Solar Electricity Bills: Then Vs Now

This isn't a great example of the possible savings sorry. We have no idea the size of your system or the amount of KW you consume. 30 euro off a bill is not going to excite anyone thinking about investing.

You mention you don't have a battery... are you getting one? Did you build hybrid so that you can add one easily? Without a battery my self consumption rate would be less than 50% of my solar generation. That would mean less monthly money saved but also less money invested on the system.

If you are happy with your outcome that is great but don't go into marketing or sales please. 😉

Anyone else eagerly awaiting their latest bill from Electric Ireland.?

bills have been issued in mid Nov, mid Jan & mid March, but no May bill yet!!

I got my may bill from EI. still in credit from the 300 euro switch (plus the 200 gov money).

After two bills im still in credit, €41. next bill will be about €20.

Do you have a battery? I can go days without any daytime import... still need a few night rate - mostly to heat water for morning showers. i only have a 5Kw but it makes a big difference.

Have a look here https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058234646/interested-in-solar-pv-read-this-faq-first#latest

I only have a 3.6 kw battery. I think I’m using import units when the battery cant supply enough kw at once to cover a high power appliance or the heat pump.

Do you have solar or a battery? Need more info to advise.... but unless you have a way of avoiding peak rate, why not stickwh night rate and load shifting....

When can we expect that "estimate" payment? I havent been keeping up with the news (or lack of it) on the FIT thing - I am holding on to my night meter for reasons above. I have a polite "No Smart Meter Please!" yellow post-it note on my meter outside.

Still using up the gov bonus - would love to get a few quid from FIT to offset the dark winter nights Nov/dec/jan.

Any idea how they estimate?

and they know that based on that PV registration thing that I still have to do?

I know there's another thread on this so apologies for double posting, I can't seem to find it.

What is the basic minimum I need to do to fill out the NC6 form, panels are in a few years so trying to track down original installer for a sig will be painful.

I saw something about being able to just attach the cert for the inverter as proof but I could be wrong.

If you were talking about ~€40 a month reduction and that was in relation to "wintertime", that sounds about right, but it's too simplistic to only compute the math off Dec&Jan generation. If you have the consumption, let's say north of 5000 units per year.....you'll do pretty well out of solar. I've been tracking mine since I got it installed

Aside: I'd an issue with my battery in late Nov/Early Dec, so they should ahve been about €40 but the battery was offline and the May increase is mainly down to the explosion in day rate lately from SSE to €0.31 (up from €0.22)

So I'm 7 months in and just broke €600. To be fair, I'm a little unusual, as I can pretty much "self-consume" my generation. But many here are also in the same boat if you have

a) an EV

b) teenagers in the house

c) generally high consumption from heat pump, lots of washing, etc.

It's been said many times on the forums, for many households, you can expect a ~10 year payback is achievable, assuming they don't buy the "magic panels" or gold plated battery. Whether or not your specific case is applicable, I can't say - but for the vast majority of people out there a solar installation is probably one of the smarter investments someone will make.

Still waiting on EI to issue a bill!! Last bill was 3 months ago!!!

They even wouldn't let me submit a meter reading a month ago as it was 'too close to my bill date', but now I can submit meter readings again!

I wanted a standard cycle bill of 1 or 2 months so I could compare to last year....

fair point alright, that's why i'll need to sit down and do a more detailed analysis. Looking at night rate and charging it probably works out at about €200 saved.

It encourages people to buy a more expensive house so they have more debt to pay more interest on for longer. Gah!

My point is I got the rate before I put in panels. Makes no difference

So i just got my first full 2 month bill after installing the solar PV system. (installed mid april. bill covers May + June)

If i had used the same number of units as the May/June bill last year my bill would be 150 euro dearer.

Im a little disappointed to be honest. the payback is probably going to be closer to 13 years than the 8 year one i had calculated before making the purchase.

i have reduced my day units by 73% so i need to try and get that down a little further but you also dont want it to take over your life!!

its hard for people to work out accurately what they will save before they buy as you really need to observe the system in action to understand when the electricity store in the battery isnt sufficient and it still pulls some from the grid (i.e the heat pump heating the water after a shower, oven late in the evening etc).

The trap i fell into was looking an my previous 12 months consumption and looking at what a 7kw array would roughly produce for a year and thinking id be able to use most of what the panels would generate.

TBH lads you cant really compare last years bill to this years bill without doing some serious background work. I have gotten a large orginsation ISO50001 certified (Energy Management) and to properly compare last year to this year you have to firstly find out what is driving energy consumption in your house is it heating, cooking by doing regression analysis on the data. For large office buildings you will find the energy consumption is driven by heating degree days with about 90% accuracy so you can adjust your bills and compare to see are you outside your baseline.

But for domestic houses there is too much variables that can influence the energy consumption that you probably cant do this with any accuracy. Last June was it very wet so you had to use the drier more...did you have a big party in the house, have guests over for a week so extra showers etc etc this will make it impossible to accurately compare last year to this year with any accuracy in domestic houses.

I think also if you have PV you will start shift more of your energy consumption into electricity which will give the impression that your elec bill has gone up but your gas bill is gone down.

What I can say for certain is for the months of May- June this year I used 659 kWh of my PV generation which at 30cent a unit saved me €197 off my electricity bill for the last 2 months. I am hoping it should save me between €700-800 on my bills for the year and that's not counting the Feed In Tariff...

Don't beat yourself up on going larger. Energy prices are only going up and panels will provide juice for decades. And houses will use more juice as we move from gas in time.So larger setup helps with that future scenario.

I only get my install in a week and it's more than a little paralysing trying to work out the right design fit. And likely the irony is the real stats we can see from the system when live (but which we all lack beforehand) would inform our design.

Now you have the system you can decide if you add more in year2 or later. Or leave alone and get on with life as you say. Maybe a larger diy battery could be calling in time (likely something I'll try once I get more confidence on solar) or a decent FIT would balance it out.

EVs at home during the day are the biggest battery. So if not doing it already you can get zappi to charge it from panels and bypass battery. OK, not cheap but an option to look at cost wise.

Another 10.9% increase on electricity from Electric Ireland coming in August. That's another 2.3c saved on every unit produced and used. Around €125 a year for me at the moment.

Now that you have solar, you have access to the information that you need to make informed decisions. The irony of getting solar is that it is difficult to get the information that you need before you commit to the capital expenditure. To take advantage of the light you need to take a leap in the dark.

The first couple of months are fun, especially if you get solar installed in the early part of the year. When Dec/Jan comes its not so pretty. I never considered sizing my system for Mar/Apr and Sept/Oct, but it makes great sense. The inverter app gives me a nice 'profit' graphic that tells me how much electricity I have used but not paid for, and the cost of that electricity. This is nice, but also a little false comfort -- if I did not have solar I would not have such an expensive day rate! I've moved to looking at 12 months (I have data for 15 months now :-)).

When it comes to comparing I am firmly of the opinion that the only figures that matter are 'what I would have paid for this load without solar' vs 'what I am paying for this load with solar'. That takes into account that the best single thing anybody can do is to shop around (at least) once a year. Prices fluctuate (go up), new plan appear. FIT is in complete flux sadly -- FIT makes a difference if you are looking at repayment time, and the batter capacity. Right now for me the difference is €773, which puts me on track ~9 years repayment time.

But now you have solar (& information from you inverter), you can begin to sweat that asset! For example, I load my battery to 50% at 02:00-04:00 (cheap), let it discharge to 20% (about 08:30) and at that stage the solar is picking up the slack. Almost all the electricity I buy is now less than 10c/KWh. In winter, I will up the charge to 90% and wait 'till 08:00 to avoid the peak rate when the sun is too low.

Of course FIT can change that. A cheap night rate and a larger battery (which I am considering to cover power outages) will have me maxing the charge every night, and doing a tax return in January, once I move to a supplier that pays a decent FIT.

In theory a smart meter will give folks half the data that they need. Sadly the suppliers are playing funny games on that front (no D/N) -- which currently seems to be the best plan for those with batteries if you can get it.