Solar panels

[hayfield]

9 hours ago, sjp23480 said:

John,

 

I am similar, December (49kwh), followed by November (69kwh) and January (77kwh) - mines a 3 kwp system.

 

in the 10+ months since installation (September), it has generated 1855kwh.  

 

With a couple of good months still to come, I am hoping to be on target to save £700 since installation, based on the new import costs and a paltry £0.04/kwh feed in tariff. 

 

This will be a 10% return on investment.

 

 

 

This all reminds me on what we used to say about investments years ago "past performance is a guide to what the returns may be, but not a guarantee.

 

We are into our 23rd month so have limited amount of data, but the patterns are forming. For us we are seeing a boom in export income as we are receiving 15p per kwh, I am expecting and for one reason (decreasing import costs) hoping this is a blimp. On the other hand its about time energy firms paid an appropriate fees for exports on to the grid.

 

Certainly since Octopus started paying 15p per kwh and the cost of importing has increased the value of using your own power has really upped the benefits of having a Solar system, the benefits have increased further as exports have remained the same and import charges have reduced. This month the weather has not been so kind, but the longer days are still benefitting us and on very hot days performance falls away

 

Gas has been the greatest benefit, not only are we using very little at the moment, prices have fallen by 25%, some days the cost of gas used is les than the standing charges.

Still these summer months do allow us to build up reserves to subsidize winters very high costs 

[sjp23480]

John,

 

My DDI will go down about £50 per month from August, but we still built up a reasonable cushion for the winter.

 

Looking back, the other benefit was that my DDI did not increase when the cap went up in January, so we were very lucky - unlike many.

 

Steve

[hayfield]

10 hours ago, sjp23480 said:

John,

 

My DDI will go down about £50 per month from August, but we still built up a reasonable cushion for the winter.

 

Looking back, the other benefit was that my DDI did not increase when the cap went up in January, so we were very lucky - unlike many.

 

Steve

 

To a certain degree my DDI not going up for 3 to 4 years is down to us investing in Solar Panels. looking back to Dec 2020 my electric bill was £66.10. Last December what I had to buy cost £92.16 plus I used 16kwh of my own generation ( £5.60).  But the main drivers of the massive energy rises is both the amount of gas/energy we use to heat our properties and the level its price rose

 

The solar panels are coming into their own in the Summer, by bill for June just a few £'s (less than the monthly standing charge) the cost if I had to pay for electricity would be in the region of £110 and we paid £4 appx

 

I was not asked to increase my DD!, I thought it was wise to do so, but I am projecting a positive balance in the region of £600 by November even after reducing my DD! nearly back to what it was, this will be a bit less than last year but costs this coming year are predicted to be much lower. Had we not bought our solar panels I would certainly be paying over £50 pm extra if not more

 

I guess we should see ourselves lucky, firstly that we have a property which can take advantage of them and have the ability to buy them. Though given their effectiveness they would still be cost effective if you had to buy them on a home owners loan (mortgage rates)

[hayfield]

10 days into July and its been a lot less productive than June

 

My total usage of electricity ha been 67.7 kwh. Value £20.80 

 

Production ha been 97 kwh

 

The net cost before standing charges £1.58 

 

Still very worthwhile, and one I could not have hoped for when ordering the system, which was projecting a benefit of £204.59 a year!!!

[hayfield]

Last weekend saw the end of the 26th week this year, to remind new readers I bought a budget 2.59 kw system 22 months ago which cost me £2688

 

Well the total benefit (power used and exported) from my system for the first 6 months this year was £200.98, in the past the 2nd half generates slightly less and of course unit costs have decreased

 

My projection just over 2 years ago was for a total benefit in the 1st year of £204 (for the year!!!), even the first 5 year average taking inflation into consideration was £223 pa.  Certainly the high energy prices have been a main contributor, but when we look at kwh produced actual production is about 5% above expectations, after 5 years performance is expected to drop by 4%

[Mike 84C]

Some months ago I asked questions about solar panels and thanks to all the advice on this thread we took the plunge. 

At this moment we could not be happier, ours is not a budget system but a 4.547 kw with a 3600w battery. Since the system was installed 5 weeks ago we seem to have imported 2 kw of power. What we have exported I'm not sure as our display is all in German! and I'm not up to speed with it yet.

   Any suggestions as to which Octopus tariff would work best for us? We are with Scottish power who have been excellent but only pay 12p on their feed in tariff. I'm retired my wife works from home, we have gas c/h and a small solid fuel Morso squirrel stove in the front room (parlour).

   Mick

[sjp23480]

Mick,

 

Welcome to the solar club.

 

I am not sure about the specific Octopus tariff - I suspect John knows.

 

Apparently, the best export tariff is with E.on Next, who offer 16.5p /kwh.  

 

Although we suspect all of the export tariffs will be dialed down following the reduction in the price cap.

 

Steve

[Phil Himsworth]

If on average you export more than you import then I think Octopus Flux has to be the best; export at peak time (4-7pm) is ~30p/kWh which I think is miles ahead of anything else current. If you're able to charge your battery on PV or overnight cheap rate electricity then discharge some of it at peak time, or have a west facing array that gives its best output later in the day, you can be quids in. It's been excellent for us recently.

 

The night rate isn't as cheap as other overnight tariffs, so while Flux is great now we'll be changing to something like Octopus Go in late autumn when we stop exporting and start using more.

[hayfield]

10 hours ago, Phil Himsworth said:

If on average you export more than you import then I think Octopus Flux has to be the best; export at peak time (4-7pm) is ~30p/kWh which I think is miles ahead of anything else current. If you're able to charge your battery on PV or overnight cheap rate electricity then discharge some of it at peak time, or have a west facing array that gives its best output later in the day, you can be quids in. It's been excellent for us recently.

 

The night rate isn't as cheap as other overnight tariffs, so while Flux is great now we'll be changing to something like Octopus Go in late autumn when we stop exporting and start using more.

 

 

I am not really up with all the tariffs have tried to look at the details about E.on but could find no details

 

I have a basic Octopus account so qualify for 15p per kwh on exports. If you have one of Octopus deals (fixed etc) then the export rate is 7.5p per kwh

 

I have found Octopus more than just being a honest company, but also a customer focused one. Both times the export rates were increased it was from the next day (not 2 months in advance) also they seem to be just under the cap, but regions do vary

 

In the past I have been too lazy to move, even when I thought I may have been overcharged, but then energy was cheap and had no need to export.

 

An extra 1.5p per kwh would be nice on exports, but it depends on other things as well.

 

I do think there is a bit of an unofficial cartel going on with energy companies. Energy price caps should be the maximum price not the norm, there should be more competition for our business on both import and export prices. But there is some movement on export income with E.on breaking ranks with the other big players on exports. As energy prices drop perhaps more competition will start.

 

As explained everybody has different circumstances and objectives. Mine simply is to get the most from a budget system. It looks like my real benefit will be in the region of just under a £400 saving for the year. My last payment period the value of the electricity was £80  my payment was about £2, certainly this month will be higher as the weather is worse, but my saving I recon will be £50 to £60 which is still very good and similar to May.

 

Lets hope the competition for customers heats up

[faulcon1]

In Australia with it's high amount of sunlight solar has taken off in a huge way which is what the government intended. To start with they were paying 45c per kwh but it's now dropped to 11c per kwh. More people are now retrofitting banks of batteries to power their homes with some taking little power or giving very little to the main power grid at all. Being a hot country in summer we have wide spread use of air conditioners but many people have been insulating their homes and not just the roof space but wall spaces too. Unlike the UK where with your steeply pitched roofs you can have another room area within the roof space via loft conversions, we don't have that luxury as many of our loft areas one is bent double in highest part of the loft so loft conversions are a waste of time and money. My house is fully insulated roof space, exterior walls and under the floor as my house is built on piers about 18" off the ground. My next door neighbours only rent the house and the landlord is not interested in putting in insulation so on very hot summer days they have their air conditioner running 24hrs otherwise they boil and I have mine running for a maximum of 6 hrs or less. I also have whirly ventilators on parts of the roof to allow hot trapped air to escape from the roof space. My last electricity bill for three months was in UK pounds 95 pounds. Our media likes to make great play of people not being able to afford electricity bills, but I put in 50 pounds each month into my electricity, water, gas and phone accounts. So that's 200 pounds into those accounts and when the bills arrive they all show a similar message "you're in credit no payment required". Therefore when they increase the charges there's no bill shock. 200 hundred pounds is not a lot of money these days and over three months that's 600 pounds allocated to utility accounts.                

Edited July 16, 2023 by faulcon1

[hayfield]

 

 

What an awful day Thursday was and perhaps at 2.9 kwh total generated for the day must have been the worst day for several months, still given my projection 3 years ago suggested an average benefit of 56p per day, my benefit was still 77p. Yesterday was back to normal with a £2.42 saving for the day and the best day in the past 19 days. As it was St Swithens day yesterday another 40 days like yesterday would be very nice, just need a little less wind.

 

Due to both the weather and jam making (allotment soft fruit comes all at once) I have had a relatively expensive week at a net £2 for net imports. But then as decent jam is expensive its a bargain. Also trying to make gooseberry flavoured Gin, but its the gin that makes up the cost.

 

 

[Phil Himsworth]

On 15/07/2023 at 08:34, hayfield said:

I have a basic Octopus account so qualify for 15p per kwh on exports. If you have one of Octopus deals (fixed etc) then the export rate is 7.5p per kwh

There are two main reasons I like how Octopus do things; one is the variety of their tariffs so there is more scope to find one that matches your energy consumption and production if you've got PV; the other is the dashboards on their website that gives you a lot more visibility of what you're using and how much is costing you.

 

We have a fairly large array so export quite a lot, so Flux is great for us, over summer at least; come winter low solar output, charging the car and running off the house battery means one of their off peak tariffs will do the trick. Nobody else offers options like this.

 

If your usage is more balanced I think the combination of a standard import tariff and the 15p export like you've got is the best combination.

 

Before we moved to Flux our export was briefly with British Gas; their rates were slightly higher than the standard Octopus export rate (6.5p vs 4.1p) but the extra bit wasn't worth it, they were dreadful; no online account at all, billing by cheque every three months... with Octopus I can see how much we used or exported and check things are working the day after, never mind three months later!

 

Our solar generation on Thursday was dreadful, the worst day we've had since early April, well under the next lowest day recently! It is like someone flicked a switch mid June; it was wall to wall sunshine for weeks before then, but patchy at best since...

[hayfield]

12 hours ago, Phil Himsworth said:

There are two main reasons I like how Octopus do things; one is the variety of their tariffs so there is more scope to find one that matches your energy consumption and production if you've got PV; the other is the dashboards on their website that gives you a lot more visibility of what you're using and how much is costing you.

 

We have a fairly large array so export quite a lot, so Flux is great for us, over summer at least; come winter low solar output, charging the car and running off the house battery means one of their off peak tariffs will do the trick. Nobody else offers options like this.

 

If your usage is more balanced I think the combination of a standard import tariff and the 15p export like you've got is the best combination.

 

Before we moved to Flux our export was briefly with British Gas; their rates were slightly higher than the standard Octopus export rate (6.5p vs 4.1p) but the extra bit wasn't worth it, they were dreadful; no online account at all, billing by cheque every three months... with Octopus I can see how much we used or exported and check things are working the day after, never mind three months later!

 

Our solar generation on Thursday was dreadful, the worst day we've had since early April, well under the next lowest day recently! It is like someone flicked a switch mid June; it was wall to wall sunshine for weeks before then, but patchy at best since...

 

As you say using the Octopus data the following day and the real time data from our inverter supplier allows me to see what's happening

 

Yesterday for instance was one of the best days of using our own generated power due to the sun shining and using power for the oven, dishwasher, washing machine and boiling water for sterilising (jam making) jam jars, using our own power which would have cost us £1.87 if imported, and still exporting 65p worth to the grid

 

June's wall to wall sunshine does give a bit of a false impression of a summer norm, but our gardens were in dire need of some rain.

 

Last week we used power to the value of £15.10 at a net cost of £2.30.  £1.60 of that was down to Friday being so bad, the other 6 days costing 70p

 

I still cannot balance the cost of batteries being worth the investment, an electric car might be a better use of our savings as we do few miles and the car is at home during the day 

[Ian Morgan]

I am switching to Octopus, but found it confusing getting the best plan. Initially the website only offered Octopus Go and Intelligent Octopus. A friend advised I should go with Agile Octopus, but you have to connect to a 'standard' plan first. Then, on actually signing up, I ended up with Flexible Octopus, which was the first time I had heard of it. Hope I can move to Agile Octopus soon.

 

Confused.

 

[Phil Himsworth]

"Flexible" is Octopus' standard rate. I think quite often you have to switch to or from other tariffs via the Flexible tariff, possibly so they have the time to make sure the smart meter is working properly.

 

"Intelligent" is a smart tariff for EVs where Octopus can control when your car charges. If you have a compatible EV or charger it is generally the best bet; the off-peak rate is cheaper and with more hours than Go, which is their other EV tariff where Octopus don't control your car charging.

 

"Agile" needs you to know what you're doing. The price changes every half hour depending on the wholesale price of electricity at the time; daily prices are generally known late afternoon the day before. It can be great; over the weekend the price went negative at times so people on Agile were being paid not insignificant amounts to use electricity. On the flip side though, if the wind is low and electricity is expensive it can be very expensive. It probably only makes sense if you're willing to keep an eye on the price and are able to move large loads like EV charging, appliance running or even dinner cooking to different times of day or even different days. To be honest I wouldn't recommend it; it sounds like a pretty full time job keeping on top of it for extremely marginal gain. You would need a lot of negative prices on a Sunday to make up for all the much more common high peak time prices.

 

A good website for comparing Agile is https://agileprices.co.uk/. You can see a lot of slots lower than the standard rate, but there are also an awful lot over it.

 

[Phil Himsworth]

3 hours ago, hayfield said:

I still cannot balance the cost of batteries being worth the investment, an electric car might be a better use of our savings as we do few miles and the car is at home during the day 

We got our PV and battery at once so it's very difficult to separate the benefit from both. The PV generates the power but the battery allows us to use much more of it, either overnight or on dull days when we can still run large loads like the washer from a smaller amount of PV without importing. The battery is also a lot more useful over winter when the PV does very little but the battery means we can largely run on much cheaper off-peak electricity. At last winter's prices that's £1.85 of savings each day if we fully discharge the battery, which we did on a lot of days.

 

Would the system pay for itself faster if we didn't have the battery? I've no idea. I could probably come up with some plausible looking maths that would justify the cost of the battery, but whether it would be based mainly on reality or optimism I don't know.

 

Mainly though I love being self sufficient with zero carbon power for a lot of the year, and able to run on low carbon power for a lot of the rest.

 

The entertainment value of it all must have some value; I love looking at all the data it generates about what it's doing. It's a good job phone screens don't suffer from burn-in like old CRTs or the dashboard of the monitoring app would be visible even when the phone is off :-)

[hayfield]

2 hours ago, Phil Himsworth said:

We got our PV and battery at once so it's very difficult to separate the benefit from both. The PV generates the power but the battery allows us to use much more of it, either overnight or on dull days when we can still run large loads like the washer from a smaller amount of PV without importing. The battery is also a lot more useful over winter when the PV does very little but the battery means we can largely run on much cheaper off-peak electricity. At last winter's prices that's £1.85 of savings each day if we fully discharge the battery, which we did on a lot of days.

 

Would the system pay for itself faster if we didn't have the battery? I've no idea. I could probably come up with some plausible looking maths that would justify the cost of the battery, but whether it would be based mainly on reality or optimism I don't know.

 

Mainly though I love being self sufficient with zero carbon power for a lot of the year, and able to run on low carbon power for a lot of the rest.

 

The entertainment value of it all must have some value; I love looking at all the data it generates about what it's doing. It's a good job phone screens don't suffer from burn-in like old CRTs or the dashboard of the monitoring app would be visible even when the phone is off :-)

 

I explored the cost of using batteries again this year when the next round of Solar Together was operating in Essex

 

The cost of batteries had reduced, though there seemed little or no discounts available and on the face of it seemed it could be of a benefit until the loss of exported income was taken into account. As for being self sufficient  firstly the costs increased greatly, in the winter my system generates too little power to recharge the batteries and in the summer the batteries would be too small to hold all the surplus power generated

 

In my situation where I am looking for the most benefit per £ spent batteries are an expensive luxury  

[black and decker boy]

I’m on Intelligent Octopus so my battery works from both sources. In summer, it charges during the day from solar

 

in winter (or current summer), it will recharge overnight on my cheap tariff.

 

I’ll not need any peak rate import year round.

[Derekl]

I have a new system (installed 15/06/3023) with 2.5kW panels and a 4.5 kW battery. I have noticed, if the monitoring is correct, that the panels can generate a little more than 2.5 kW.  Mostly, much less. The battery runs down to about 75% overnight and recharges in a few hours in the morning. That "run-down" includes cooking which is usually later than any significant charge. My hob and oven are electric, so there is some evening use. I have taken to using washing machine and dishwasher latish morning or afternoon when the solar is generating, although I am not sure whether it has any effect one way or the other - if charged, the battery "pays" for it.

For some reason the system imports small amounts of grid electricity - I am not sure why, so while the solar generation and battery seem to cover my use, the imports amount to about 0.5 kWh per day. It is exporting quite generously, but I am not getting any advantage (yet) as the system is not registered. That should be sorted in the next week or so.

So, in summer, and with the battery, it seems to cover use. I will have to see what happens in winter.

 

[ejstubbs]

20 hours ago, black and decker boy said:

I’m on Intelligent Octopus so my battery works from both sources. In summer, it charges during the day from solar

 

in winter (or current summer), it will recharge overnight on my cheap tariff.

 

I thought Intelligent Octopus was for EV owners - specifically, those with "smart" EV chargers which can talk to Octopus to charge at the best rate.  From what I've read on their web site (not the clearest information source on the web, I will admit - and the horrible neon-on-black colour scheme doesn't help, either), it doesn't seem to be aimed at installations with just a storage battery and no EV.

 

Style over substance seems to be a common problem with a lot of renewable energy web sites: energy suppliers, equipment manufacturers and system installers.  Too many of them seem to think that to engage with customers you have to appear to be funky and with-it and not bother them with too much detail.  My entire working life was spent in a technical industry, on both the customer and the sales sides.  As a result, when looking to buy stuff I expect to be able to get hold of is detailed specs and clear explanations of how new technologies work.  If we need a new household appliance, I'm the one who downloads and reads user manuals as part of the decision-making process.  Any assumption that you can just trust the sales person and their spiel is an immediate turn-off for me (and that's based in good part on my own experience in sales organisations!)

 

Aaanyway...our PV and battery system is due to be installed next week.  I think I'm going to start off on Outgoing Octopus - their basic 15p/kWh export tariff which just plugs in alongside the Flexible Octopus tariff we're currently on - while we get a feel for how the two components function, both individually and as a system.  Once I've got an adequate handle on how to drive the thing I'll start looking at switching to one of their "smarter" tariffs like Octopus Flux.

 

It turns out that, purely by luck, we've been fortunate with the timing of our application for the interest-free loan from Home Energy Scotland.  I sent in the application in mid-May and it was all confirmed in the first week of June.  What I was unaware of at the time (and I don't think an awful lot of notice of the change was actually given) was that from 27th June any application for a loan for PV or PV+battery would only be approved if it was part of a package together with a heat pump or high heat retention storage heaters.  We're in no position to consider installing either of those technologies just yet so it turned out I'd got the paperwork through pretty much just in time.  I do wonder how many properties in Scotland actually are suitable for those technologies - at least without a significant amount of additional energy efficiency work up front, which will take time to get done.  Of course we should all be aiming to get closer and closer to being carbon-zero but, given the practical issues with old housing stock vs new heating technologies, I wouldn't be surprised if the take-up rate on loans for PV and batteries didn't drop off significantly for a while.

 

As far as heat pumps are concerned, I'm keeping half an eye on developments in the high flow temperature systems which are apparently starting to become available, and which seem to promise to be a more straightforward replacement for 'legacy' boiler-and-radiators heating systems.

[Hobby]

I have just completed the order for our solar panels, eight of them for just over £5k. I'm giving the batteries a miss for the time being.

[hayfield]

1 hour ago, Hobby said:

I have just completed the order for our solar panels, eight of them for just over £5k. I'm giving the batteries a miss for the time being.

 

 

Wow I think I got in at the right time, at these prices I doubt if given our circumstances (panels on a single story extension roof , slight shading during the winter months and a shallow roof pitch (is this a problem or benefit?)  ) anyway I might have had second thoughts as when we ordered import fees were 16p per kwh and export fees 3p per kwh

 

On a different topic, current law states the network must accept and pay for a maximum of 3kw without prior agreement to raise the amount they are willing to accept and pay for, two thoughts come to mind, firstly those with larger systems are the network enforcing this or paying for whatever is exported ?

 

Secondly at some point if installations continue to increase will the network be flooded with power at times when its very sunny ? And I guess would an increasing amount of domestic supply reduce the cost of electricity for others ?

[Neal Ball]

2 minutes ago, hayfield said:

 

 

Wow ......

 

Secondly at some point if installations continue to increase will the network be flooded with power at times when its very sunny ? And I guess would an increasing amount of domestic supply reduce the cost of electricity for others ?

 

Hi John,

 

I understand from a friend in Birmingham, that there are proposals to convert fields into "Battery installations" to store the solar energy created during the sunshine hours

 

Maybe this is the next generation of fields with solar panels - and battery packs underneath.

 

Whilst the nimbies might not like like.... (I am sure they could be underground), it must be the way forward - there's no point throwing all that electric into the grid if its not needed.

[black and decker boy]

45 minutes ago, Neal Ball said:

 

Hi John,

 

I understand from a friend in Birmingham, that there are proposals to convert fields into "Battery installations" to store the solar energy created during the sunshine hours

 

Maybe this is the next generation of fields with solar panels - and battery packs underneath.

 

Whilst the nimbies might not like like.... (I am sure they could be underground), it must be the way forward - there's no point throwing all that electric into the grid if its not needed.

A local farmer built a solar farm 4 or 5 years ago. They are currently adding a huge battery storage facility to the same fields.

 

an adjacent landowner is getting on the act too with another new storage facility just starting on site. Both are near a recently upgraded national grid substation 

 

 

local opposition was quite fierce for the solar farm, we prefer that to a wind farm, gas power station or nuclear plant and it really doesn’t not impinge on the beauty of the area one bit. It’s silent and emission free.

[black and decker boy]

3 hours ago, ejstubbs said:

 

I thought Intelligent Octopus was for EV owners - specifically, those with "smart" EV chargers which can talk to Octopus to charge at the best rate.  From what I've read on their web site (not the clearest information source on the web, I will admit - and the horrible neon-on-black colour scheme doesn't help, either), it doesn't seem to be aimed at installations with just a storage battery and no EV.

 

I have an EV.

 

it’s a side bonus that I can top up my battery overnight at 7.5p/KWh.

 

the downside is I cannot access Octopus Flex / Outgoing Agile etc and can only use their SEG tariff at 4.1p/KWh exported.

 

nonetheless, my business case is made on not using any peak power year round.