Solis users, quick question
Am I right in thinking that to prevent discharge on night rate, I just need to set a timed charge overnight? But at 1a so it isn't really charging at any notable rate, but it will prevent discharge?
Yeah ultimately removing the T90 is the "right" solution.
The tank is not bad insulated. 2 lagging jackets - wish it had integrated insulation, that hard plastic shell stuff (dunno what it's called) - but it holds the heat decently enough all the same. Removing the T90 though would involve tiling, waterproofing and closing off the pipes - which I'm not adverse in doing, but it's like path of least resistance at the moment. Everything on the shower side is plumbed already, just will hold off until doing a bathroom refit - so slotting in a 1.5 bar pump should see that whole problem solved.
Depends on the shower you get, some are designed with low pressure in mind and can go as low as 0.1 bar I think.
It does restrict flow but there is options there for you if you don't want to fit a pump.
If you have a well insulated tank I wouldn't worry about the extra water being heated as it will get used. The temp drop on good tanks is lower than 0.5 degrees an hour. I have a gas boiler and a factory insulated tank and I just heat the water once in the morning and once in the wvening - yes we have people who love to take long showers.
Thanks for the link garo - I'll open a thread there.
As an FYI - I did consider ditching the T90, but then there's the problem of what to do on a cloudy day in the middle of winter where the eddi isn't getting any juice or enough juice to make a hot water shower from the immersion viable. For those days the T90 would be heating only the water that I'm actually using... and would be in effect a little more efficient than heating water than I'm not using via gas or grid sourced electricity. So my thinking was since it's not actually causing any harm (other than looking a little weird having two outlets in the shower) and removing it would leave a gap and more work for me to "fix" I'd leave it as is, but install a pump to improve the pressure for the immersion.
Again, thanks for the link.
With an electric shower the water pressure also depends on how fast the shower can heat the water. Electric showers basically suck. If you are getting a pump might as well get a proper pumped shower and ditch the T90. And yes Plumbing is the right forum. Here's the master thread: https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2057860985/recommend-alternative-to-triton-t90sr-and-mira-qt-elite-showers/p1
This maybe perhaps better suited in the plumbing forums, but since many here would have followed the same path with eddi installs, I suspect the knowledge is here?
I'm currently using the reliable Triton T90 which I'm sure many have here. I've also got a "shower mixer" outlet in the shower (unused currently) plumbed from the immersion tank. Problem is that the drop of 1-2m of water from the attic tank down to the shower head, that equates to only 1/5th of a bar of pressure, so am thinking I'll need a 1.5/2.0 bar boost pump. Anyone got any pointers, approx cost for install, and if they could PM a reputable installer that would be very helpful. Just need the hot press work done. Everything on the shower side is already there from previous owners. Many thanks.
I have just changed out the old 140l 25mm insulated cylinder for a 206l 50mm cylinder for the very reason that PV is going in and thankfully no leaks 😀
pretty much ties in with what I found on Google then... 162L capacity. Dont know why I had 120L in my head!!
Yup - 200L would be about right with those numbers. In reality, probably slightly less as there'd be I guess an inch of insulation (?) on the outside, so your actual "usable space" inside the tank would be 16" inches. Be about 160L of water.
The installer has come back anyway and said they are sending out engineer. They have been good previously so I expect they have checked online and seen an issue.
No LCD display, these are the two main boxes.
yeah, thats the new tank I had installed.
far too early in the morning to be doing maths... but roughly 200L from a 48x18"" cylinder?
LOL !
Pi x R^2 x h = ?
Is that a picture of it ?
Because thats at least 220L in the pic
I'm sure it's a 120L tank!! Was actually looking for a receipt/invoice to confirm...
edit: I pulled out my receipts folder and the very first receipt that fell out was for the cylinder from October 2014.. maybe its a 160L tank as it's dimensions are 48" x 18"
(Gledhill Cylinder Se48x18Ind 48" By 18" 20Psi Insulated)
A quick Google tells me its a 162L tank, but either way, it's more than enough for us... and we have those big rainforest type shower heads...
2 showers and a bath from 120L?
Must be 4minute showers and a baby bath.
Currently upgrading from 120L copper to a 220L steel for 2 people .
120L is more than enough for the 3 of us. When we bought the house it only had a 60L copper tank, and we wouldn't get 2 showers out of it, but now we can get 2 showers and a bath, and there's still plenty of warm water left in it... It was effectively a free install as the hot press had to be moved anyway to accommodate the stairs to the attic!
The great thing about the new tank is it'll keep the water warm for a few days
So if as you say it's hot by mid morning, thats great as we can then get the battery topped up, as well as manually putting whatever's left into the car... I can dial the car down as low as 5amps / 1kW, so If I see I have a steady excess of say 1.5kW for a couple of hours during the day, it'll be no hassle for me to plug in and dial the car down to 7/8 amps, and then just stop it remotely via the app as the excess tails off... then if it's a regular thing, and there's always some excess, I'll go for a Zappi
Likewise we are not too concerned about the economics of it all, we just want a system in place that will ultimately reduce our monthly bills in the future, be that by reduced electricity bills over the year, as well as reduced gas usage over the summer as the Nest used to let you time the hot water in 15 minute increments, but an update a few years ago changed that so it's a minimum of 30 minute increments now.... so we do 1 per day over summer, so that's 3.5 hours of boiler usage per week for hot water over summer that'll hopefully disappear... (almost 70 hours of usage since the heating was last on)..
Our ultimate goal is long term reduced outgoings... we both have decent paying jobs, but they are stressful and we don't want to do it for very much longer, so we are trying to make hay while the sun shines... The plan is to go for a heat pump in about 2 years...
As others have pointed out, a 120l cylinder is small for PV, if that works for you then fine but in Summer it will be topped up mid morning at the latest.
EDDI not economical in your case but I don't worry about economics when it comes to hot water, it's about convenience and self consumption of PV generation
I was assuming a dual stat, dual element immersion, but yes, single stat dual element will suffer from that issue. Better to wire bath only, as you suggested.
@AndyBoBandy Another option is to get the relay board for the Eddi. You can then add two PT1000 sensors if you have suitable pockets in your cylinder. This will allow you to see the temperature in the tank. You could then go one step further and use relays on Eddi to call for heat from boiler.
Usually the battery always has priority over the Eddi. The Eddi is smart enough that it lowers the amount it is consuming periodically and checks if this results in an export. If yes, all good and it goes back to what is was consuming. If no, it will consume less and then repeat by lowering consumption again to check if that results in an export. If you only have a 120l cylinder with I assume a 2/3kW dual element, you will find that the water will get up to 60C after an hour and a half of Eddi going full blast (i.e. nothing else on apart from house baseload). A small cylinder really brings the economics of the Eddi into question as You will only use a fraction of the excess in mid-summer.
In your case, you would wire the sink element as Heater 1, and the bath element as Heater 2.
as it's the same thermostat controlling both elements, it would stop the power going to heater 2 (bath).
So the eddi should just be wired into the bath one.
A temperature gauge on the hot water tank is quite useful.
You could go further, and get a thermostat fitted to the hot water tank, and then in tandem with the nest thermostat, it will heat the water at the end of the day as needed.
Brilliant. Cheers for the replies.
I'll answer a couple of these q,
The immersion has it's own thermostat, it will shut off when the tank gets up to temp.
The eddi will keep putting power into the immersion until it shuts off. Doesn't need a timer or schedule.
The immersion itself will have a thermostat in it. Take off the plastic cap and you can set the temperature (most are set to 60C).
Eddi will keep dumping heat into Heater 1 until it can take no more, and then it will dump into Heater 2 (if you have one). It retries Heater 1 every 15 mins to see if it can store any more heat.
No need to turn off the Eddi in winter (assuming you have a cylinder stat connected to boiler).
Few questions on the Eddi if anyone can help..
Does it take the excess generation all day, or does it only take it up to a preset point either in time or kWh? As in can you set how many kWh goes into it in a given day before it stops, and the excess generation the Eddi was using then goes elsewhere (battery)?
My water cylinder doesn’t have a thermostat so I’ve no way to know how hot the water is.. Is it trial and error as to how much energy it takes to heat the tank up? Normally in Summer I run the boiler for 30 minutes a day in ‘water only’ mode via a Nest schedule, which seems to cover all our needs. What would the Eddi need in terms of kWh to replicate this?
I did get a new 120L stainless steel insulated water cylinder about 6 years ago when we got the attic converted, and I installed a new heating element in it that I picked up in Woodies (twin element sink/bath), so would that be sufficient to work with the Eddi?
Once my gas central heating starts kicking in as it gets colder, it also heats the water cylinder, so I’m guessing once the heating starts coming on, I just switch the Eddi off for the entire time the heating is regularly coming on, or would the Eddi somehow know when it’s needed to put excess generation into heating water?
Post a screenshot of what you see when you login. I logged into their demo site and don't see anything excet for power. So no voltage or current.
Hi, it was installed in 2019...I did log a call with the supplier but nothing back yet so I said I would ask in case I am doing something stupid on it.
Does it have an LCD display panel ? You should be able to see the stuff I'm asking about in information menus or even on the main display.
Photograph it and post it in here and we can guide you.
Hi "Blue4u", when did you get it installed? If it's recently enough then you should be covered under the installers support plan. Any (all?) of then would be happy enough to log into your system remotely assuming you have WIFI setup on it and have a look. Often they can see the fault problem and fix remotely without even sending out an engineer to have a look. Sometimes in as short of a few minutes. Don't give out your username/password on the forums anyway, as while most people here are above board, there's always some yahoo who'll abuse.
Course you might have a more complex problem that can't be sorted out over the phone/internet, but they'd be able to asses that. Might be something as simple as a firmware upgrade which they can do remotely.
There's a lot of things you can do such as looking at the currents with CT clamps, but since in your own words, your more a plug and play type of person, I'd probably just give them a call.
I have zero idea how to check any of that. I log into http://www.givenergy.cloud/GivManage/login
Apart from the main screen I have no idea what to check outside that. I'm the type of person "plug n play" was invented for.
I expect 2 strings as 19 panels. I think you can't have 19 on one string from recollection?
