Renovating old farmhouse... what system would you install?

deegs

Hey all, Can I tap into the fabulous boards collective all things solar hive mind :)

Currently renovating an old farm house (everything myself and my wife on youtube "west cork wander") on the derelict grant scheme and that has been my focus. I needed to build a pump house for the well so I built a 24m2 ground mount array for it with a view to adding panels later. Once I get past the derelict house grant I'll consider the solar. almost 100% certain ill diy it. Everything is electric in the house. Electric underfloor, induction range / oven, hybrid outlander we use a little power on etc.

My RECI electrician came out and agreed to let me do the most of the work and he will come later and connect / test wiring in the actual house. He also suggested moving the consumer unit in the house and moving the ESB line input from the house gable to the pump (ground mount array) house. So a lot more infrastructure work.... I'm going to get a digger and run the cables from the house to the pump house for and do all the wiring.

Now, without doing any research on solar systems for the last 3 years, I'm stuck wondering if its best to ;

a) wire house, continue paying esb rates and standing charge for a year or so while I think about the ideal setup, maybe a bit of wind as well as solar?

b) Wire house, continue paying esb rates, maximise my south facing array with 9kw of panels and a 5kw inverter and no batteries. Consider batteries and wind in about a year or so.

c) Wire house, screw esb, go offgrid with 12kw system, (not sure on inverters) and a 15kw diy battery system

Any thoughts or suggestions? what would you do? I'll need to show house is livable for the derelict grant so electricity / wiring needs to be complete by may one way or another.

slave1

Forget about off grid, covered here many times, just won't cut it Nov-Feb. I'd forget about wind also, complicated. On Grid, max your output and export during the 9 good months of the year to offset colder weather usage

slave1

Oh, just subscribed, looking forward to the journey

deegs

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121676238#Comment_121676238

Whilst I do agree here, and I'd top up with generator / keep adding pvs annually till i could get by, the feelgood factor of telling our supply board to f£$k off is pushing me that way ultimately; but right now I agree, it make less sense.

graememk

You could possibly go off grid if your heating wasn't electric. Off grid is hard in the winter.

Getting the electric into the pump house is a good idea, and make it big enough to hold inverters and batteries.

Then take a good supply to the house and it's own consumer unit there.

Are you sure about electric underfloor? Granted it's cheap to put in, but v expensive to run. Vs a heatpump in a well insulated house, with underfloor should easily be reaching a cop of 4-5.

Electric underfloor, 1kWh of electricity, 1kWh of heat, a heatpump is 1kWh of electricity to 4-5kWh of heat.

Air to air could be an option, not as good as Air to water, but would also give you air conditioning!.

One advantage of staying on grid is that you can export excess power.

Another thing you could do to skirt around the limits of the NC6,

Put a grid tied hybrid inverter + Battery system.

Then if you want to install more solar, just use charge controllers to take the PV directly to the battery.

Then once your batteries are big enough you possibly could just get an off grid inverter and connect your house to that.

House is then off grid, export at least enough to cover your standing charge and you still have the grid as a fall back.

deegs

That's a good plan! I think my electric setup will be pricy to run in short term, but fingers crossed it will be a dry maintenance free system eventually. Even if it takes a lot of wind and solar to setup!

Eleusis

You can go off grid but still keep the grid as back up. Off grid inverters have an I put especially for this. Some have multiple inputs so you can have grid and generator back up. Don't micro generate and you won't have any restrictions to solar array and inverter size

In winter when solar doesn't cut it, you can top up batteries and ev on cheap ev rates(5c available now). Yes you would have esb standing charge but you would never pay a cent of electricity higher than cheap ev rate again.

Gradually add enough panels and batteries (now with no solar and inverter restrictions) and you can go fully off grid. Price of both of these are plummeting and if you DIY then it's quite affordable. Solar installers are scalping (word I can't type)

For example I use average of 25kwh per day of electricity in my house during winter months. From what I can tell solar will produce an average 1kwh per day for every 1kw solar during Dec Jan. Some days are worse and some days better but a large battery will means you can catch it all when available so average is important. 25kw array would give you 25kwh per day to play around with.

Edit: I have electric heating in my house and it's a renovated cottage. If done right no reason why you can't have electric heating and be fully of grid.

Eleusis

You really should reconsider electric underfloor heating though if it's not too late. Like graememk pointed out it's very inefficient. Really should be wet underfloor heating with heat pump or even solid fuel boiler. If you are taking floors out do not scrimp on insulation below as you can never upgrade that in the future again without taking them out again.

deegs

Too late as floors laid but I did put down 180mm insulation under screed so hope the electric underfloor helps. Myvids are on YouTube of this. Interesting to think about grid as a backup along with gennie, I'll have to do some quick back of napkin costs on this , thanks!