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12 Months living in The Windy Roost


Jenki

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I thought I'd publish some rough figures for the running costs for 12 months.

Details.

85 Sq M bungalow.

North Scotland -highlands

All electric (heating/DHW/cooking and running * two self catering cabins)

4 kW South facing solar panels.

0.88 ACH

EPC A103

Heating set to 20⁰C

DHW set to 43⁰C

 

 Year to date:

Total Electricity usage 3300kWh

ASHP usage 890kWh heat and DHW don't know if Samsung gen6 can split the usage?

 

Solar Generation 4254kWh

Solar export (given away) 2359kWh.

 

I'm happy with the house, and the heat retention seems very good for our budget build.

Heating hasn't been needed since mid April, and has only been on around 6 days this autumn.

Obviously my biggest issue is reducing our solar export.  I have done nothing in this regard with the exception of manually loading shifting  washing machine / drier / dishwasher on sunny days.

My issue with solar diverter is that the meter is located 50M from the house (in an enclosure) the house is supplied separately from the cabins  so I can't just monitor the house as the cabins maybe using power.

 

I'm in the early stages of exploring using ESP-Now as a CT clamp monitor and building a diverter similar to how @ProDave and others have done.

 

 

How do these figures look?

*We had around 170 days of cabin usage which use electric for cooking/heating and the laundry.

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"How do these figures look"

 

Your PV production is very good for your location.  I don't know about 'up there', but our weather has been dreary down here all year.

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3 hours ago, SteamyTea said:

"How do these figures look"

 

Your PV production is very good for your location.  I don't know about 'up there', but our weather has been dreary down here all year.

The estimate was around 3600kWh so we had a good return. This year's weather was definitely not as warm as last year, but from spring onwards we have had lots of clear skies, and prolonged dry spells. That's all changing now though,just hope it's not as long and wet as last year

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Those are impressive figures, the usage is commendably low.

 

One of the reasons for my DIY solar PV diverter was the unusual meter position and PV generation remote again from the meter.

 

I hard wired my current clamps using twisted pair armoured telephone cable between the meter box and the house, about 25 meters, then 2 pairs of a CAT5 cable from the entry to the house to the plant room where the diverter is, probably another 10 metres.  All seems to work well.  I have exported just over 400kW in about 5 years.

 

Definitely very much colder from today for at least the next week.

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10 hours ago, ProDave said:

Those are impressive figures, the usage is commendably low.

 

One of the reasons for my DIY solar PV diverter was the unusual meter position and PV generation remote again from the meter.

 

I hard wired my current clamps using twisted pair armoured telephone cable between the meter box and the house, about 25 meters, then 2 pairs of a CAT5 cable from the entry to the house to the plant room where the diverter is, probably another 10 metres.  All seems to work well.  I have exported just over 400kW in about 5 years.

 

Definitely very much colder from today for at least the next week.

I have considered hardwiring, but logistically it's a pain. My meter / Cabinet is on the other side of our drive / track and around 50M away. Also we have now  concreted around the front of the barn and side of the house.  There is an option to get a cable into the ducting that feeds the house, but would require burying the cables under a portion of the track, so this is going to be my back up plan if my very limited ESP programming skills fail implementing my wireless plan. This is a job for the colder winter months so I can look like I'm doing something in the warmth of the house 😂.

Today is markedly colder ❄️

 

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