Domestic solar PV quotes 2018

KCross wrote: »

Same advice.... get an energy monitor and if you are using more than 3 units, on average, per day during the night rate hours then you should be on a night rate plan.

My bet is that you would save also, as 4hrs per day during the winter months is alot of energy and spread that out over the year along with the 365 days usage to heat water and you are almost certainly more than 3 units per day... probably multiples of it to be honest but as I said, dont trust me.... get an energy monitor and prove it for yourself.

Watching the zappi charger, the house is ticking over at 0.1 kw so I guess I should stick with the 24 hour plan for now. That said, we could change our habits and put the washing machine and dishwasher on at night. I also do roughly one weekly car charge at night, say 20kWh.

KCross wrote: »

That alone is your 3 units per day for the week. Add in your heat pump during the winter and you should be on night rate.

The 20kWh is an estimate.. I'll get the spreadsheet out to track my usage over the next month or two (once I have the Zappi hub app setup) and see where I'm at. Cheers for the info. Out of interest, what's the logic behind the 3 units per night?

Even during winter, the heatpump is not on after say 11pm. The house is sitting at 20 degrees and I drop the baseline temperature for the house to 18 overnight and during the early day, so the temperature tapers back down, whilst the heatpump is off.

Conar, I would spend whatever you can manage on the rooftop-PV and postpone the battery.


I strongly disagree with many of the payback/ROI-calculations for renewables that I see (on here and elsewhere).


Firstly the calcs all disregard tomorrow's financial costs to each and every one of us of the environmental damage we are doing today. If the science is right, we will very soon have to build floodgates, dikes, additional border controls etc to try to mitigate warming. If we're lucky, we would in this way get to preserve something like today's society, at a cost. We all need to factor these costs now, unless we don't believe the science. No-one tells us how high the costs will be, but we need to plug in some kind of estimate to our ROI-calcs, or we're running incorrect numbers. Mitigation will not be free!



Secondly many of the calcs disregard obsolescence and maintenance costs. They run something like this: if I spend 100 euro today on PV, and save 2.5 euro a year in energy costs, my ROI is 2.5%. But this doesn't factor the reduced market value of the panels at the end of the period for which we are calcing return - these will obselesce and therefore fall in value by, presumably, substantially more than the 2.5% per annum, not to mention maintenance of, for example, the inverters...when you wrap all of that into the ROI-calc, the numbers tend to make little sense for many renewables...except when you factor future environmental damage.


Not too many renewables yet pass muster on classicial ROI-calcs. We many of us tend to buy renewables because we sense the cost of damaging the environment.


We need to start plugging some value for that damage into our calculations.



For me, PV works on above basis, but batteries don't because they themselves have an environmental footprint and I've found no evidence that export is technically unmanageable by the grid.



QUOTE=Conar;110432696]Ah we have an air to water heat pump so that includes heating bills.
3 adults 1 teen so lots of showers.
Server running 24/7.
Hot water all day long.

I could definitely knock 30% off with more frugal use but I'd rather the comforts at this stage of life.

If I could cost effectively generate solar electricity I would but it looks like we're not there.[/QUOTE]

wexfordman2 wrote: »

Yeah, the eddi is great, I am really surprised at how well it tracks and soaks up the excess.

I had a period when I didnt have the eddi in, and it was heartbreaking to see all that power being exported.

small hope that we will get paid some day for that exported energy