Solar for Dummies.

End up with no hot water? That's a load of nonsense. How much hot water can use depends on the cylinder size and how much you need. If you have a standard Irish 120l cylinder heated to 50C then yeah, with a 3-4 bar pump you'll run out in about 10 minutes. So you would have to heat that up again to 50C until anyone else can have that 10 minute shower

We had our 120l cylinder replaced with a 360l cylinder when we had 40 solar thermal tubes installed 7 years ago. Lots and lots of hot water, even for 5 people (including 4 women) who like their showers / baths. But of course even that isn't enough if all 5 want to have a 10 minute shower straight after each other. I would have preferred a 500l tank, but the one we got was the biggest that would fit in the hot press.

In some new builds people are installing 1000l tanks, they simply are a super cheap battery if you have lots of solar PV / thermal or even night rate electricity that is cheaper than fossil fuels

AFAIK some of the Triton and possibly Mira electric showers that were available from B&Q, Homemade etc were not pumped as this was more common in the UK.

Just to clarify a little. Those Mira/Triton electric shower are indeed "gravity fed", but they do contain a pump inside the unit itself. So while you might be feeding it with (say) 0.5bar pressure, the shower unit will get a boost from the unit (probably in the region of 0.5bar I reckon)

Novel SR Quiet Running Thermostatic Power Shower (tritonshowers.ie)

To answer MacDanger's question, it's sort of a personal choice. Also depends a lot on how your heating the water? Do you have a immersion tank or a combi boiler. Heat pump installed etc. If you have an option to install both in the shower unit, I would. It'll look a little odd that you have a mixer along with a electric shower, but you'll have flexibility on swapping easily as your rquirements change. E.g. in summer time my Eddi gives me all the hot water I need, so taking it from the immersion (pumped) is the way to go. Winter time the eddi doesn't always heat the tank.....hence the electric shower is in play.

We have three showers in the house, 2x en-suite and main bathroom. One of the en-suites is an electric shower with the other two pumped from cylinder.

Although the electric is rarely used, even though it is in the master en-suite, it is handy for when friends and family are staying and as a backup should the hot water cylinder run cold. If I was building I would probably go with the same setup again.

Only two of us in the house so can pick and choose, 1st world problems I know. We could move into the other en-suite bedroom but the one we use is on the south and quieter side of the house.

Before the solar and monitoring all usage it was always used but pulling 9kW!!!!!🤑I'd be locking the door so no one can use it.

We've a heatpump provide hot water as well as central heating and 4 showers in the house. The water cylinder is 200Litres. Although it is a pressurized system I do find I miss the pressure from a pumped shower unit. What I don't miss is the noise of those units. Lived for years with a Triton T90 and a Mira pump before that and your head would be melted by the sound of it. At the moment we've a great set up with the heat pump and the night rate as I've it all kicking on around 6:30am and getting the hot water up to 50c and going off for the rest of the day.

Well I feel a proper Dummy trying to get my head around all this solar stuff. Nothing makes sense at the moment and we suspect CT clamps wrongly positioned are the problem and want a proper electrician to sort not the installer who does not seem to understand our problem. So the energy flows are all going wrong way as indicated by the displays on the inverter, the Solarman App and the MyEngergi App. We have an Eddi with inbuilt Hub. I notice there is a Harvey in the meterbox with a CT clamp connection to one of the main wires to/from the house. Is this redundant? Shall I remove/dump?

To help you out could you provide photos of your installation, what the inverter shows and your CT clamp, and also what you're seeing in the app.

Lets reset, why do you think there is a problem? You haven't actually said what the issue is. You mentioned there is something on your inverter? Your Eddi and Myenergi shouldn't have anything to do with an issue showing up on your Inverter.

The thing beside you meter is just a wireless CT clamp, it will be sending a signal back to the Eddie to turn it on and off. You would need this for your Eddi to work correctly. It isn't a hub.

Edit: I'm assuming the clamp you showed is the only one, if the Eddi is wired directly to the consumer unit you wont need the harvi.

This is what your set up looks like right? Except you have the order wiring. The arrow on your clamp (the black thing) should be pointed away from the meter as mentioned above.

Sorry I am floundering here. I am mistaking the Harvi for the hub. No we do not have a Zappi, just a battery and Eddi.

I mention the inverter as the readings on its screen were contradicting that of the two apps. At various odd times we were being told that we were exporting to the grid from the solar .... at night on a dull day! or that the house was feeding the grid... The various data feeds seemed to be going to th wrong locations.

The installer set the battery recently to come on at 6 am and charge for few hours off main grid and stay full til 5 pm. I think he thought we had a night rate? That is another issue... now disabled hopefully but must admit the 'advance settings' were confusing. I fail to understand why we should be filling up at battery at dawn to sit there full all day and at a loss of efficiency of 20% compared to just using the power direct from the grid as needed and only excess to the battery. In time we will have an EV and some sort of cheap rate at night time to justify the battery. For the moment we have 24 hr rate energy from grid, no day/night and no smartmeter.

At one stage the Eddi was coming on all day long despite two setting morning and evening as per the timer but the installer seems to have fixed that.

The Myenergy app was 'offline' today. We have been on to them and expect a call back. When it did work, there is no icon /data for solar production. The green leaf at centre of display is always 0%.

It seems to me there is another technician needed to set up new solar systems and advise people like myself. Adjustments need to be made as the seasons change and household demands vary. An annual check up would be handy like we do for our cars, gas boilers, alarm systems etc. The installers just want to get the infrastructure into the premises and be off to the next customer. I have no idea what is happening on my roof. How do I know those panels are connected and operating as they should? I do not wish to become as expert as so many on this group. I think I am one of many.

It may or may not be a spinning meter though, they are super rare. Most of those old style ones were fitted in the 90's and have a little widget in them (and a sticker on the front showing this) to stop the meter going backwards.