them together in 2 x 16 metre lengths, went up on my roof and wrapped them around the 2 panel arrays, just tucking them in at the ends with a bit of overlap. It works a treat. The leftover 2 lengths of gutter brush will be installed as gutter brushes. I have 10 x JA 405W panels in 2 arrays of 6 South Facing and 4 West Facing panels, A 3.7W Solax X1-G4 Hybrid inverter and a Solax 5.8W triple power master battery. I may consider expanding on the East Facing Roof in the future - I may get some more panels to charge up from earlier in the morning, noticeable now Autumn approaches. No more cooing pigeons, bird-shit in the gutters or attempts to mate and build nests under the installation. Although the edges are not tight, a pigeon could not squeeze through with a twig in its beak. Just keeping an eye on the seagulls, who could potentially build their nests at the top now there is a sort of a ledge. Just hit 3mWh of generation after 8 months, Octopus Flux £100 in credit and have had everything I paid for energy refunded so far this year, with a couple of referrals for new accounts
Fantastic to hear and I’m glad that solar is working for you. The birds, pigeons in particular, can be a bit of a nightmare so I’d always recommend the bird proofing. It’s a great feeling to see positive numbers on your energy account isn’t it! Thanks for the comment. 👍
I fitted a Mitzi air to air heat pump in 2000 for my upstairs area. Never had gas central heating due to rooms to small to fit radiators. Fitted 2kW solar in 2012, which paid back quickly due to FIt Payments. That also helped to pay towards a car solar port I had made in 2022, with an extra 2kW of solar panels fitted for the roofing. Down stairs I installed just over 2kW of underfloor heating so I can get rid of the gas fire. And today the induction hob arrives to replace my gas hob. That only leaves me with a gas fired tumble dryer, which I will be keeping untill I can afford an industrial heat pump version!
Sounds great. You’re already further down the track than me. Any regrets doing for A2A? I’d love to get underfloor heating, but don’t fancy ripping up the whole house after we’ve just decorated. 😁
I was too lazy to study your spreadsheet in detail, but what did stand out was the way you indexed your feed in tariff over the years. A warning here from an Australian is that as the amount of available renewable energy increases, they don’t want your energy. My feed in tariff has halved in three years to 3.3cents, because why should they pay more than they pay for it anywhere else. (This is the actual reason!) With reducing feed in tariffs and likely narrowing of the spread between buy and sell prices in peak times, I would warn to possibly not expect to make as much in the future as you might hope for.
Thanks for this comment. It’s really interesting to see what’s happening in Australia. I suspect we would take longer to get to this position as we get less sun overall, unfortunately and therefore it needs more installs to cover the grid demand, but it’s definitely something to bear in mind. Hopefully by then the system has paid back and we can use as much of it in the house/car. 👍
Thanks Dan I have 19x395w panels and my main regret is that I didn’t utilise all the suitable roof space and have two more panels installed. In 2023 (not including 31/12/23) the system produced 5721kwh. We exported 3965kwh and imported 2848kwh. Octopus Flux for six months in the summer and intelligent go in the winter. I need to calculate the finances at some point
Thank you! Yeah it’s really not easy to work out the finances, as there are so many variables, especially with tariff switches, but I think that’s pretty close to reality. What are your thoughts on moving back to Flux next year? I think with the increased export rate on IOG I may stick with Intelligent Octopus Go instead
@@DanEVSolar7 Two months ago we got our second EV (after the ULEZ expansion) and I need a bit more data about charging the cars, but probably we ll stay on the IOG.
Thanks for the breakdown, Dan! I've been quoted just over £12k for a system identical to yours (albeit with Gen3 inverter and 430W panels) so will likely take them up on that. Good to see how you're getting on after a year, and thanks for pointing out about the 3.6kW discharge rate on the battery - that detail had escaped me. I think you're probably right about the future tariffs as more renewables come online at larger scales. These may be the golden years for domestic solar! Either way, it's nice to be a little more self-sufficient, and I'm going to pay a bit extra for an EPS circuit so I'll at least be able to use the battery in the event of a power cut. We had 2 last month due to the storms, and one lasted 9 hours, so I think power cuts will become more common as we see the more extreme weather events hitting the UK as a result of global warming. Subscribed so I can compare my stats to yours! Cheers!
Thanks for the post and happy I could help a little. Seems like a pretty reasonable price for that spec and no doubt you’ll do better than me with the additional capacity from the panels and newer inverter. Agree with everything you wrote, it’s a really nice feeling being mostly self sufficient for most of the year. Hope the install all goes well! 👍
Thanks for informative presentation and advice. About to embark on a very similar solar install and move to Octopus. Planning to use your Octopus referral. (Fellow North-Easterner.)
You are correct about the future effects of more wind turbines. The uk is intending to double installed wind. This will make electricity a waste/cheap product during winter winds.
Great video. 3 months into a heat pump install and that has shown a massive amount of power. If you go heat pump, consider adding the 15 panels on the west roof. The more panels, the more energy on site. You can over size inverters by a large factor, you will get clipping during the summer but the annual uplift will be effective. It comes down to the maximum string voltage. Given the number of panels you have, I would think about adding a second inverter with the extra battery and add the panels. That would.providenmorenexport and the give energy equipment can be put in parallel. Just a thought.
Thank you! Something to consider. My only problem with it is that on a bad winters day when you need it the most, no matter how many panels you have, the total generation is poor.
True, winter generation is around a 10th of May or June , however it is winter when more power is consumed for heating. We have a 10kw array and average 1.2mwh in may and 0.12mwh in December. We are considering a ground mount south facing array to add 5kw to the system, the advantage being in winter to shift the angle to almost 90 degrees to catch the low winter sun and therefore get a bit more yield (approx 20%). The thing is, too much power is a good problem, too little is expensive. Having said that, our average consumption per month was 1mwh last year and is likely to be nearer 2mwh with the heat pump in colder months. Any power that is self generated and consumed is good. Now December is over, generation will ramp up and once in late March we should have enough solar to cover usage. The system averages 20kwh a day, but more like 30kwh between late March until beginning October.
True winter generation is poor. We have 14kW across our 2 GivEnergy arrays and an older FIT array so in the summer we generate loads (70kW peak I think). With Flux you just end up building a big credit for the summer export which you then chew through wit( the winter ASHP usage
Just having Give energy 10 kWh batteries inverter car charger to do exactly what you have just said,we have a hybrid at the moment however will be ordering a full electric in the new year with a 73 kWh battery in it , I’m also excited about the app and saving money now I won’t get a winter fuel payment enjoyed the video
Hi, I've got 16 panels, like you 8 East facing and 8 west with a10j battery. Only installed in September but so far I'm very happy. I've not used the old gas central heating system as I've got an air to air heat pump which has been brilliant heating the house using cheep electric from the battery, curtesy of Octopus Cosy. I expect to change tariff when I need less heating. I'm hoping to find a way of electrically heating water next year and having the boiler removed! 😊
Sounds great. You should check out Tim and Kat’s Green Walk channel if you haven’t already. He is going through the process at the moment of choosing how to heat his water. 👍
Totally get what you mean about your inverter size even the 5kw powerwall limit we've been over a few times so can only imagine how careful you have to be with yours.
Not sure my wife knows the word careful when it comes to electricity usage haha. 😂 I’ve not added it up but I could probably get a figure somewhere near. I don’t think it would payback on a new inverter but it would certainly make up a chunk of the bills I reckon.
Great video. Interesting that my installation is almost identical to yours (including a commissioning date of 14/12/2022) and the performance is very similar except I live on the south coast so the annual generation is slightly more. I also have a GivEnergy 9.5kW battery and 5kW Hybrid Inverter (plus a 6.4kW west facing solar array) and my biggest regret is the maximum power of 2.5kW that the battery can give and also the rather clunky monitoring which means that it is forever reverting back to grid import to meet the instantaneous changes in home usage rather than providing power from either the solar array or the battery. Having lived with the system for a year I would certainly look at getting a better battery and inverter if I could go back.
Thank you. Yes sounds very similar. I’m curious to know what your ‘slightly more’ generation equated to. I imagine it’s quite a bit difference compared to the sunny North East haha. 🤣
Great video Dan. You definitely seem to be making the most of your set up using the right tariff and saving sessions to increase the financial benefits is something that’s really helped us too. I’m still working on my 2023 review stats and video but it’s certainly been a good year! Looking forward to spring now and seeing a bit more sunshine!
1:28 Having West facing panels as part of the set-up is important for most domestic situations due to heavy usage in the early evening. Unfortunately this is rarely mentioned and my installer, principally a Business-to-business company, as I learned later, failed on this crucial aspect. Generation between 16:00 and 19:00 can profit significantly from export during these hours on some tariffs, such as Octopus Flux.
Agreed. The decision to install more panels on the West roof looks like a good one for our usage. Flux changed things a lot for us over the summer. What configuration did you end up with? You have probably mentioned in previous comments, but I get quite a lot. 🙂
My system is about the same age as yours. I am using LuxPowerTek inverter and Greenlinx batteries. I started with 2x 3.2kWH and added a another one to make it 9.6 kWh in total. That has been a great move as I know have enough spare to export on Saving Sessions. When the VAT is removed, I may get a 4th one.
Very interesting, thanks. Considering all sorts of options lately, for both generation/consumption, so it’s really useful to see some real-world results. Side note - recommended sorting out your microphone or settings, sounds like it’s clipping.
Thank you for an amazing and full of real data video. You did amazing job but I hope you prediction about future electricity pricing will never happen 😱
Would you be tempted to add a load of panels to the East side as well? If the inverter can cope with the number on the West side it would cope with the number on the East side. Export levels have been much higher than expected. On the other hand, those export rates might well drop as more and more people get solar.
Fair point. I did consider it but there’s nowhere near as much space on the East roof. I could probably squeeze another 4 panels in. Plus there’s the aesthetics to consider at the front. The back makes more sense for me in my opinion and I think in summer I’d see a lot of clipping with the current inverter.
I've been suprised how little extra cost is added to the total system price by changing from 8 to 20 panels. It appears that a large part of the initial cost is scaffolding, roofers etc. The panels themselves are relatively cheap. Upgrading to more panels later will incur these high costs whereas upgrading inverter or battery does not so may be a better strategy to invest as much money as possible in panels first and then look at adding or upgrading batteries later?
Absolutely. I’ve found the same. I originally went from 10 panels on my original quote to 16 for not much more and I’m glad I did. I would have liked more but it was the right decision at the time for me.
I took the same view and had 22 panels installed across my East and West roofs. Individual panels are only a few hundred pounds and the extra labour to install is minimal
@@UpsideDownFork yes because of the number of panels we had two GivEnergy hybrid inverters installed, one with a 5.2kW battery and the other with a 9.5kW battery. I’m very happy with the setup, we’re on Octopus Agile at the moment and have had some very cheap electricity days
Thanks Dan again Happy new year. My growatt hybrid invertor will give the 3.6kW out but the difference overall is not worth you upgrading as I still draw from the grid when domestic stuff is on along with the kettle. For comparison again my December total with my south facing 5.1kWp array was 65 kWh . My installation is now 6 months old and I wish I had got two 6.5kWh batteries, so far I would say your battery size should be roughly what your daily consumption is..mine is around 10 Kwh per day.
Thank you for sharing. Interesting to here VAT is being removed on Battery install. May be worth getting another one added to my system. My plan at the moment is to get more panels added (that was my regret). Eventually I will get A2A Heat Pumps for heating and hot water. Like you though my boiler is only 5 years old so probably waiting a few more years for my pension and than having a massive retro fit on the house. On your question of where do we see the energy market in 5 years? I would say it will be 5-10 years for all the renewable infrastructure to catch up with demand and we will see export prices drop and saving sessions end. On that basis anyone able to get Solar should try and do it soon so they can get the maximum benefit.
Totally agree. The best time to get solar is now if not already. Extra panels will always help to add extra flexibility to your system. What’s behind your thinking with A2A instead of A2W for the heat pump?
Thanks Jean. That’s interesting to know. I was torn between the two but it was the price that swayed me towards the GE equipment. Hopefully they can increase the flexibility in future for you with a software upgrade.
Dan, another great video. I have modified your spreadsheet somewhat to include the cost savings against not only the standard variable tariff, but also to the Octopus Tracker and and Octopus Agile tariffs. Both of these don't need solar/battery investment (and I was using both of these prior to my solar/battery install last month), so I'm not kidding myself on how much my installation is saving. My model shows a similar annual saving to yours against the standard tariff of approx £1200, but that drops to £550 if I were on the Agile tariff and the Tracker tariff is somewhere in the middle. I'm hoping that once we get to the summer months my export level will increase and the savings will follow suit, but at the moment the ROI/payback is really a lot lower that a straight comparison to the standard tariff shows. Just food for thought and based on my (probably flawed) maths..;-)
Thank you! 🙂 Wpuld it be possible to send me a copy of the updated spreadsheet please? My contact details are on the About tab for my channel. I’d be intrigued to see the difference for myself. It’s certainly something to consider as even without solar and a battery, I’d be on Intelligent Go for my EV, which would lead me to shift usage to overnight as much as possible and would generate savings that way.
@@DanEVSolar7 Previously I was was on Intelligent Octopus but found as I was only charging 1 or 2 times a week the off-peak price wasn't off-setting the higher peak rate. Agile for me was a much better cost saver. Its a complicated thing to work out..! Anyway, I've e-mailed you.
Yeah gas for cooking and heating so pretty low electricity usage. We have a modern house with LEDs throughout, eco appliances etc so don’t use a lot. That also excludes EV usage which is to add on top of that amount.
Coming up to 1 year for my GivEnergy system as well, and I also ended up with gen 1 inverters, but 2 of them as I maximised the panels on the roof whilst the scaffolding was up. Not having gen 2 inverters for the extra charge & discharge rate is my main regret. That and wishing that GivEnergy and the installers knew how to install multiple inverter battery systems. There are some quirks (like the GivEnergy portal consumption and generation data is rubbish) and you need a battery on each inverter or peak solar generation can trip the non-battery inverter offline. But overall happy and expect to be on close to zero annual running costs (and that’s with 2x 9kW ASHP’s)
@@DanEVSolar7 that’s my hope/ expectation. Although we had the panels and battery in January 2023 we were on an Eon fixed tariff at the time and I was still arguing with Eon about getting my existing smart meter working. That (and 3 further meter swaps) took until June to resolve at which point I went to Octopus Flux but it wasn’t until mid August that I got the export part setup. From mid August to Mid November i earnt £290 from export, so based on a full year ….. I’m hoping net zero £ is possible!
Hi mate, how are you generating enough solar power to both meet your electrical demand in the day AND heat your house? My daily gas usage in winter is 50kwh, with a COP of 3 I would need 17kwh just for heating + electricity consumption for the house. That's not going to come from 20 odd panels at home... really interested to understand your experience. Thanks
@@emkay1365 My first full year results from August 23 to August 24 were a consumption bill of -£11 so yes, I did achieve my goal of net zero bill. Plus another ~ £85 income from DFS session savings. How? Firstly have to look at it over the whole year, exporting loads in the summer (15p Octopus fixed export rate) to build up a credit to see me through the winter. Second buy import electricity as cheap as possible. Our base home demand is ~14-17kWh a day, the ASHP can use 20-70kWh a day on top of that. No way I can afford (nor fill) enough battery storage to meet that kind of demand, so I went for Octopus Agile to give me a generally cheap import rate even during the day. Tracker or maybe Cosy (now its 3 cheap-rate periods) were the alternatives I considered but with that kind of consumption I knew I would end up importing in the peak rate so EV tariffs were more expensive for me. Third need decent battery automation that takes account of solar forecast, home demand forecast and variable import prices. I use Home Assistant with Predbat which has served me well, it charges the battery when cheap, sometimes charging to then export soon after, and has meant my average import rates even in winter were no more than 20p/kWh. For most of the last winter I only had 4.2kWh of usable battery storage which would see me through the peak, so you don’t need lots of storage. Fourth as many panels as possible on the roof to maximise export opportunity. We have a large East/West aligned roof with panels on both sides, 44 in total with 14kWh max potential generation. East/West gives the best longer generation days, better than South facing. Some summer days we have generated 70-80kWh for £5 or so of export income a day Fifth shift where we can heavy load to overnight. We run the dishwasher, washing machine and occasional tumble dryer overnight and the ASHP heats the hot water overnight as well. But the rest of the time we just use the electricity as normal, cooking, oven, electric showers, etc, no special energy management.
Thanks Dan, we’ve been on a similar journey. Following a flood and boiler failure in 2018 we opted for an extensive rebuild with better insulation and a heat pump plus thermal solar (which provides all the hot water in summer and a lot of it in winter too). We then added 10 solar panels: 7 east facing, 2 west and one south because the thermal panel and Velux windows occupy most of the south facing roof. All we could afford at the time was a GivEnergy Gen 1 inverter and a 2.6kwh battery. 18 months later we are very pleased with most of it but are now aware of the shortcomings. The thermal panel is outstanding and earns £400 on the RHI system, the Nibe heatpump is only just about adequate for heating the house on very cold days so we are glad we retained the log burner. The main issue is the very small battery and the lack of west and south facing panels. Your video made me realise the significance of west facing panels - thanks. We’ll try to squeeze in a few more this summer.
Thanks for the comment. Wow, sounds like a pretty big project! I can imagine the 2.6 battery gets eaten through very quickly, especially with a heat pump. The West panels only generated more because I have more panels than on the East side and the winter generation is not great, but it all helps.
Hi, it was interesting to hear your personal analysis of the financial impacts of your system. Have you looked at any increase in your properties value if you come to sell your property? Perhaps over time from installation date to projected required replacement date. I’d be curious to see if you would recoup your outlay for the system in an increased sale price for your property.
Thank you! I haven't. It's quite difficult to estimate but I would at least like to think that it was an additional selling point for the property, although I have no plans to move at present. I'm not sure it would recoup all of the costs, but certainly wouldn't do the value of the house any harm.
@@DanEVSolar7 hi, I think you’re right but given PV systems have become, whilst not common, certainly not rare I thought the value it adds to a property would have started to enter into estate agents vernacular 🤓.
Great video Dan. Might also be worth considering a hot water tap instead of a kettle. Ours is a 750w Insinkerator...one of the best decisions we've made in terms of ease and really helpful to limit peak load from the house.
That’s a good shout. How much does it use just ‘ticking over’ so to speak? We don’t drink much tea but do have a couple a day and the convenience is something that appeals to me. Will look into it. Cheers.
Seems like a false economy to me (sorry not trying to be argumentative for the sake of it but just based on numbers) Looking on amazon they are about £400 plus Id guess at least £100 to fit. So let's say that is £500. Last year I spent less than £50 on electricity for my kettle (I have a power monitor plug on it) and i make a lot of cups of tea, probably ten a day Id guess. A hot water tap obviously also uses electricity to heat the water so if it was half that thats still £25 and a 20 year payback, but even if it didn't use energy at all, that would still be a ten year payback.t. To limit peak load you could instead just buy a 1 or 2kw kettle (mine is 3kw and i will likely replace it with a 2kw when i go solar&battery) Not denying its more convenient OTOH i need water filter here or the tea tastes awful so id need to have one of those plumbed in as well rather than a cheaper Brita type.
You can do this for much less. My Fohn was £260 and I self installed with zero plumbing experience. The bits I had to buy came to about £15. It's the best thing ever. Convenient and I have less clutter on my counter top. Highly recommend.
Thanks for the video, i have a ac coupled givenergy system (9.5kw battery) and might look to add an additional battery in February (i wont have space for another 9.5kw battery though 😢). Glad to hear the intelligent tarrif has been working well for you, i find the tariff ideal for charging the ev and topping up the battery
Very welcome. The Intelligent Octopus tariff is great. I have the odd time where it will keep charging the car at peak times but generally it has been great. The battery prices seem to be coming down as well, which hopefully encourages wider adoption.
I have had that as well but only very occasionally thankfully. I did consider the Flux tariff but Intelligent seemed the better option (especially with increased export rate to 15p). My last monthly bill was only 15kwh at peak rate and 475kwh at off-peak 👍. Looking forward to seeing what the costs are like in the summer months as only had the battery system installed this August I'm really enjoying the GivEnergy app, especially the quick settings feature for bulk discharging to the grid 👍
Another great video Dan, great stuff. In your spreadsheet your % consumption from Solar and battery is 18% for each. My total consumption (estimated from 3 quotes I received - the installation of PV/Battery system is end of this month) is 2.3Mwh. My self consumption is estimated as 1.94Mwh (84% of the total production) of which 1.19Mwh(52% of self consumption) is from battery and therefore my Solar will be 0.75Mwh (32% of self consumption). I am assuming that I don't input these figs into the % consumption cells which would be 52% and 32% as they seem extremely high. So do I use these figs from my estimated System production which is : Total production 4.6Mwh with an Export estimated to be 2.66Mwh which is 58%. Therefore the estimated % consumption will be 58/2=29, so 29% for Solar and Battery? Sorry about the long winded comment! Thanks so much, Ian
Thanks Ian. Hmm, to be honest, I'm a bit confused by those figures. From what I can gather, your system is expected to produce 4.6MWh, therefore the figures in the spreadsheet should be export (2.66MWh) equates to 58%, home consumption from battery (1.19MWh) equates to 26% and home consumption from solar (2.3MWh) equates to 16%. This isn't a million miles from where mine was so sounds correct. Hope that helps?
The battery has a 10 year/unlimited cycle warranty, not necessarily 10 year life. It could last a lot longer than that in reality as we are seeing with EVs. Because of this I haven’t included the costs and as I would expect the battery costs to decrease it’s difficult to predict anyway. Certainly something I’ve considered though and just have everything crossed it lasts well.
Thankyou so much. This is so far the most insightful video I have seen. Shame you focus on the word 'regrets'. I think a better title would be "Solar estimate v actual pretty accurate"
Excellent video, very useful and informative - -Can I ask if you would have put all your panels on the west facing roof if you were to start again, or still split them? Look like you get most generation from the west side. Thanks
Thank you. Only because I have more panels on the left. 🙂 If it was 50/50, the generation would be comparable. I think my ideal solution would have been 20 panels on the west roof, as we use the most power in the evening but it works quite well as it is so can’t complain.
Nice to see your review as we both have the same inverter and battery installed at the same time Dec 22. How ever my total generation for the year has topped put at 8170Kwh. Is this because of my south facing roof? The fact I live in the south or the panels I picked which are 16 JA 455w 7.1kwh My colleague at work also has the same set up as me and with 6.2kwh. And she got 6300kwh this year. The gaps are so large I don't know what to think. I am happy but why such large gapes?
Wow, that’s a huge difference and probably a combination of all three reasons. South facing roofs do make a massive difference especially in winter and it’s grim up North. 😂 the extra 60w across 16 panels equates to nearly an extra kwp too so all will help. Great results. 👍
We had to wait so long for a gen 1 inverter that (given it was January so little expected generation) I said we could wait another month to get a gen 2 one.
Dan for your total annual generation did you use the Givenergy app ? I have noticed the app value is approximatelly 6 % lower than the value on the export meter installed next to the inverter. I am guessing this higher value is the real amount of power generated, and the GE app reflects the losses associated with converting from DC to AC.
Thanks for the update. Could you use an EV battery with V2L as a home battery and avoid the expense of having to buy a domestic battery and still get the benefits?
Thanks Dan, good video A question about intelligent Octypus, do you allow them control over your batteries daily charge / discharge or do you you run the times yourself? Thanks
Intelligent octopus Go is for car charging, you need a compatible charger or car, and yes, Octopus will manage your car charging for you. Intelligent Octopus Flux is for home batteries, have to have a compatible battery system (at the moment only GivEnergy), and Octopus manage the charging of your battery. There isn’t as far as I know a tariff that does both
@@geoffreycoan thanks for reply I am on intelligent and Octypus control my daily charge / discharge of my battery I was questioning whether there is more benefit in doing it myself?
For the car I leave it all to Octopus on the Intelligent Octopus Go tariff. As long as the car is ready for when I request it I’m happy for them to charge when they want. It works well except for the odd time when the initial charge hasn’t clicked off. For the home battery I set it to charge between 11:30-5:30am every day. When the home battery is charging any home consumption draws from the grid at the cheaper rate, so make sense to do it that way. Hope that helps.
your payback over 25 years looks impressive & I think the price you paid for your system was great. Certainly a better deal than mine. One thing I noticed you didnt consider though is the longevity of the battery. Do you expect the battery & inverter for that matter to last 25 years? Maybe that needs to be taken off the profit figures as you could be on your 3rd battery & 4th inverter by then. However who knows you may still be on original rig
It’s a good point and something to consider. The figures include a lot of assumptions. It would be great if the battery lasted the 25 years but I don’t imagine it will and I can expect the tech will have moved on a lot by then too.
Cheap Inverters should last 10-12 years, but microinverters (20-25 years) and hybrid inverters (15 years) last longer, so it is mostly a case of you get what you pay for. As for the batteries, the issue is mostly about number of charge/discharge cycles. How may cycles you have per year is mostly a function of how you use the battery. Current Lithium-Ion home batteries will last 10-12 years before degradation becomes an issue. But a top end battery manufacturer such as sonnenBatterie are using LFP batteries in their home systems which they claim are good for over 10,000 cycles so you are probably looking at 30+ years of use before degradation is an issue. So again you get what you pay for!
The only thing stopping me doing a similar install is that fact I plan to move house in the next 5 years. I am wondering if I got a home battery like a Powerwall 2, would I be able to take that with me when I move?
Yeah, I’ve heard of a few people doing that and I think it’s easy enough to do. Agree, 5 years probably isn’t quite enough to get the full benefit but would potentially increase the house value. Harder to measure that though.
Very informative. Do you know if an suppliers like Octopus/Ovo have plans to give an overnight rate to a home (flat) that cannot have an EV charger but will have a home battery?
Have you thought about how you will power a ASHP in the deep winter adding more panels, even another 15 is only going to give you very marginal gains in the winter, not enough to even power your house let alone heat it. You could use off peak electricity and a battery, but you'd probably need around 20kwh battery exclusively for heating (around £15k for batteries alone). Am I missing something here?
I think you have answered your own question there in some ways. Off-peak tariffs and an extra battery will certainly help and any additional requirements will come from the grid, as it does now with my gas boiler. The magic of a heat pump is in the efficiency... So much more efficient than a gas boiler and whilst I don't expect the bills to be massively reduced, by the time you take into account the extra savings and the standing charges saved, it will all add up. Any winter solar is almost supplementary.
@DanEVSolar7 Thanks mate as long as I'm not missing something here. My gas use in January (with some simplifications) is 1300kwh, thus say 42kwh/day. With an ASHP with middling COP, say 3, I would be using 42/3 = 14kwh/ day on space heating and hot water. I calculated that with; 12 panels I have shortfall of 195kwh/month. Try 15 panels, shortfall = 180kwh, Ok try 20 panels, shortfall = 139kwh. Therefore, the marginal gain per additional panel in the winter is almost nothing, I will be storing off peak energy to use in the day for electrical consumption. For space heating and hot water it goes without saying that it will be powered by offpeak stored energy. Therefore, assume offpeak energy tariff is 7p. In January (1300kwh) at gas unit price of 5p costs me £65. With a COP of 3, an ASHP would do it for 7p x 1300kwh / 3 = £30. Now let's try one year, assume 10,000kwh usage, gas = £500 + £75 for standing charges, ASHP electricity = £233. = 84% difference, but in absolute terms it's £342. Assume cost of £10k for ASHP including £7.5k Govt grant. Then your £2500/ £342(savings) = 7 years for payback at current prices. Safe to assume gas unit price will increase more than electric price will increase, therefore 7 years likely to decrease. If you don't cut the gas line off and plan to pay the standing charges for the hob etc. Then payback increases to about 9.5 years. Hang about, you now need to store an additional 42kwh for space heating alone. Assume a Powerwall 3 or similar at an average of £6000/piece @ 13.5kwh each. 3 x £6000 = £18,000. £20.5k/ £342 = 59 years! By which time your batteries might give up mate. I don't think it works mate, honestly, am I missing something here?
Thank you! 👍 Yeah that’s a great summary. I’m going through exactly the same type of calcs myself at the moment. It’s definitely not a slam dunk from a financial point of view. A better solar, winter generation would help massively, but we can’t change the weather and day length. 😆 The only caveat with your calcs is that the COP could be lower than 3 on the worst days in winter. My basic calcs have come out with a similar payback time as yours but I’m thinking through how I could do more accurate winter calcs as this is the key time really. Maybe a new video idea? 💡
@@DanEVSolar7 this topic is screaming out for a new video mate. The conclusions sorted though, even if you have a COP far greater than 3 I.e. 5, your battery will be in a skip before you get your money back mate. For ASHP to make sense, I think something bigger needs to happen; 1. Gas prices sky rocket (too many OAPs to let that happen) 2. Electricity prices nose dive (in which case what was the point of PV and battery). 3. Battery prices come down considerably, they already have been but they have a very very long way to go. By that time the grant for the ASHP might have dried up so back to square one. I don't see any other possibility where ASHP becomes attractive mate. It's a dead duck. Dump that idea. Unless you're an ecowarrior with very deep pockets of course! :)
It makes more sense to charge EV overnight and not use the battery. Any battery capacity will assist a heat pump, so good to have that option as you cannot do that with gas.
Dan, I am curious why you had so few panels on your east facing roof - my system is E/W and put the maximum on each roof (12 on each) and the East facing panels are producing around 50% more than those on the west (some shading late on) ?
Wow that’s a huge difference! I guess I’m kind of the opposite. We have zero shading at the back and potentially a slight bit of early spring and late autumn shading at the front. When I plugged the figures in to the PVGIS calculator there wasn’t much in the E/W generation and space was a bit tighter on the front. Plus most of my usage is evening so more west panels made sense.
I've thought about adding an extra GivEnergy battery but EON who did my install want to charge me a fortune, I wonder if getting any cheaper installer to add one would invalidate any EON warranty?
Potentially. It’s all very dependent on your own usage patterns and times. You would need to do some sums to verify it but WFH all day presents a pretty good use case for solar on its own.
Home battery solution sounds like an interesting solution. However, where I live I think the possibility to install these will be heavily restricted. Most likely all installations in the house, being garage or other storage, will be banned. It could even be that they need to be installed in a separate building with minimum distances in excess of 8 meters from the main building. The reason is the fire safyey issues. Fire deparments will push the regulations in this direction. They simply do not have the capability to deal with battery fires in a residential house. Insurance companies could also dissaprove any home insurance were batteries are installed in the house.
I don’t live in the states but at least here in Europe the battery fire hazzard is on the agenda. I live in Finland and we have quite stringent building regulations, so I am expecting that there will be changes in what you are allowed to do or not. I googled the distribution of home ess battery distribution and it seems Tesla and LG Chem are the biggest in US. Both uses Lithium based technology in their ESS solutions. I am no expert but I think this is similar as the bateeries used in the EV market. I would not park an EV in a garage that is in connection to the living space, nor would I install any other type of other large scale battery in such a space without concidering the fire safety. There is of course saftey requirments already. I have a separate garage with double plasterboards towards the house as it is closer than 8 meters from the house. My parents house have the garage in connection to the house. The regulations where different 50 years ago so the walls are only chipboard with some additional rockwool insulation. According to google ESS fire saftey is on the agenda in many countries including the International Association of fire fighters. This is not of course related only to ESS but in general. It is little strange you talk about little or no evidennce of fire sftey issues. There are also companies selling fire saftey solutions for ESS. I wonder why? Anyone are free to do as they like. I think I will not invest in something that might become restricted in the near future even though I think a residential battery storage is an interesting proposition. Not following potential future regulations will only lower the value of my property or have me invest in expensive modifications. I am not either capable of judging when in the life cycle the batteries would start to be a bigger risk. I would not trust any ESS sales guy on his judgment on this.
@@thomasl2974If you would be selling your property and the battery devalued it, then just remove it (and sell it) that would only be a very small job to complete.
Potentially yes. Depends on your usage/situation. I’m hoping to come up with a video about this in the next month or so, but the calculations will probably take some thinking about.
Your electricity price seems somewhat high? You have 36p for this year and its currently 27p or thereabouts? And export is now 15p not 20p? (Of course I dont know what tariff you are on)
This was estimations based on prices at the time, when the prices were silly. The export payment depends on the tariff. Octopus Flux were paying 35p per kWh at peak times last year. Outgoing Fixed Export is currently paying 15p per kWh exported, as you say. 20p was again my estimation based on Agile Outgoing prices at the time.
One of my key decisions for solarPV/battery was added value to property (UK est between 4-14% of house value) which covered the investment outlay easily. Rest is all gains on top!
Very valid point. With energy prices the way they are, it must certainly be a selling point and add value. No plans to move for the foreseeable future though. 🙂
You must surely be interested in a heat pump Dan with the size of your solar system? Im hopefully getting mine installed in spring. Octopus were far cheaper than all the other qoutes I had, I only have to cough up £1300 after government grant & theyre replacing 3 radiators & upgrading my house fuse for free.
I definitely am. The quote off octopus would probably be cheaper than installing a new boiler with the grant but I use less than 10,000kwh of gas a year to heat the home and for hot water so gas is cheap for me as it stands. Definitely something I keep coming back to though.
I'm starting to think a battery without solar could be the way to go. Especially now it's going vat free. Kind of a shock to see electricity costing over £1 a unit in 25 years, but that's inflation for you. But but but when nuclear comes online electricity will be near free! 😮 😮
It’s definitely another option to consider. I might try and do a video on it but it’s so dependent on each persons own usage. I agree with the £1 a unit… Seems scary but the prices this year without the cap would not have been far off that. I need to buy a crystal ball. 😂
Because of the variables, it really is impossible to forecast battery ROI. Using the current figures, a 10kWh battery will take approx twice as long to pay back compared to a 5kWp solar system.
The recent low prices on Octopus tracker have started to put me off the upfront cost of a decent size battery. It's going to take a big spike in electric costs or a big drop in battery costs to get me back on it.
@@tonyfeasby1437 agreed. The forecasts seem to move batteries further away from being beneficial unless you are very canny with selling back to the grid during the saver sessions etc.
Haha thanks. That does not include EV usage, just home consumption but yes a few people have commented on that. LED bulbs throughout, efficient appliances and sensible usage in a modern home. 🙂
@@DanEVSolar7 I have a similar setup, how much would you add for your car? Last year I used 4650 from the grid and 6066 from solar (total 10700) including the car. We only drive local. That is a huge difference between us.
You have proved that you must do the maths before you embark on schemes like this. We installed PV in 2010 (3.7 kWh) and a 10 kWh battery in 2022. Then you slightly change the way you use power and you are quids in. My advice to anyone is to keep an eye on tariffs, PV costs and inverters, chargers and batteries capacities and cost and couple that with your power consumption. My motives are simple - make money and make money. When the rest of the country participates in saving the planet, I might.
Thanks for the comment. Yeah the investment aspect was a big pull for me. Obviously I want to help the planet in any way I can, but not as any cost and when paying out so much you have to at least have some idea what to expect to get back. Agree about the tariffs and hardware costs. A new tariff alone can shift the economics very quickly.
Hey we are also celebrating (a bit more than) 1 year operation of our Solar+Battery system and there are NO regrets so far.
Excellent. Great to hear!
Good to hear about your results. I kad a 7.7 kW system consisting of 19-405w Q-Cell panels with Enphase micro inverters installed in December 2023, and flipped the switch the first week of January. Was not impressed with my January and February results, so I found 4 additional panels, mincro inverters and a racking system through facebook marketplace, ebay and Amazon for another $1200 and plan to install them myself. But as luck would have it, since about mid February, I've been producing more than I need and am currently banking the solar credits for next fall and winter. I'm still going to install the panels and go with a mini-split heat pump system to cut into my propane heating bill. My system will pay for itself too in about 6-7 years. A wise investment if you ask me.
Sounds great! Yeah January and February generation tends to be pretty miserable, but certainly on the up from now onwards. By summer you will definitely have way more than enough. 😃
Thx for your help
I just switched to octopus with your code this afternoon 😊
I will get install next month 4.6kw solar panel (10x460w)
Givenergy 5kw inverter Gen3 + 9.5kw bat
Thanks David. Really appreciate that! 👍 good luck with the install. The beauty of a winter install is that you see the worst of the generation early on and things only get better from then into spring and summer. 😄
Have really enjoyed your videos this year. I’m on a similar journey. Got my Tesla last month and a 6kwp solar and GE AIO and EV charger coming early in the new year. Went for AIO as also getting a heat pump. Not far up the road from you so it’s great seeing your results! I’m fortunate that I have a big south facing roof, so that where all my panels are going. Can’t wait for it all to get going!
Thank you! Excellent, I hope it all goes well for you. You should be in a good position with a south facing roof. Good luck!
Nice update. Regrets (1) - not knowing that planning would take six months for our ground mounted system so missed out from March 2023 to August 2023 (2)- not knowing that you could export units during saving sessions so only fully participated in the last three sessions earned 46176 Octoplus points = £57.72. Having a 6Kwh inverter helps.
You will definately need more battery storage if you get a heat pump. Have had to import during the day time four times in December as the 20Kwhs of battery storage was not enough to cover all usage.
Will be getting an EV in the future and will be looking at models that allow V2G.
Thank you! Wow! I hadn’t really thought about the planning for a ground mounted system. 6 months is crazy. Saying that my DNO approval took long enough. 😂 £57 is a great return from just 3 sessions. Thanks for the info on the heat pump. V2G is definitely something I will look into in ‘24 as well.
Another great video Dan and a special thanks for sharing your excellent spreadsheet, which I am now populating with my own data.
This is my 1st winter with a heat pump and I have found that I need a lot of battery storage for the winter months. In Dec, my heat pump eats 12-20 kWh daily but it keeps the house really comfortable. If you keep on IO for winter, your one 9.5 battery won't get you through the day with a Heat Pump on a single IO charge. You might have difficulty fully charging 2 batteries from one inverter. I have two 8.2 kWh batteries and am on Cosy. With the split times, on most winter days, I can get through the day on Cosy rates. Can't wait to get back onto Flux again once the sun reappears (I have 10 kWh panels on E/W/S). Keep up the videos, really informative and well delivered. Rob
Thanks Rob. Really appreciate the feedback! 12-20kWh sounds pretty reasonable for heating and glad to hear the heat pump is working out for you. Good luck with the spreadsheet, it hurts my brain some of the time. 😂
Exactly the same system as we had installed 2 years ago. Best thing we ever fitted🎉
Yeah, it’s great. Really happy with it overall.
We have a south facing 3.6 kw solar Edge inverter array and tesla battery set up in Northumberland. For two thirds of the year we use no grid electric at all and the remaining third (winter) we charge the battery at night at cheap rate and that runs the house all day. We have been running this for over 3 years and it's worked perfectly
Great to hear. It’s a nice feeling not relying on the grid for most of the year. 👍
Have you done the maths to see if like Dan you'd be better off exporting all your solar and running off batteries filled up at off peak? Because currently(no pun intended 😂 ) you are using solar worth 7.5p when you could be exporting it at 15p?
Hi Dan im currently waiting on solar and battery install similar to yours, and planning to do exactly the same as you regards tariffs good to hear its working for you . Main difference would be no backup from the battery as power cuts are infrequent here and i have nearby relatives where i can hang out for a few hours.
Id like to give up gas but thats not at all economically feasible for me to do so unfortunately.
FWIW i did look at battery only and that would have worked also but given i can fold in the two installs at the same time i might as well do it together. Plus as you alluded to the longer i put it off the less time in this house getting the benefits.
One big difference im getting the 5kW inverter so will get the benefits of that. Ive literally maxed out the panels i can get on the grounds that doing it later isn't a good financial option.
Heat pump for me is the last thing I will ever do (not never). There are other things that really need doing first which are easier to get done before I get there. Another battery will benefit straightaway and in my case would double my charge/discharge rate to 10KW and storage to 27KW and then fit the induction hob. This means that by the time the heat pump gets fitted, I dont have much in the way of bottlenecks to sustain the whole thing without drawing from the grid a peak times. Thanks for the video :)
Thanks for the comment. That certainly sounds like a sensible way to approach it. 27kW would likely be more than enough for me even with a heat pump most days. 👍
Also if you can get rid of gas you arent paying the standing charge either.
Thank you Dan for a very informed 12 months of videos. I had solar and a battery fitted this year and your videos helped me with the decision. Happy new year and all the best for 2024.
That’s great Steve, really pleased to hear that and it’s a big reason I make these videos. Happy New Year! 👍
Only regret that the surveyor didn't discuss bird protection with me at all, just wrote "NO" on the instructions to the installers.
I ended up buying 40metres of "hedgehog" gutter brush, wired them together in 2 x 16 metre lengths, went up on my roof and wrapped them around the 2 panel arrays, just tucking them in at the ends with a bit of overlap.
It works a treat. The leftover 2 lengths of gutter brush will be installed as gutter brushes.
I have 10 x JA 405W panels in 2 arrays of 6 South Facing and 4 West Facing panels, A 3.7W Solax X1-G4 Hybrid inverter and a Solax 5.8W triple power master battery. I may consider expanding on the East Facing Roof in the future - I may get some more panels to charge up from earlier in the morning, noticeable now Autumn approaches.
No more cooing pigeons, bird-shit in the gutters or attempts to mate and build nests under the installation. Although the edges are not tight, a pigeon could not squeeze through with a twig in its beak. Just keeping an eye on the seagulls, who could potentially build their nests at the top now there is a sort of a ledge.
Just hit 3mWh of generation after 8 months, Octopus Flux £100 in credit and have had everything I paid for energy refunded so far this year, with a couple of referrals for new accounts
Fantastic to hear and I’m glad that solar is working for you. The birds, pigeons in particular, can be a bit of a nightmare so I’d always recommend the bird proofing. It’s a great feeling to see positive numbers on your energy account isn’t it! Thanks for the comment. 👍
I fitted a Mitzi air to air heat pump in 2000 for my upstairs area. Never had gas central heating due to rooms to small to fit radiators.
Fitted 2kW solar in 2012, which paid back quickly due to FIt Payments. That also helped to pay towards a car solar port I had made in 2022, with an extra 2kW of solar panels fitted for the roofing.
Down stairs I installed just over 2kW of underfloor heating so I can get rid of the gas fire. And today the induction hob arrives to replace my gas hob.
That only leaves me with a gas fired tumble dryer, which I will be keeping untill I can afford an industrial heat pump version!
Sounds great. You’re already further down the track than me. Any regrets doing for A2A? I’d love to get underfloor heating, but don’t fancy ripping up the whole house after we’ve just decorated. 😁
8 year pay back looks great!!
I was too lazy to study your spreadsheet in detail, but what did stand out was the way you indexed your feed in tariff over the years. A warning here from an Australian is that as the amount of available renewable energy increases, they don’t want your energy. My feed in tariff has halved in three years to 3.3cents, because why should they pay more than they pay for it anywhere else. (This is the actual reason!)
With reducing feed in tariffs and likely narrowing of the spread between buy and sell prices in peak times, I would warn to possibly not expect to make as much in the future as you might hope for.
Thanks for this comment. It’s really interesting to see what’s happening in Australia. I suspect we would take longer to get to this position as we get less sun overall, unfortunately and therefore it needs more installs to cover the grid demand, but it’s definitely something to bear in mind. Hopefully by then the system has paid back and we can use as much of it in the house/car. 👍
Thanks Dan
I have 19x395w panels and my main regret is that I didn’t utilise all the suitable roof space and have two more panels installed.
In 2023 (not including 31/12/23) the system produced 5721kwh. We exported 3965kwh and imported 2848kwh. Octopus Flux for six months in the summer and intelligent go in the winter. I need to calculate the finances at some point
Thank you! Yeah it’s really not easy to work out the finances, as there are so many variables, especially with tariff switches, but I think that’s pretty close to reality.
What are your thoughts on moving back to Flux next year? I think with the increased export rate on IOG I may stick with Intelligent Octopus Go instead
@@DanEVSolar7
Two months ago we got our second EV (after the ULEZ expansion) and I need a bit more data about charging the cars, but probably we ll stay on the IOG.
Yeah I think my wife will get an EV at some point as well which at that point IOg all year round makes the most sense.
Thanks for the breakdown, Dan! I've been quoted just over £12k for a system identical to yours (albeit with Gen3 inverter and 430W panels) so will likely take them up on that. Good to see how you're getting on after a year, and thanks for pointing out about the 3.6kW discharge rate on the battery - that detail had escaped me.
I think you're probably right about the future tariffs as more renewables come online at larger scales. These may be the golden years for domestic solar! Either way, it's nice to be a little more self-sufficient, and I'm going to pay a bit extra for an EPS circuit so I'll at least be able to use the battery in the event of a power cut. We had 2 last month due to the storms, and one lasted 9 hours, so I think power cuts will become more common as we see the more extreme weather events hitting the UK as a result of global warming.
Subscribed so I can compare my stats to yours! Cheers!
Thanks for the post and happy I could help a little. Seems like a pretty reasonable price for that spec and no doubt you’ll do better than me with the additional capacity from the panels and newer inverter. Agree with everything you wrote, it’s a really nice feeling being mostly self sufficient for most of the year. Hope the install all goes well! 👍
Thanks for informative presentation and advice. About to embark on a very similar solar install and move to Octopus. Planning to use your Octopus referral. (Fellow North-Easterner.)
Excellent! Thank you for the feedback and referral use. It really is appreciated! 👍 Good luck with the install.
You are correct about the future effects of more wind turbines. The uk is intending to double installed wind. This will make electricity a waste/cheap product during winter winds.
Yep. The world is changing! It really could change the way we think about and use energy. Exciting times.
Great video. 3 months into a heat pump install and that has shown a massive amount of power. If you go heat pump, consider adding the 15 panels on the west roof. The more panels, the more energy on site. You can over size inverters by a large factor, you will get clipping during the summer but the annual uplift will be effective. It comes down to the maximum string voltage. Given the number of panels you have, I would think about adding a second inverter with the extra battery and add the panels. That would.providenmorenexport and the give energy equipment can be put in parallel. Just a thought.
Thank you! Something to consider. My only problem with it is that on a bad winters day when you need it the most, no matter how many panels you have, the total generation is poor.
True, winter generation is around a 10th of May or June , however it is winter when more power is consumed for heating. We have a 10kw array and average 1.2mwh in may and 0.12mwh in December. We are considering a ground mount south facing array to add 5kw to the system, the advantage being in winter to shift the angle to almost 90 degrees to catch the low winter sun and therefore get a bit more yield (approx 20%). The thing is, too much power is a good problem, too little is expensive. Having said that, our average consumption per month was 1mwh last year and is likely to be nearer 2mwh with the heat pump in colder months. Any power that is self generated and consumed is good. Now December is over, generation will ramp up and once in late March we should have enough solar to cover usage. The system averages 20kwh a day, but more like 30kwh between late March until beginning October.
True winter generation is poor. We have 14kW across our 2 GivEnergy arrays and an older FIT array so in the summer we generate loads (70kW peak I think). With Flux you just end up building a big credit for the summer export which you then chew through wit( the winter ASHP usage
You should have more Solar Panels. Especially in the UK. And a large battery Bank and another paralleled Inverter.
Haha and a bigger bank account. 😂 It’s a work in progress.
Just having Give energy 10 kWh batteries inverter car charger to do exactly what you have just said,we have a hybrid at the moment however will be ordering a full electric in the new year with a 73 kWh battery in it , I’m also excited about the app and saving money now I won’t get a winter fuel payment enjoyed the video
Thanks Steve. Indeed, I'm sure it will help. Good luck with the install!
Hi, I've got 16 panels, like you 8 East facing and 8 west with a10j battery. Only installed in September but so far I'm very happy. I've not used the old gas central heating system as I've got an air to air heat pump which has been brilliant heating the house using cheep electric from the battery, curtesy of Octopus Cosy. I expect to change tariff when I need less heating. I'm hoping to find a way of electrically heating water next year and having the boiler removed! 😊
Sounds great. You should check out Tim and Kat’s Green Walk channel if you haven’t already. He is going through the process at the moment of choosing how to heat his water. 👍
Totally get what you mean about your inverter size even the 5kw powerwall limit we've been over a few times so can only imagine how careful you have to be with yours.
Not sure my wife knows the word careful when it comes to electricity usage haha. 😂 I’ve not added it up but I could probably get a figure somewhere near. I don’t think it would payback on a new inverter but it would certainly make up a chunk of the bills I reckon.
Great video. Interesting that my installation is almost identical to yours (including a commissioning date of 14/12/2022) and the performance is very similar except I live on the south coast so the annual generation is slightly more. I also have a GivEnergy 9.5kW battery and 5kW Hybrid Inverter (plus a 6.4kW west facing solar array) and my biggest regret is the maximum power of 2.5kW that the battery can give and also the rather clunky monitoring which means that it is forever reverting back to grid import to meet the instantaneous changes in home usage rather than providing power from either the solar array or the battery. Having lived with the system for a year I would certainly look at getting a better battery and inverter if I could go back.
Thank you. Yes sounds very similar. I’m curious to know what your ‘slightly more’ generation equated to. I imagine it’s quite a bit difference compared to the sunny North East haha. 🤣
Great video Dan. You definitely seem to be making the most of your set up using the right tariff and saving sessions to increase the financial benefits is something that’s really helped us too. I’m still working on my 2023 review stats and video but it’s certainly been a good year! Looking forward to spring now and seeing a bit more sunshine!
Thanks Joshua. Absolutely. Roll on spring! 😆 I’m thinking I’ll stick with IOG next year now I have an EV, but will see how it goes.
1:28 Having West facing panels as part of the set-up is important for most domestic situations due to heavy usage in the early evening. Unfortunately this is rarely mentioned and my installer, principally a Business-to-business company, as I learned later, failed on this crucial aspect.
Generation between 16:00 and 19:00 can profit significantly from export during these hours on some tariffs, such as Octopus Flux.
Agreed. The decision to install more panels on the West roof looks like a good one for our usage. Flux changed things a lot for us over the summer. What configuration did you end up with? You have probably mentioned in previous comments, but I get quite a lot. 🙂
My system is about the same age as yours. I am using LuxPowerTek inverter and Greenlinx batteries. I started with 2x 3.2kWH and added a another one to make it 9.6 kWh in total. That has been a great move as I know have enough spare to export on Saving Sessions. When the VAT is removed, I may get a 4th one.
How are you finding it? I’ll be honest, I’ve not heard of those brands. There are so many around now I struggle to keep up!
Very interesting, thanks. Considering all sorts of options lately, for both generation/consumption, so it’s really useful to see some real-world results. Side note - recommended sorting out your microphone or settings, sounds like it’s clipping.
Thanks. I’ll look into it. Happy to have helped. 👍
Excellent video. You'll be pleased to hear that £50 will be winging its way to you in the near future. Thanks.
Thank you so much. It really is appreciated! 👍
Thank you for an amazing and full of real data video. You did amazing job but I hope you prediction about future electricity pricing will never happen 😱
Thank you for the kind words. Glad you found it useful. Yes, those figures do look a little scary but after the last few years, who knows!
Would you be tempted to add a load of panels to the East side as well? If the inverter can cope with the number on the West side it would cope with the number on the East side. Export levels have been much higher than expected. On the other hand, those export rates might well drop as more and more people get solar.
Fair point. I did consider it but there’s nowhere near as much space on the East roof. I could probably squeeze another 4 panels in. Plus there’s the aesthetics to consider at the front. The back makes more sense for me in my opinion and I think in summer I’d see a lot of clipping with the current inverter.
I've been suprised how little extra cost is added to the total system price by changing from 8 to 20 panels.
It appears that a large part of the initial cost is scaffolding, roofers etc. The panels themselves are relatively cheap.
Upgrading to more panels later will incur these high costs whereas upgrading inverter or battery does not so may be a better strategy to invest as much money as possible in panels first and then look at adding or upgrading batteries later?
Absolutely. I’ve found the same. I originally went from 10 panels on my original quote to 16 for not much more and I’m glad I did. I would have liked more but it was the right decision at the time for me.
@@DanEVSolar7 if money were no object, then we'd all go bigger I think 😁
I took the same view and had 22 panels installed across my East and West roofs. Individual panels are only a few hundred pounds and the extra labour to install is minimal
@@geoffreycoan Nice! How is that working out for you? Did you install in conjunction with a battery?
@@UpsideDownFork yes because of the number of panels we had two GivEnergy hybrid inverters installed, one with a 5.2kW battery and the other with a 9.5kW battery. I’m very happy with the setup, we’re on Octopus Agile at the moment and have had some very cheap electricity days
Thanks Dan again Happy new year. My growatt hybrid invertor will give the 3.6kW out but the difference overall is not worth you upgrading as I still draw from the grid when domestic stuff is on along with the kettle. For comparison again my December total with my south facing 5.1kWp array was 65 kWh .
My installation is now 6 months old and I wish I had got two 6.5kWh batteries, so far I would say your battery size should be roughly what your daily consumption is..mine is around 10 Kwh per day.
Happy New Year to you too. Thanks for the info. It’s great to get some different perspectives on this. 👍
Thank you for sharing. Interesting to here VAT is being removed on Battery install. May be worth getting another one added to my system. My plan at the moment is to get more panels added (that was my regret). Eventually I will get A2A Heat Pumps for heating and hot water. Like you though my boiler is only 5 years old so probably waiting a few more years for my pension and than having a massive retro fit on the house.
On your question of where do we see the energy market in 5 years? I would say it will be 5-10 years for all the renewable infrastructure to catch up with demand and we will see export prices drop and saving sessions end. On that basis anyone able to get Solar should try and do it soon so they can get the maximum benefit.
Totally agree. The best time to get solar is now if not already. Extra panels will always help to add extra flexibility to your system. What’s behind your thinking with A2A instead of A2W for the heat pump?
Thanks for all your valuable information. I regret not getting Givenergy batteries. I chose Libbi but I do not find the system flexible enough.
Thanks Jean. That’s interesting to know. I was torn between the two but it was the price that swayed me towards the GE equipment. Hopefully they can increase the flexibility in future for you with a software upgrade.
Dan, another great video. I have modified your spreadsheet somewhat to include the cost savings against not only the standard variable tariff, but also to the Octopus Tracker and and Octopus Agile tariffs. Both of these don't need solar/battery investment (and I was using both of these prior to my solar/battery install last month), so I'm not kidding myself on how much my installation is saving. My model shows a similar annual saving to yours against the standard tariff of approx £1200, but that drops to £550 if I were on the Agile tariff and the Tracker tariff is somewhere in the middle. I'm hoping that once we get to the summer months my export level will increase and the savings will follow suit, but at the moment the ROI/payback is really a lot lower that a straight comparison to the standard tariff shows. Just food for thought and based on my (probably flawed) maths..;-)
Thank you! 🙂 Wpuld it be possible to send me a copy of the updated spreadsheet please? My contact details are on the About tab for my channel. I’d be intrigued to see the difference for myself. It’s certainly something to consider as even without solar and a battery, I’d be on Intelligent Go for my EV, which would lead me to shift usage to overnight as much as possible and would generate savings that way.
@@DanEVSolar7 Previously I was was on Intelligent Octopus but found as I was only charging 1 or 2 times a week the off-peak price wasn't off-setting the higher peak rate. Agile for me was a much better cost saver. Its a complicated thing to work out..! Anyway, I've e-mailed you.
Thank you. Really appreciate that. Plus you’ve given me an idea for a new video so thanks for that as well. 🙂
4 to 7 kwh per day seems very low. Do you use gas for cooking? Gas/oil for heating?
Yeah gas for cooking and heating so pretty low electricity usage. We have a modern house with LEDs throughout, eco appliances etc so don’t use a lot. That also excludes EV usage which is to add on top of that amount.
Coming up to 1 year for my GivEnergy system as well, and I also ended up with gen 1 inverters, but 2 of them as I maximised the panels on the roof whilst the scaffolding was up.
Not having gen 2 inverters for the extra charge & discharge rate is my main regret. That and wishing that GivEnergy and the installers knew how to install multiple inverter battery systems. There are some quirks (like the GivEnergy portal consumption and generation data is rubbish) and you need a battery on each inverter or peak solar generation can trip the non-battery inverter offline.
But overall happy and expect to be on close to zero annual running costs (and that’s with 2x 9kW ASHP’s)
Great stuff. Paying nothing to run the house is pretty impressive. Thanks for the info.
@@DanEVSolar7 that’s my hope/ expectation. Although we had the panels and battery in January 2023 we were on an Eon fixed tariff at the time and I was still arguing with Eon about getting my existing smart meter working. That (and 3 further meter swaps) took until June to resolve at which point I went to Octopus Flux but it wasn’t until mid August that I got the export part setup. From mid August to Mid November i earnt £290 from export, so based on a full year ….. I’m hoping net zero £ is possible!
Hi mate, how are you generating enough solar power to both meet your electrical demand in the day AND heat your house? My daily gas usage in winter is 50kwh, with a COP of 3 I would need 17kwh just for heating + electricity consumption for the house. That's not going to come from 20 odd panels at home... really interested to understand your experience. Thanks
@@emkay1365 My first full year results from August 23 to August 24 were a consumption bill of -£11 so yes, I did achieve my goal of net zero bill. Plus another ~ £85 income from DFS session savings.
How?
Firstly have to look at it over the whole year, exporting loads in the summer (15p Octopus fixed export rate) to build up a credit to see me through the winter.
Second buy import electricity as cheap as possible. Our base home demand is ~14-17kWh a day, the ASHP can use 20-70kWh a day on top of that. No way I can afford (nor fill) enough battery storage to meet that kind of demand, so I went for Octopus Agile to give me a generally cheap import rate even during the day. Tracker or maybe Cosy (now its 3 cheap-rate periods) were the alternatives I considered but with that kind of consumption I knew I would end up importing in the peak rate so EV tariffs were more expensive for me.
Third need decent battery automation that takes account of solar forecast, home demand forecast and variable import prices. I use Home Assistant with Predbat which has served me well, it charges the battery when cheap, sometimes charging to then export soon after, and has meant my average import rates even in winter were no more than 20p/kWh. For most of the last winter I only had 4.2kWh of usable battery storage which would see me through the peak, so you don’t need lots of storage.
Fourth as many panels as possible on the roof to maximise export opportunity. We have a large East/West aligned roof with panels on both sides, 44 in total with 14kWh max potential generation. East/West gives the best longer generation days, better than South facing. Some summer days we have generated 70-80kWh for £5 or so of export income a day
Fifth shift where we can heavy load to overnight. We run the dishwasher, washing machine and occasional tumble dryer overnight and the ASHP heats the hot water overnight as well. But the rest of the time we just use the electricity as normal, cooking, oven, electric showers, etc, no special energy management.
Thanks Dan, we’ve been on a similar journey. Following a flood and boiler failure in 2018 we opted for an extensive rebuild with better insulation and a heat pump plus thermal solar (which provides all the hot water in summer and a lot of it in winter too). We then added 10 solar panels: 7 east facing, 2 west and one south because the thermal panel and Velux windows occupy most of the south facing roof. All we could afford at the time was a GivEnergy Gen 1 inverter and a 2.6kwh battery. 18 months later we are very pleased with most of it but are now aware of the shortcomings. The thermal panel is outstanding and earns £400 on the RHI system, the Nibe heatpump is only just about adequate for heating the house on very cold days so we are glad we retained the log burner. The main issue is the very small battery and the lack of west and south facing panels. Your video made me realise the significance of west facing panels - thanks. We’ll try to squeeze in a few more this summer.
Thanks for the comment. Wow, sounds like a pretty big project! I can imagine the 2.6 battery gets eaten through very quickly, especially with a heat pump. The West panels only generated more because I have more panels than on the East side and the winter generation is not great, but it all helps.
Very informative - just obtaining quotes right now but this video helps me understand the setup, tks
Excellent. Thanks for the feedback and good luck with the quotations/install. 👍
Hi, it was interesting to hear your personal analysis of the financial impacts of your system. Have you looked at any increase in your properties value if you come to sell your property? Perhaps over time from installation date to projected required replacement date. I’d be curious to see if you would recoup your outlay for the system in an increased sale price for your property.
Thank you! I haven't. It's quite difficult to estimate but I would at least like to think that it was an additional selling point for the property, although I have no plans to move at present. I'm not sure it would recoup all of the costs, but certainly wouldn't do the value of the house any harm.
@@DanEVSolar7 hi, I think you’re right but given PV systems have become, whilst not common, certainly not rare I thought the value it adds to a property would have started to enter into estate agents vernacular 🤓.
Great video Dan. Might also be worth considering a hot water tap instead of a kettle. Ours is a 750w Insinkerator...one of the best decisions we've made in terms of ease and really helpful to limit peak load from the house.
That’s a good shout. How much does it use just ‘ticking over’ so to speak? We don’t drink much tea but do have a couple a day and the convenience is something that appeals to me. Will look into it. Cheers.
Seems like a false economy to me (sorry not trying to be argumentative for the sake of it but just based on numbers)
Looking on amazon they are about £400 plus Id guess at least £100 to fit. So let's say that is £500.
Last year I spent less than £50 on electricity for my kettle (I have a power monitor plug on it) and i make a lot of cups of tea, probably ten a day Id guess. A hot water tap obviously also uses electricity to heat the water so if it was half that thats still £25 and a 20 year payback, but even if it didn't use energy at all, that would still be a ten year payback.t.
To limit peak load you could instead just buy a 1 or 2kw kettle (mine is 3kw and i will likely replace it with a 2kw when i go solar&battery)
Not denying its more convenient OTOH i need water filter here or the tea tastes awful so id need to have one of those plumbed in as well rather than a cheaper Brita type.
You can do this for much less. My Fohn was £260 and I self installed with zero plumbing experience. The bits I had to buy came to about £15. It's the best thing ever. Convenient and I have less clutter on my counter top. Highly recommend.
Thanks for the video, i have a ac coupled givenergy system (9.5kw battery) and might look to add an additional battery in February (i wont have space for another 9.5kw battery though 😢). Glad to hear the intelligent tarrif has been working well for you, i find the tariff ideal for charging the ev and topping up the battery
Very welcome. The Intelligent Octopus tariff is great. I have the odd time where it will keep charging the car at peak times but generally it has been great. The battery prices seem to be coming down as well, which hopefully encourages wider adoption.
I have had that as well but only very occasionally thankfully. I did consider the Flux tariff but Intelligent seemed the better option (especially with increased export rate to 15p). My last monthly bill was only 15kwh at peak rate and 475kwh at off-peak 👍. Looking forward to seeing what the costs are like in the summer months as only had the battery system installed this August
I'm really enjoying the GivEnergy app, especially the quick settings feature for bulk discharging to the grid 👍
Another great video Dan, great stuff. In your spreadsheet your % consumption from Solar and battery is 18% for each. My total consumption (estimated from 3 quotes I received - the installation of PV/Battery system is end of this month) is 2.3Mwh. My self consumption is estimated as 1.94Mwh (84% of the total production) of which 1.19Mwh(52% of self consumption) is from battery and therefore my Solar will be 0.75Mwh (32% of self consumption). I am assuming that I don't input these figs into the % consumption cells which would be 52% and 32% as they seem extremely high. So do I use these figs from my estimated System production which is : Total production 4.6Mwh with an Export estimated to be 2.66Mwh which is 58%. Therefore the estimated % consumption will be 58/2=29, so 29% for Solar and Battery? Sorry about the long winded comment! Thanks so much, Ian
Thanks Ian. Hmm, to be honest, I'm a bit confused by those figures. From what I can gather, your system is expected to produce 4.6MWh, therefore the figures in the spreadsheet should be export (2.66MWh) equates to 58%, home consumption from battery (1.19MWh) equates to 26% and home consumption from solar (2.3MWh) equates to 16%. This isn't a million miles from where mine was so sounds correct. Hope that helps?
Battery has 10 year life, so have you calculated cost of new battery after 10years?
The battery has a 10 year/unlimited cycle warranty, not necessarily 10 year life. It could last a lot longer than that in reality as we are seeing with EVs. Because of this I haven’t included the costs and as I would expect the battery costs to decrease it’s difficult to predict anyway. Certainly something I’ve considered though and just have everything crossed it lasts well.
Thankyou so much. This is so far the most insightful video I have seen. Shame you focus on the word 'regrets'. I think a better title would be "Solar estimate v actual pretty accurate"
Thank you. Really glad you enjoyed it. Fair point... I may have took a slightly clickbaity angle for the title. 😆
Excellent video, very useful and informative - -Can I ask if you would have put all your panels on the west facing roof if you were to start again, or still split them?
Look like you get most generation from the west side.
Thanks
Thank you. Only because I have more panels on the left. 🙂 If it was 50/50, the generation would be comparable. I think my ideal solution would have been 20 panels on the west roof, as we use the most power in the evening but it works quite well as it is so can’t complain.
Apologies if you have mentioned this before...but does the extra hour change in Spring and Autumn greatly affect your calculations?
Nice to see your review as we both have the same inverter and battery installed at the same time Dec 22.
How ever my total generation for the year has topped put at 8170Kwh.
Is this because of my south facing roof? The fact I live in the south or the panels I picked which are 16 JA 455w 7.1kwh
My colleague at work also has the same set up as me and with 6.2kwh. And she got 6300kwh this year.
The gaps are so large I don't know what to think.
I am happy but why such large gapes?
Wow, that’s a huge difference and probably a combination of all three reasons. South facing roofs do make a massive difference especially in winter and it’s grim up North. 😂 the extra 60w across 16 panels equates to nearly an extra kwp too so all will help. Great results. 👍
We had to wait so long for a gen 1 inverter that (given it was January so little expected generation) I said we could wait another month to get a gen 2 one.
Wise move! 🙂
Dan for your total annual generation did you use the Givenergy app ? I have noticed the app value is approximatelly 6 % lower than the value on the export meter installed next to the inverter. I am guessing this higher value is the real amount of power generated, and the GE app reflects the losses associated with converting from DC to AC.
I'll have to check that thanks. This was mostly using the GE data with a bit of assistance from the Octopus data.
Thanks for the update. Could you use an EV battery with V2L as a home battery and avoid the expense of having to buy a domestic battery and still get the benefits?
Thanks. Potentially, if you had the hardware/car to handle it but financially a battery probably makes most sense right now.
Biggest problem is the weather ,impossible to predict definitely more cloud & rain more recently affecting performance.
Certainly feels like it was bad weather towards the end of summer and definitely November and December.
Great video … thank you.
Thank you too!
Thanks Dan, good video
A question about intelligent Octypus, do you allow them control over your batteries daily charge / discharge or do you you run the times yourself?
Thanks
Intelligent octopus Go is for car charging, you need a compatible charger or car, and yes, Octopus will manage your car charging for you.
Intelligent Octopus Flux is for home batteries, have to have a compatible battery system (at the moment only GivEnergy), and Octopus manage the charging of your battery.
There isn’t as far as I know a tariff that does both
@@geoffreycoan thanks for reply
I am on intelligent and Octypus control my daily charge / discharge of my battery
I was questioning whether there is more benefit in doing it myself?
For the car I leave it all to Octopus on the Intelligent Octopus Go tariff. As long as the car is ready for when I request it I’m happy for them to charge when they want. It works well except for the odd time when the initial charge hasn’t clicked off. For the home battery I set it to charge between 11:30-5:30am every day. When the home battery is charging any home consumption draws from the grid at the cheaper rate, so make sense to do it that way. Hope that helps.
your payback over 25 years looks impressive & I think the price you paid for your system was great. Certainly a better deal than mine. One thing I noticed you didnt consider though is the longevity of the battery. Do you expect the battery & inverter for that matter to last 25 years? Maybe that needs to be taken off the profit figures as you could be on your 3rd battery & 4th inverter by then. However who knows you may still be on original rig
It’s a good point and something to consider. The figures include a lot of assumptions. It would be great if the battery lasted the 25 years but I don’t imagine it will and I can expect the tech will have moved on a lot by then too.
Cheap Inverters should last 10-12 years, but microinverters (20-25 years) and hybrid inverters (15 years) last longer, so it is mostly a case of you get what you pay for.
As for the batteries, the issue is mostly about number of charge/discharge cycles. How may cycles you have per year is mostly a function of how you use the battery. Current Lithium-Ion home batteries will last 10-12 years before degradation becomes an issue. But a top end battery manufacturer such as sonnenBatterie are using LFP batteries in their home systems which they claim are good for over 10,000 cycles so you are probably looking at 30+ years of use before degradation is an issue. So again you get what you pay for!
Yeah agreed. The GivEnergy are LFP too and have a 10 year/unlimited cycle warranty so I’m hopeful it will last well. 🤞
The only thing stopping me doing a similar install is that fact I plan to move house in the next 5 years.
I am wondering if I got a home battery like a Powerwall 2, would I be able to take that with me when I move?
Yeah, I’ve heard of a few people doing that and I think it’s easy enough to do. Agree, 5 years probably isn’t quite enough to get the full benefit but would potentially increase the house value. Harder to measure that though.
Which calculator did use for your planning? I’m just starting down this road.
I used a number of different tools but primarily the PVGIS calculator and the spreadsheet I show in this video.
Very informative. Do you know if an suppliers like Octopus/Ovo have plans to give an overnight rate to a home (flat) that cannot have an EV charger but will have a home battery?
I’ve not heard anything but it would make sense from a customer perspective. I guess the closest is flux but you would need solar as well.
@@DanEVSolar7 Cheers
Have you thought about how you will power a ASHP in the deep winter adding more panels, even another 15 is only going to give you very marginal gains in the winter, not enough to even power your house let alone heat it. You could use off peak electricity and a battery, but you'd probably need around 20kwh battery exclusively for heating (around £15k for batteries alone). Am I missing something here?
I think you have answered your own question there in some ways. Off-peak tariffs and an extra battery will certainly help and any additional requirements will come from the grid, as it does now with my gas boiler. The magic of a heat pump is in the efficiency... So much more efficient than a gas boiler and whilst I don't expect the bills to be massively reduced, by the time you take into account the extra savings and the standing charges saved, it will all add up. Any winter solar is almost supplementary.
@DanEVSolar7
Thanks mate as long as I'm not missing something here.
My gas use in January (with some simplifications) is 1300kwh, thus say 42kwh/day.
With an ASHP with middling COP, say 3, I would be using 42/3 = 14kwh/ day on space heating and hot water.
I calculated that with;
12 panels I have shortfall of 195kwh/month.
Try 15 panels, shortfall = 180kwh,
Ok try 20 panels, shortfall = 139kwh.
Therefore, the marginal gain per additional panel in the winter is almost nothing, I will be storing off peak energy to use in the day for electrical consumption.
For space heating and hot water it goes without saying that it will be powered by offpeak stored energy.
Therefore, assume offpeak energy tariff is 7p.
In January (1300kwh) at gas unit price of 5p costs me £65. With a COP of 3, an ASHP would do it for 7p x 1300kwh / 3 = £30.
Now let's try one year, assume 10,000kwh usage, gas = £500 + £75 for standing charges, ASHP electricity = £233.
= 84% difference, but in absolute terms it's £342.
Assume cost of £10k for ASHP including £7.5k Govt grant. Then your £2500/ £342(savings) = 7 years for payback at current prices.
Safe to assume gas unit price will increase more than electric price will increase, therefore 7 years likely to decrease.
If you don't cut the gas line off and plan to pay the standing charges for the hob etc. Then payback increases to about 9.5 years.
Hang about, you now need to store an additional 42kwh for space heating alone. Assume a Powerwall 3 or similar at an average of £6000/piece @ 13.5kwh each. 3 x £6000 = £18,000.
£20.5k/ £342 = 59 years! By which time your batteries might give up mate.
I don't think it works mate, honestly, am I missing something here?
Thank you! 👍
Yeah that’s a great summary. I’m going through exactly the same type of calcs myself at the moment. It’s definitely not a slam dunk from a financial point of view. A better solar, winter generation would help massively, but we can’t change the weather and day length. 😆 The only caveat with your calcs is that the COP could be lower than 3 on the worst days in winter. My basic calcs have come out with a similar payback time as yours but I’m thinking through how I could do more accurate winter calcs as this is the key time really. Maybe a new video idea? 💡
@@DanEVSolar7 this topic is screaming out for a new video mate. The conclusions sorted though, even if you have a COP far greater than 3 I.e. 5, your battery will be in a skip before you get your money back mate.
For ASHP to make sense, I think something bigger needs to happen;
1. Gas prices sky rocket (too many OAPs to let that happen)
2. Electricity prices nose dive (in which case what was the point of PV and battery).
3. Battery prices come down considerably, they already have been but they have a very very long way to go. By that time the grant for the ASHP might have dried up so back to square one.
I don't see any other possibility where ASHP becomes attractive mate. It's a dead duck. Dump that idea. Unless you're an ecowarrior with very deep pockets of course! :)
Charging an EV and running a heat pump - it needs a big initial outlay on additional battery & inverter to not dip into peak rate electric.
It makes more sense to charge EV overnight and not use the battery. Any battery capacity will assist a heat pump, so good to have that option as you cannot do that with gas.
Dan, I am curious why you had so few panels on your east facing roof - my system is E/W and put the maximum on each roof (12 on each) and the East facing panels are producing around 50% more than those on the west (some shading late on) ?
Wow that’s a huge difference! I guess I’m kind of the opposite. We have zero shading at the back and potentially a slight bit of early spring and late autumn shading at the front. When I plugged the figures in to the PVGIS calculator there wasn’t much in the E/W generation and space was a bit tighter on the front. Plus most of my usage is evening so more west panels made sense.
east facing may produce more for the same amount of irradiance because the panels are colder first thing in the morning, hence more efficient.
Thanks
Thank you Mark! Really appreciated. 🙏
I've thought about adding an extra GivEnergy battery but EON who did my install want to charge me a fortune, I wonder if getting any cheaper installer to add one would invalidate any EON warranty?
Good question. I guess you would have to check with EON. Surprised they are charging a lot. From my understanding it’s a pretty easy retrofit.
@@DanEVSolar7 exactly yeah, surprised me too when I saw the price was pretty much double the retail cost of the battery
Wow that is a lot!
Im curious if solar is worth it without the battery, especially for people who wfh.
Potentially. It’s all very dependent on your own usage patterns and times. You would need to do some sums to verify it but WFH all day presents a pretty good use case for solar on its own.
Great video
Thank you
Thank you Peter. Glad you enjoyed it!
Home battery solution sounds like an interesting solution. However, where I live I think the possibility to install these will be heavily restricted. Most likely all installations in the house, being garage or other storage, will be banned. It could even be that they need to be installed in a separate building with minimum distances in excess of 8 meters from the main building. The reason is the fire safyey issues. Fire deparments will push the regulations in this direction. They simply do not have the capability to deal with battery fires in a residential house. Insurance companies could also dissaprove any home insurance were batteries are installed in the house.
There’s very little evidence (if any?) to backup what you are saying. Most home batteries use LFP chemistry which are really safe.
I don’t live in the states but at least here in Europe the battery fire hazzard is on the agenda. I live in Finland and we have quite stringent building regulations, so I am expecting that there will be changes in what you are allowed to do or not.
I googled the distribution of home ess battery distribution and it seems Tesla and LG Chem are the biggest in US. Both uses Lithium based technology in their ESS solutions. I am no expert but I think this is similar as the bateeries used in the EV market. I would not park an EV in a garage that is in connection to the living space, nor would I install any other type of other large scale battery in such a space without concidering the fire safety.
There is of course saftey requirments already. I have a separate garage with double plasterboards towards the house as it is closer than 8 meters from the house. My parents house have the garage in connection to the house. The regulations where different 50 years ago so the walls are only chipboard with some additional rockwool insulation.
According to google ESS fire saftey is on the agenda in many countries including the International Association of fire fighters. This is not of course related only to ESS but in general. It is little strange you talk about little or no evidennce of fire sftey issues. There are also companies selling fire saftey solutions for ESS. I wonder why? Anyone are free to do as they like. I think I will not invest in something that might become restricted in the near future even though I think a residential battery storage is an interesting proposition. Not following potential future regulations will only lower the value of my property or have me invest in expensive modifications. I am not either capable of judging when in the life cycle the batteries would start to be a bigger risk. I would not trust any ESS sales guy on his judgment on this.
@@thomasl2974If you would be selling your property and the battery devalued it, then just remove it (and sell it) that would only be a very small job to complete.
The installer will negate the vat reduction on the battery. It would of been better if vat was taken off at purchase.
Is it not better to buying a bigger battery storage system rather than solar??
Potentially yes. Depends on your usage/situation. I’m hoping to come up with a video about this in the next month or so, but the calculations will probably take some thinking about.
Your electricity price seems somewhat high? You have 36p for this year and its currently 27p or thereabouts? And export is now 15p not 20p? (Of course I dont know what tariff you are on)
This was estimations based on prices at the time, when the prices were silly. The export payment depends on the tariff. Octopus Flux were paying 35p per kWh at peak times last year. Outgoing Fixed Export is currently paying 15p per kWh exported, as you say. 20p was again my estimation based on Agile Outgoing prices at the time.
One of my key decisions for solarPV/battery was added value to property (UK est between 4-14% of house value) which covered the investment outlay easily. Rest is all gains on top!
Very valid point. With energy prices the way they are, it must certainly be a selling point and add value. No plans to move for the foreseeable future though. 🙂
You must surely be interested in a heat pump Dan with the size of your solar system? Im hopefully getting mine installed in spring. Octopus were far cheaper than all the other qoutes I had, I only have to cough up £1300 after government grant & theyre replacing 3 radiators & upgrading my house fuse for free.
I definitely am. The quote off octopus would probably be cheaper than installing a new boiler with the grant but I use less than 10,000kwh of gas a year to heat the home and for hot water so gas is cheap for me as it stands. Definitely something I keep coming back to though.
I'm starting to think a battery without solar could be the way to go. Especially now it's going vat free.
Kind of a shock to see electricity costing over £1 a unit in 25 years, but that's inflation for you.
But but but when nuclear comes online electricity will be near free! 😮 😮
It’s definitely another option to consider. I might try and do a video on it but it’s so dependent on each persons own usage.
I agree with the £1 a unit… Seems scary but the prices this year without the cap would not have been far off that. I need to buy a crystal ball. 😂
My pv system will have paid back for itself way before the wide adoption of nuclear energy😁
Because of the variables, it really is impossible to forecast battery ROI.
Using the current figures, a 10kWh battery will take approx twice as long to pay back compared to a 5kWp solar system.
The recent low prices on Octopus tracker have started to put me off the upfront cost of a decent size battery. It's going to take a big spike in electric costs or a big drop in battery costs to get me back on it.
@@tonyfeasby1437 agreed. The forecasts seem to move batteries further away from being beneficial unless you are very canny with selling back to the grid during the saver sessions etc.
Hi Dan, Im looking to switch tariff and if in on octopus Go already, I can only get an 8p per kWh export.
How are you getting the full 15p per Kwh?
Hi. This is on Intelligent Octopus Go rather than Octopus Go, which only qualifies for the 8p per kWh export rate.
the most impressive thing is how you are only using 2500kWh.
Haha thanks. That does not include EV usage, just home consumption but yes a few people have commented on that. LED bulbs throughout, efficient appliances and sensible usage in a modern home. 🙂
@@DanEVSolar7 I have a similar setup, how much would you add for your car? Last year I used 4650 from the grid and 6066 from solar (total 10700) including the car. We only drive local. That is a huge difference between us.
You have proved that you must do the maths before you embark on schemes like this. We installed PV in 2010 (3.7 kWh) and a 10 kWh battery in 2022. Then you slightly change the way you use power and you are quids in. My advice to anyone is to keep an eye on tariffs, PV costs and inverters, chargers and batteries capacities and cost and couple that with your power consumption. My motives are simple - make money and make money. When the rest of the country participates in saving the planet, I might.
Thanks for the comment. Yeah the investment aspect was a big pull for me. Obviously I want to help the planet in any way I can, but not as any cost and when paying out so much you have to at least have some idea what to expect to get back. Agree about the tariffs and hardware costs. A new tariff alone can shift the economics very quickly.
lol highway robbery 😂
What?
You're missing a few costs. It'll take about 12yrs for you to see a return.
Come on then, don’t keep me hanging, what costs am I missing?
newb :)
Q
Thanks