Solar panels / batteries / cheaper energy at night

Had they let Paul Conway have a crack at being CEO by any chance? Sounds like our recruitment under him

 

All I would say is that he couldn’t have done any worse than the guy that was in charge…

 

A smart meter submits readings every half an hour. Mine shows up to 5 different meter readings for different times of use, although my tariff only has 2 times, 4 hours at night and then the rest.

 

In lots of cases, developments seem to have planning permission based on fulfilling criteria such as exactly that. But it is never nailed down properly, so you see new houses with 2 panels on the roof because the planning permission said they must have solar. 2 panels is about as much use as a central heating system run using farts.

Developers will always do the minimum they can get away with.

 

All new housing estates should be running off ground source heating and be self sufficient for electric via solar panels and battery storage systems. But it would no longer be “affordable housing” I.e. a dump that no one would choose to live in unless they were desperate.

 

There's a tarrif from octopus energy - agile octopus or something - that has different tarrifs every half hour, with the night ones being cheapest and sometimes even negative. You can get battery systems that work this to get the best bang for the buck, read a blog about it a while ago, but can't find it now.

 

Think they’ve paused sign up to it in the current climate, but you’re right, it was a thing. Very much suited to those with battery systems and electric vehicles.

 

How long does it take to charge the batteries up?

 

About 7 hours with average use if i get around 450w from the panels.

 

Depends how many batteries you have and how many solar panels.

 

What about winter hours, would you need to drag from the grid overnight to get a full charge then?

 

I am on a boat in the Med, i have no grid to pull from.

 

Well at least you’ll see plenty of daylight hours then

 

With my normal use and sunrise at about 6am i am pretty much fully charged by 1pm.

 

Definitely good times for you then!!!!!

 

Well, i have no electricity bill, or water bill because i built a desalinator that runs from the solar system. Currently i buy gas for cooking.

I designed and built my system to cater for my requirements with some spare capacity, i will probably add a wind generator at some point. I need a bigger invertor so i can cook all electric and get rid of the gas. That will up my daily charge times.

 

It's been a while since I last looked but it kind of died off as an attractive choice last year because, for reasons I don't fully understand, the rates were no longer good value. Rates were still as high as 10p even in the off peak times when they used to be 1 or 2p, and then hours of peak rates of 35p (when standard tariffs were around 15p). Rates were often high overnight and it went weeks without a negative rate. The market was all to c0ck but it may be sorting itself again now. But I know that, for a good long while, it was significantly inferior to just going with the standard dual rate on Octopus Go.

 

One of the problems is the fact that Govt brings in rather childishly thought out house building targets for Council's in the North, but based on demand in the South. The developer doesn't want to use brownfield sites due to the cost of cleansing them, so Council planning departments are complicit in accepting/encouraging them to have virgin greenfield sites, they will redesignate prime agricultural land as lower grade land to push it through. The Councils in South Yorkshire have all declared there is a climate emergency, but allow developers to build to the lowest current standards without solar or heat pumps and the minimum standards of insulation, all because they have a ridiculous arbitrary target to meet.

 

That makes absolutely no sense.. why use batteries during the day?!! Charging up the storage batteries during the day from solar is zero cost so cheaper than the cheapest low tariff available. A properly sized system with batteries will provide enough power to charge the batteries and run the appliances in the house in daylight hours except in winter with long dark nights and gloomy foggy days, when it will need supplementing in the early hours . Surplus power if/when the batteries are fully charged goes back to teh grid which some contracts pay you for.

Something like 7Kw solar system with 10-13kw battery storage should suffice for most. The idea is free electric during the day via solar , then free electric from the stored batteries at night until they run low then the system switches to mains supply for a brief period (low tariff). The buy back tariff is usually less than you pay per Kwh for incoming supply . Your method of using maind to charge batteries completely defeats the idea of solar + batteries. Ultimately when batteries become cheaper with sufficient storage you could probably become self sufficient. You also need an inverter that can darw from teh battery storage otherwise if the grid disconnect (power cut) then you also lose your PV system functionality).
As we had a wet underfloor system installed during restoration we are able to have a hybrid Air to Air /gas Heat pump hot water/ heating added that works even in sub zero temperatures and only switches to our incredibly expensive LPG gas if/when the batteries are depleted. Careful programming means that we can run the underfloor in daylight as the house is well insulated and underfloor works a bit like a huge storage radiator anyway so it takes a while to heat up but then stays warm for hours. Like I said using low tariff to charge batteries makes no sense that is what the solar panels are for. Solar during daylight, batteries at night, Grid electric when batteries are low (usually when low tariff is operating anyway)

 

Many people either can't afford solar panels or just dont want them on their roofs for a variety of reasons. Charging a battery at the lower rate whilst sleeping to then use during the day instead of paying the higher rates makes a lot of sense to me if the cost of the batteries are not prohibitive.