SteamyTea

Yes, but the government, well parliament, set the legislation, so it is their fault really.

Yes, and the installer I know that fitted one made an error. He had to start again. Then the installation had a lightening hit. So was bugger and I think abandoned in the end. It is the community hall in St. Just, so not exactly in the metropolis.

Can't think what, maybe £350 million a week on the NHS. Or just pay for a new sign for the side of the bus that says. 'We are robbing you'

Except you are personally punishing me, you rascal. I wonder if the real problem is simply that grid power is too cheap to create real inovation. And I say that paying 24p/kWh day rate and 9p/kWh night rate and have just paid my 'winter bill' when my E7 water cylinder was bust, so £260 for that quarter. Things are fixed now but when I calculate the total cost with meter rental and VAT, the unit rate is not often below 16p/kWh and that is using 80% night rate.

If the local DNO can handle it, then no. More is better. I often think the scaling is wrong. We try to self store enough energy to supply our needs on the days of little generation. But if we accept that we do need grid supplied power, then much small storage can be used. Taking data from Gridwatch for a random day in March, the peak demand was 20% higher than the mean, or 10 GW. The peak was in the evening and lasted 3 hours (5PM to 8PM). This is almost certainly caused by domestic use. So all that is needed is enough storage for that 30 GWh peak. Now keeping the maths simple, there are about 26 million houses, so that will be 1.1 kWh of storage per house.

Looks a lot better than my 1987 'professionally' fitted kitchen. When I had the house valued a few years back, the estate agent raved about it, saying how modern it was. But then, this is Cornwall.

Yes, they are lazy and the information could be useful to customers and suppliers. I think that is why there is the deemed export rate and the total generation rate. In an ideal world there would be no gain for anyone. The real problem is that the scheme was a pig's ear from the very beginning. But if you are exporting over 50%, then your PV system is too large (getting back on topic)

One problem with variable pricing is that the government has dictated that our energy bills need to be 'simpler', so less opportunity to have variable pricing. Not sure how this sits with the energy supply companies who probably want to use variable pricing. We have a secondary problem with our infrastructure insomuch as some supply companies are also generation companies. Generally this should not be a problem as it introduces an element of competition into the market, except it didn't as the main players have tended to stick to individual technologies i.e. EDF with Nuclear, British Gas with Gas, EON with Coal (but now RE and gas). Then you have to remember what happened in California in the early 2000s. California had 45GW of installed generation capacity and demand was about 28GW. But Enron realised that they could shut down supply to the state, sell it to a neighbouring state, then buy it back again at an increased price to the consumer. Our Contract for Difference would allow this to happen. Another, more serious problem with variable pricing is the the public will just not understand it. I occasionally chat to someone that supplies a data service to the power companies. He raves about 15 minute billing and how it will even out supply and demand. Sounds great, except no one plans their life to that degree. You only have to look at Gridwatch to see that we are all individuals, just like everyone else. This is rather going off thread here, but the point about the morals of self use is that most people on the FiTs scheme are getting paid to supply the grid with 50% of their generation. It is really not right to take that money and not supply the goods. If it was a business it would be prosecuted for fraud. But back to the main point. The first thing you need to do is an energy audit of your hourly consumption, then plot it against hourly irradiation. That will tell you what you can expect to happen. A hunt around on WeatherUnderground should find a local weather station with that data (you used tt be able to download it but the have changed the webpages so now not so easy).

You could call up a refrigerant technician and ask them for a quote, then when they say something silly, ask if they want to buy it off you. If they say yes, then you know , that they know, what is wrong with it and it is a tuppence ha'penny repair.

" All that is necessary for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing " Edmund Burke (1729-1797).

Use the old one to do some experiments with. Wish I had an old HP to play with.

As @pdf27 as said, self consumption is about matching power and not energy. There is a moral argument about claiming FiTs and then minimizing your exports, but that is another issue. You also have to look at the opportunity costs involved i.e. could you have spent the money on something that would save even more energy i.e. an EV

That is what is generally though, hence we are going to do some monitoring to see what is actually happening. Hurry up and get yours plumbed in, winter is on its way come this Thursday

I don't think it makes a huge difference as with lower RH you also have lower energy (all that latent heat of fusion and stuff). When I look at RH levels across the country, they don't vary that much as our weather is predominately affected by South Westerly winds, which are high in RH.

That is 100W/m2, which seems high to me. Or maybe I am just tough and like the cold (which I don't). My space heating is 21 kWh/m2.year, which is 2.4W/m2 on average or 10W/m2 during the heating season.

Miss read that at first and lost the 'on'. Then though it is not your arms hurting you need to worry about. Oh you Welsh boys make me smile sometimes.

Does the built in immersion heater kick in at all?

I think it is to do with the unmeasurable effects of different noises. Quite often they seem irrational. There are certain noises I really hate, barking dogs, crying children and dot matrix printers spring to mind. But then I hate dogs, small children and really hated the women in accounts who ran the DMP. So probably nothing to do with the noise, just pure, healthy prejudice.

I sang for this man when I was at school in Canterbury. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Ramsey He autographed my bible too. I know a joke about wielders. Shall we all join and help them out.

They need to be oversized anyway. If you look at the installation spec for the RHI, then they say it must supply all the heat load for the house 99% of the time. Most gas installations don't do that, and I suspect that most ASHP installed don't either. The physics of heat pumps is well understood, so sizing should never be an issue.

I did not realise it was running at the time and we were standing right next to it looking at your PV inverter. I think part of the problem is that many people see and air-conditioning unit that has been hanging from a wall for years, if not decades, and think that it must be the same. I also suspect that if an ASHP was undersized too much that it was running at full pelt all the time, and it was neglected i.e. used at a bike rack, then it could rattle a bit.

Or an induction hob, which is much, much better. Re: PV You can have roof integrated, you will hardly notice it and it can be cheaper than tiling. Ground mounted which can track the sun, is not really worth it, easier and cheaper to add a few extra modules. Just check with your DNO how much you can fit. The mismatch between maximum generation times and space heating times is often used as a negative against having PV. This is why FiT payments were introduced. For the 3/4 of the year that you export some power you get payment, you then, in effect, use that cash to import power. The FiT is just under 10p/kWh in all at the moment, so not to be sniffed at. Maximizing self consumption can get costly and may not be worth while over all.

I have tried plastering 3 times, all been a disaster. But I have noticed that plasters get more on the floor than the walls.

@JSHarris The idea is to monitor the temp/RH before and after the cooling fins with DHT22s and the fin temperature with a DS18B20. Then, once the data is in, crunch some numbers and see if it is possible to detect the condition that frosting may occur, before it happens.

Welcome. Re your groundwork/foundation/piling, it may be worth having a word with @joe90. He built on the flattest bit of land in the West Country, and it was very boggy. His local Building Control was happy with trenches. I know little about foundations, and each house seems to have unique issues, though I think half of that is lack of knowledge about alternatives by builders/SEs/BCs. As for SIP's Have you checked the U-Values and associated thicknesses of the panels. You may need secondary internal/external insulation fitted. I have stood next to both @JSHarris's ASHP while it was running, and next to @joe90's with it was not. There was no difference in noise. @JSHarris you may have missed my post about monitoring an ASHP for frosting, I am looking to put some kit on a couple or three.