Question about solar connection to meter cabinet

kilgore209

Hi,

I am currently looking to get Solar PV for my house.

No battery but with the option to supply back to the grid.

I am waiting on some quotes back but have a question.

The invertor would be installed in the attic. I have my attic converted so the issue of running cable from the invertor to my fuse board has arisen.

I do not want trunking and wire inside my house so have asked can they run the cable outside

All three suppliers say they can run the cable down to the side of the house but 2 of the suppliers said they wanted to connect the wires from the invertor into my fuse box in my hall which is problematic because we have a side room on the house. I also have a porch and they are having difficulty finding a way to get to the fuse box in the hall.

One of the suppliers says he can connect the invertor by means of a fuse box located beside the outside esb cabinet. Which means he does not need to go near the fuse box in the hall.

Can anyone advise if the second solution IE connect to the main cabinet outside is a viable option. This would mean a waterproof box located next to the esb cabinet. Apparently you are not allowed install them inside the cabinet now.

Any advice welcome

graememk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058351486/question-about-solar-connection-to-meter-cabinet

You were never allowed to install in the meter cabinet, thats ESBN space.

Second option is allowed, as the outdoor CU then becomes your main one, and then the house one is a sub board from it as I understand.

Proper way is to go back to your main consumer unit.

allinthehead

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122132782#Comment_122132782

My understanding is that the option to fit a board by the Meter cabinet is for retro fitting an Ev chargepoint only and should not be used for any other purpose. There must also be an Esbn isolator installed in the meter cabinet to facilitate the new board.

NedNew2

I had a similar problem with my installation and did not want ugly cables running down the front of the house from the consumer unit, around to the side and then up the back wall to the inverter. The solution I took - which may well not be applicable for you - was to dig a trench around the house and bury the cables.

Costly (c. €700) but very neat and very effective. Now that it's done I don't regret it.

prosaic

Going back to internal CU is madness in our case. The CU is as nearly as far away from the car charger as you could get, about 8 or 10 m in a direct diagonal line. You'd have some serious routing issues to get to it. It was installed in ESBN cabinet with breaker switch. Very straight forward. The ESBN people installing the smart meter later were quite content with it.

graememk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122142159#Comment_122142159

Smart meters were installed by a contractor. If I was that contractor I'd not open that can of worms 😂

Add to that it was sorta allowed for a while but then not, then clarified. It is a whole mess.

@allinthehead with EV chargepoints from the meter box now, are the tails split (with Henley blocks?) and one goes to the cu and the other goes to the outdoor cu?

If that outdoor CU became the "main" CU, and the old one in the house became a sub board, would it then be allowed to put solar into it?

allinthehead

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122142279#Comment_122142279

You're not supposed to split with a Henley block. There must be an Esb isolator in place before proceeding. You remove the house feed from the isolator and that is supposed to be fed from the new outside board. New tails then from the new board to the Esb isolator.

You're correct, the outside board now is the main board and you're in theory free to connect anything you want to it. It's all a ball of shite imo, it's either safe or it isn't, this last resort bs needs to be thrown out.