PV- real world figures

a148pro

Clearly need someone who knows what they're at on site! Thanks

Gumbo

a148pro wrote: »

Clearly need someone who knows what they're at on site! Thanks

You 100% need 6mm Sq cable. That’s what I needed for my 3kw system.
While your at it, run another 6Sq cable to your front garden for electric car charger in future. You’ll thank yourself then.

a148pro

kceire wrote: »

You 100% need 6mm Sq cable. That’s what I needed for my 3kw system.
While your at it, run another 6Sq cable to your front garden for electric car charger in future. You’ll thank yourself then.

I would if I had a driveway. Thats another battle...

a148pro

kceire wrote: »

You 100% need 6mm Sq cable. That’s what I needed for my 3kw system.
While your at it, run another 6Sq cable to your front garden for electric car charger in future. You’ll thank yourself then.

PM sent enquiring after your install KC

Gumbo

Good sunny day today.
Good generation and the surplus has filled my 200L cylinder with hot water.

a148pro

I was climbinng on my roof earlier, to check if the second bit was shaded at this time. It wasn't, and the slates were really warm, even at 11 o'clock in the morning. I had one thought - thermal, though obv PV working well today too.

Gumbo

So today’s update.
5th November.

Bursts of sunny spells. Not enough to generate anything major in one go but it trickle fed the house all day. Enough so that I heated enough hot water for 2 adult showers and still hot water in the tank.

It sent 4kwh throughout the day to the immersion, which normally is enough to heat to max temp but I’d say it was a trifle feed all day rather than a lengthy burst as I’ve filled my tank using 2.5kwh before.

a148pro

I was thinking today, I'm buying applicances and I scoffed at the idea of some of them having wifi. But ideally you would have apps which could anticipate the flow of solar energy and turn on / pause the applicances as sun / shade were anticipated. Pretty minimal gains but would add up.

Good to see you're still getting the benefit KC. Can't imagine there'll be a whole amount of love from here on in though. Any of the graphs I've seen then to be very low Dec and Jan, for obv reasons. Am interested to see though.

Gumbo

I’ll keep monitoring it. I only got access to the data through the app on Friday so I’ve only started using it since then.

rolion

kceire wrote: »

So today’s update.
5th November.

Bursts of sunny spells. Not enough to generate anything major in one go but it trickle fed the house all day. Enough so that I heated enough hot water for 2 adult showers and still hot water in the tank.

It sent 4kwh throughout the day to the immersion, which normally is enough to heat to max temp but I’d say it was a trifle feed all day rather than a lengthy burst as I’ve filled my tank using 2.5kwh before.

Nice one,enjoy it.

But,your dashboard numbers are not making sense...
Total energy generated is 630Kwh but this year AND month you had only 20 !?
And the income !? €113 already ?

Gumbo

rolion wrote: »

Nice one,enjoy it.

But,your dashboard numbers are not making sense...
Total energy generated is 630Kwh but this year AND month you had only 20 !?
And the income !? €113 already ?

I think the dashboard is off as I was registered on a different time to when I sync’d the app or my account to my invertor. The panels are installed about 3 months now but only connected my app last week.

Gumbo

Didn’t get much yesterday as was a cloudy day.
Certainly didn’t hear the full tank of water but it was warm to the touch. Either way I boosted it with the gas.

Today was good. Good generation and I’ve a 200L cylinder of hair water from my surplus.

rolion

kceire wrote: »

Didn’t get much yesterday as was a cloudy day.
Certainly didn’t hear the full tank of water but it was warm to the touch. Either way I boosted it with the gas.

Today was good. Good generation and I’ve a 200L cylinder of hair water from my surplus.

Keith,it looks like you reading the diagram wrong !?

The day displayed in the photo tells me is today's generation report BUT you said that yesterday was a cloudy day...so,if my new usb mouse is right,you can't generate 8KWh on a cloudy day !

And yes,today was a good day,got a bit as well H E R E .

I was like you ,reading it every day...until.

Gumbo

rolion wrote: »

Keith,it looks like you reading the diagram wrong !?

The day displayed in the photo tells me is today's generation report BUT you said that yesterday was a cloudy day...so,if my new usb mouse is right,you can't generate 8KWh on a cloudy day !

And yes,today was a good day,got a bit as well H E R E .

I was like you ,reading it every day...until.

I only generated just about 5kwh yesterday (Monday 6th).
It must have been spread across the whole day as it didn’t fully heat the cylinder.

I only mentioned it as I didn’t post an update yesterday.

Today’s (Tuesday 7th) generation was 8kwh.

TomOnBoard

kceire wrote: »

I only generated just about 5kwh yesterday (Monday 6th).
It must have been spread across the whole day as it didn’t fully heat the cylinder.

I only mentioned it as I didn’t post an update yesterday.

Today’s (Tuesday 7th) generation was 8kwh.

I assume you mean that you did not have enough excess of production over usage to be diverted into the cylinder to heat it fully?? You still had a good few KwHrs of generation that you consumed directly.. Yes/No?

Gumbo

TomOnBoard wrote: »

I assume you mean that you did not have enough excess of production over usage to be diverted into the cylinder to heat it fully?? You still had a good few KwHrs of generation that you consumed directly.. Yes/No?

Yes sorry. Should have made that a bit more clear. I didn’t produce enough excess to heat the cylinder fully on Monday. It did divert 2.5kwh five or take from memory and the test powered the base load in the house I suppose.

That includes the usual kitchen applicant Esther in the background, Alarm
And IP CCTV system.

mrawkward

I have a a Mitsubishi Ecodan 8.5KW Air Source Heat Pump system with an Ecodan_EHPT20X-VM2HB_Monobloc_Cylinder and low temperature radiators and am thinking of adding a 3Kw PV . Bungalow BER B2 with 30deg pitch totally unshaded due south facing South Dublin. Total energy spend reduced from €4k pa to €1.3K pa. since installation 18 months ago. Opinions/advice? Cheers Peter

noel100

I was looking at Samsung air source heat pump system last year upgrade water cylinder cost 26k but I had to change existing radiators to aluminum low temperature rads and asked about adding PV they hadn't a clue. So didn't change the system. I thought what they were offering was to expensive.

But that sounds great 1.3k Electricity bill in total.
Is all the Electricity produced used and also that is inclusive of your household usage.

Would you not add another KW and a battery to bring down the bill. Would be great to come of the grid.

mrawkward

noel100 wrote: »

I was looking at Samsung air source heat pump system last year upgrade water cylinder cost 26k but I had to change existing radiators to aluminum low temperature rads and asked about adding PV they hadn't a clue. So didn't change the system. I thought what they were offering was to expensive.

But that sounds great 1.3k Electricity bill in total.
Is all the Electricity produced used and also that is inclusive of your household usage.

Would you not add another KW and a battery to bring down the bill. Would be great to come of the grid.

I have no PV yet!! So looking to get that €1.3K down more!! and yes that is everything in the house included. I have no other form of heating.

mrawkward

My pump, wireless controller and hot-water cyl including magnetic trap cost 7.5K + VAT + basic plumbing/wiring. I used std steel rads, my installer said alu rads are a con!!

freddyuk

Sir Liamalot wrote: »

Yeah I think they are. It's just an image I pulled from tinternet for intents and purposes I was hoping to demonstrate the difference in hardware mass for one school compared to thuther. Wouldn't know a whole lot about those cells Freddy I'm still getting great results from FLA, I've had no good reason to try an alternative.

I am just about to secure some of the old stock for a price that is too good to miss. I know about Aquion and have been impressed with their performance on the sites I am monitoring for over 2 years. No apparent degradation.
They do need a bit more space than Lithium but they will not impact the environment either physically or politically and will not be hazardous in the home environment.
The company is back in business but will struggle to overcome market reluctance to take another risk. I understand the technology has been improved and the price should be more competitive with Lithium than it was before Chapter 11. That was their downfall.
I do wonder with Lithium what happens to the expired cells as they will be classed as hazardous waste so there will be a charge to dispose of them.

Lithium is too difficult and dangerous to recycle.
Reuse then dispose. It's not viable recycle and even then the returned reusable material is minimal.
Plus they swell and become extra volatile at end of life. I'd be afraid they'd light the truck that's transporting them.

mrawkward

There are a number of products that are described as Lithium batteries http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/types_of_lithium_ion. Nissan/Renault use end of life EV packs to build DC storage banks.

Gumbo

Sorry haven’t updated my daily generation in a while.
My WiFi router was acting up so only got it connected back up to the invertor last week.

Twice in the last week I’ve had my 200L cylinder heated from the panels while I was at work. Today I generated 5.53kwh with 3.5 of those going to my immersion. The remaining kept the house alive and exported balance to the grid.

Good for December but not everyday is like that currently with the rain, clouds etc

TomOnBoard

My buddy Has just installed 3Kw of panels that are feeding a 2.5Kw inverter.

The inverter gives some very useful information. However, at any time, he doesn't know how much of his production is being consumed and how much is going back to the grid.

His meter was changed out by ESB networks from the old dial type to a digital type that is suitable for a domestic PV installation. However, the meter that records the number of units going back to the gird is only available at a cost of a few hundred Euro (even though they get the units for free).

We know that some folks use a special immersion controller that pushes any excess of PV production over usage into heating the hot water cylinder, and records the info we are looking for.

Is there any reasonably inexpensive monitoring device that would sit the house side of the meter before the fuse-board that would sense the direction of power at any point in time and record/display it so that decisions could be made to switch stuff on/off? Perhaps such a device could link in with a smartplug or other device controller. Maybe that is exactly what the immersion controller does- we don't know enough to figure that out.

Any pointers appreciated..

Gumbo

TomOnBoard wrote: »

My buddy Has just installed 3Kw of panels that are feeding a 2.5Kw inverter.

The inverter gives some very useful information. However, at any time, he doesn't know how much of his production is being consumed and how much is going back to the grid.

His meter was changed out by ESB networks from the old dial type to a digital type that is suitable for a domestic PV installation. However, the meter that records the number of units going back to the gird is only available at a cost of a few hundred Euro (even though they get the units for free).

We know that some folks use a special immersion controller that pushes any excess of PV production over usage into heating the hot water cylinder, and records the info we are looking for.

Is there any reasonably inexpensive monitoring device that would sit the house side of the meter before the fuse-board that would sense the direction of power at any point in time and record/display it so that decisions could be made to switch stuff on/off? Perhaps such a device could link in with a smartplug or other device controller. Maybe that is exactly what the immersion controller does- we don't know enough to figure that out.

Any pointers appreciated..

Has he got an immersion divertor fitted?
I use the eddi unit. It tells me in real time what I’m generating, what I’m using, what’s been diverted to the immersion and also what is been sent back to the grid.

TomOnBoard

kceire wrote: »

Has he got an immersion divertor fitted?.

No diverted fitted. He has a solar panel heating water from a previous project and the supplies all his domestic hot water.

Gumbo

TomOnBoard wrote: »

No diverted fitted. He has a solar panel heating water from a previous project and the supplies all his domestic hot water.

His best option is to save towards battery storage. IMO.

TomOnBoard

kceire wrote: »

His best option is to save towards battery storage. IMO.

He's only trying to find out how much of his production is going back to the grid at any time so that he can maximise his usage.

Battery storage is not even on the agenda and won't be for years as the current installation has blown budgets for a few years to come.

air

If he's into technology / DIY get an open energy monitor, otherwise something like an Owl Intuition PV will give him the info he's looking for.