FIT 2021

unkel wrote: »

Indeed. That's why I carefully said that if you planned in getting a SEAI installer to install a large PV system anyway, the battery is then more or less free.

What you are saying is that if someone has decided to get a large PV array and has done no math on the ROI then the battery is free! :P

Strange justification for saying that batteries are viable!

unkel wrote: »

It makes little sense to go for a grant install and get 4kwp installed without a battery. It will be overpriced and only give you €1,400 in grants, so it will cost you almost as much as going for a same size system with a battery and get €3,800 in grants

The extra cost of the labour, hybrid inverter and battery will eat up alot more than the €1k you get for the battery grant. It will eat into the majority of the unlocked grant for the panels.

So, you can say you have a free battery but then you have expensive panels. I just think its misleading to say the battery is free or viable on that basis.


Some figures from my quotes....
€350 extra labour for the battery, about €800 extra for inverter and the battery about €1300. That's €2450 for an entry level battery system.

The grant is €1k for the battery and an extra €1400 for the additional 2kWp of panels... so, yea, you have a free battery on that basis but you paid full whack for that extra 2kWp if thats how you want to allocate the grant money.

There is no free lunch here!

KCross wrote: »

Some figures from my quotes....
€350 extra labour for the battery, about €800 extra for inverter and the battery about €1300. That's €2450 for an entry level battery system.

The grant is €1k for the battery and an extra €1400 for the additional 2kWp of panels... so, yea, you have a free battery

That additional labour is very rich and they added a nice wedge for themselves on that battery

I already had some solar PV when the grant system came in, so I can't make any of these grants work for me. I've tried

But I can honestly say, if I had the space on my roof and if didn't already have solar thermal, then I would probably have gone with the SEAI grant system with a 6kwp array, hybrid inverter, 5kWh battery, Eddi diverter and Zappi car charger. I would have negotiated the last €100 out of a deal. With people in the house during the day most days, that system would have paid off for me at some stage, particularly with a modest FIT. And would have enormous savings to the environment of course.

Well the one quote I actually got for a battery install under the SEAI grant, was very fair. He charged a full day's labour for an electrician, which was OTT, I guess he was covering eventualities there. But the prices of parts where very reasonable, just a bit over wholesale prices.

And yes, of course companies need to make a profit to survive. It's in fact their duty to the shareholders / owners to actually maximise that profit

anyone care to share a basic 2.1kw quote price. I've only got one back from ringing around all the seai cork approved. 3.8K pre grant.

Perhaps this should be moved to the quotes

Here by popular demand, a file containing day-ahead and imbalance prices since the beginning of iSEM operations in October. (It is a csv file, but with a .txt ending, because csv files are seemingly not liked by the boards upload manager.)

Please note that some imbalance prices may yet be revised.

The day-ahead market is in hourly intervals; the imbalance pricing is in half-hourly intervals.

This is not the full cost of electricity. It excludes distribution, transmission, loss factors and capacity charges, amongst other things. It is just the energy portion.

Yup, a negative imbalance price.

This probably happened because there was excess wind 'spilling' onto the grid, which had not been pre-sold in the day-ahead market.

But the intuitive principle you might have in your mind, that if you are generating and feeding to the grid, that it automatically results in a payment, is not necessarily correct. It might well cost you money.

The day-ahead market is where most electricity is bought and sold. It is determined by an auction, the day before the power is delivered.

(There is also an intra-day market that happens between day-ahead and balancing but the volumes are small, so don't worry too much about that.)

The balancing market is a sort of market of last resort. It is priced 'in the moment', and is actually the average of the prices paid to generators in the 6 5-minute intervals that make up the half-hour. If a generator puts electricity onto the grid that has not been pre-sold, or if a supplier/customer takes electricity that hasn't been pre-purchased, this is the price they pay. (Equally, if you pre-sold electricity, but then fail to deliver it, you will pay this price to make the market 'whole'.)

The setting of imbalance prices is a complex and controversial issue in the industry. The controversial part has been very high prices, rather than negative prices.