Using a few of these in my shed https://www.buyitdirect.ie/p/2kw-slim-wall-mountable-panel-heater-with-wifi-ephal2000w
You can toggle between 1/2kw power.
Can control via app/Home Assistant and quite easy to make them turn on automagically when excess goes over the threshold.
Super, that looks to be pretty much what I'm looking for. Thanks.
4kwh yesterday, at least there wasnt much bought. Today probably a bit better.. but I need to get proper forecasting into my home assistant setup.
I have both WiFi electric heaters (Warme) and some regular electric heaters on smart relays.
I find the relays more than adequate for them, as they only need to be turned on/off sporadically, e.g electric towel rail in office toilet, only need to come on for an hour or two on the days of the year when it gets especially cold. The two WiFi heaters are also in the same out building but as they are in our two home offices, we needed a little more control with the temp.
Have all automated with Home Assistant to come on and maintain 18°c during working hours, but on really cold days the other half might want to be able to manually adjust it.
The only downside to the WiFi heaters is that if they get turned off and on again, they go into anti-frost mode and don't heat above 14°, the mode settings are not available in Home Assistant so have to access them through the Tuya app.
Today is going shockingly well. I've seen just under 8kWp from my 6kW inverter and 8.2kWp array. Already have over 12kWh today and my southeast facing array is just hitting peak time now!
Afaik you can’t get rads that will adjust the wattage output dynamically. There may be expensive rads to do that but I’d wonder why it’s needed.
I’ve an electric rad with 3 settings. It has physical buttons to change the wattage: 700w, 1100w, 1800w. If I set it to on, it runs at that same wattage until it gets to the temp of the thermostat. So if set to 700w, it runs at 700w and nothing more or less. I can’t change it to use a higher wattage if there is more solar excess, unless I walk over to it.
I’ve several ‘WIFI’ electric heaters. But they are old skool ones with a 10 quid smart plug – gives me the exact same thing for ~60 quid upwards per rad. Efficiency of electric rads is the same irrespective of per rad. All convert close to 100% of electricity to energy. Rest is marketing. So use what you have a available as a test, then can buy more when you see if that rad heats the room. At this time of the year you'll have much less need of heat.
I’ve the rad connected to a separate thermostat that is accurate and in a different part of the room to the rad (the ones in the rads are crap). It’s on a smart plug linked to that, and I can set the times it comes on too. As in I don’t run it overnight. My thermostat is one with a physical cable, ~25 qid on Amazon. Not linked to Home Assistant – just never got around to automate via Home Assistant. Shout if want info on the plugs and wired thermostat I use.
Overheating a room isn’t comfortable. So set to the temp you want, then you’re done.
I’ve different electric rads that use different wattage. I’ve a 400W one that is perfect to end Oct and from now in a small but cold WFH room. Needs to run ‘low and slow’ for a small heater like that to heat the space. But easily takes the solar excess.
I’ve solar for under 1 year now and I’ve come to the view that I don’t want to micromanage stuff for the next 25 years of it’s life - or mine 😊. At the very start I was deffo turning stuff on and off X times a day. So close enough is good enough for me now. I've a routine on Alexa to turn off certain smart plugs for a defined time. So when I've a shower, I tell Alexa to turn the plugs off. Means electric rads, dishwasher...all power off for 15mins then start again themselves. You can deffo automate a lot with smart plugs and adding Alexa.
Thanks a mill for the rundown, very interesting. I wonder if the likes of myenergi are working on integrating an electric heater into their platform.
Seems like a bit of a gap there currently.
If they would do anything heat related it would surely be something to do with a heat pump. I wouldn't hold my breath and not sure I'd want to rely on myenergi for heating...
You can wire a old fashioned storage heater into an eddi
Hi everyone
First full day of operation in Co Longford.
5kw SSW + 3.4kw W (awaiting battery to be be fully connected)
27kwh ...not a bad start 🌞
Class. Welcome!
Thanks, great to finally be able to start posting some numbers. It's been a long wait for the installation, but looks to be well worth it.
probably one of the best days so far - 17.6kw from 3kw SW and 1kw NE in north Kildare. Not much missing, maybe 20 is possible though.
34.9 today on a 7.9kWp split E/S in Limerick. Best yet and the day could have been better as there was some rain and cloudy spells☀️
First bright day since install of a small mid-terrace system on Tuesday. 13.4kWh off 2.0kW SW/1.2kW NE in Cork, delighted!
21.9kWh in today. Exported 5.3kWh. 4.5kWp SW facing system in North Co. Dublin.
Shame I couldn't use more of it but mistiming on my part with charging the car up the other day fully meant it was mostly full. The battery got topped up and the immersion connected to the eddi is a top mount only so not great. I did manage to get a clothes wash & dry in and dinner done which is OK I suppose.
Welcome to the club. I remember my first installation day. It was end of October and lashing. 1.1Kwhr - and I was chuffed :-)
Tomorrow should be better than today by all accounts too!!
Great start just curious where did the 24 kWh consumption go to? Would it be typical usage or diverting it?
Welcome :)
Just to give an opinion on a few of the points raised above. Im running 8.4kwp with 6kw inverter and 9.6kwh off the shelf battery. The house is all electric no oil or gas and no ev yet and we are on CEG so no benefit to exporting. When V2G comes along it’ll be a game changer I think.
The battery is expensive but works for me as it balances out the power consumption during the day and allows load shifting in winter which for us is a big winner.
In terms of control I haven’t gone into home assistant yet so use 4 Tapo plugs with oil filled rads I had already as back up to the heatpump if it is down for whatever reason and use this in the colder months to use up excess power produced during the day.
Recently I installed a Wi-Fi controlled water heating spur to run the immersion and send excess into the tank so use up the excess and avoid nighttime heating of water by the heatpump.
It was a pretty cheap low tech way of giving me remote control of heating and using excess power. The maths for an Eddie didn’t work for me with both tubes and a heatpump in place.
For me a battery makes sense and I’d love another 10kwh to give me a bigger resovoir on cloudy days and would mean probably not having to charge the battery even partially on night rate at this time of the year. With CEG currently there’s no benefit to exporting but when that goes that would further change the battery maths. Battery also give you a backup during a power out but again these are few and far between. V2G though would really make a big difference in terms of grid independence and reducing running cost I think.
Apologies for the rambling.
Had a PHEV charging up (waiting EV arrival) and washing machine/dryers running non stop
44.4 kWh produced today, and most of gone to the feckin' grid for free as I was out most of the day 😬😬 !!!
8.8kWp system, south facing, Kildare area
A great couple of days with 31kw yesterday with 29kw today.
I replaced my 3.6kw inverter with a 5kw about 6 weeks ago as I had 4.2kWp of panels and I got it for a good price. Then I had a spare 3.6kw inverter bugging me so I found some second-hand panels to go with it a few days on the extension roof and long story short since last week I now have 6.7kwp on 3 strings SE/SW split. My previous best was 28kw on the original 3.6kWp and that was an outlier. I only got above 25kw a half dozen times in previously so to have 2 this early is great.
Good day today. Exported a lot as away from home. Imported about 80 cents of electricity to top up battery overnight, exported about 5 euro worth.. hopefully that's the picture for lots of the next few months
Forecast 22.7kWh
Actual 21.6kWh
Close enough :) Exported roughly half of generation.
I have a 2kw electric rad on a smart plug. On the lowest setting it seems to use 1200watts. It's grand to turn on for an hour or two when I'm home but I'd love to set up a lower wattage heater automatically.
47.8kWh produced yesterday (April 7th) from a 10.4kW array and a 6kW hybrid inverter. Pointed south in South Dublin.
I managed to use all of it between storage batteries, EV, electric radiator, washing machine and dishwasher.
Not sure if to be happy or sad 😢
32kwh generated, but a load of Solis 'grid over voltage' events cost me a good chunk of production.
Hopefully if I can get installer back to tweak inverter soon and finish battery install things will improve:
That's 5kw SSW + 3.4W in Co Longford
Glorious day in any case
55.9kWh generated which is a new record. South facing 10.4kWp with a Solis 6kw hybrid inverter in South Dublin.
20kWh from 4.5kWp split equally between E/W, consumption was 16kWh, so we exported 9kWh and imported only 2, so happy with that,
