Dillsue

They are trialling the principle so its not available to everyone just yet

Sounds like you're unlucky or expectations maybe too high? Online sellers seem to have plenty of stock. It's summer holidays so every company has lots of people on holiday and may be struggling to fulfil existing orders. If youre trying to add to the workload then you might encounter some reluctance to take on the work. Good installers will likely be booked up for weeks or months in advance so you wanting them to start soon may be being overly optimistic. Maybe hold on til the autumn??

Exactly that. They'll only make FIT payments on the FIT registered capacity which for you is 4kw. If you double the system size to 8kw then paying for 50% of your generation is paying only for 4kw of generation

Not sure they are actually accepting customers as they sent me this on the 8 August- Hello We don't currently accept export customers without an MCS certificate, but we're in the very early stages of trialling a solution for non-MCS customers. If you or anyone you know would like to hear if this becomes available, pop your name down here: https://octopus.typeform.com/to/UAbK9bRq Kind regards, Harriet Octopus Energy Ltd is a company registered in England and Wales. Registered number: 09263424. Registered office: UK House, 5th Floor, 164-182 Oxford Street, London, United Kingdom, W1D 1NN On Fri, 04 Aug 2023 at 20:50, phill.edge@yahoo.co.uk wrote: Hi. I've just read your Export Tariff Terms and Conditions and sections 5.7 and 5.8 seem to suggest that MCS accreditation isnt necessary? Could you confirm this please?

That would be a G99???? We have 7.4kw agreed export on 1Ph so dont bank on having to have 3 ph.

Fingers crossed for you. Be nice to have a precedent set. Been watching 6.5kw disappear into the grid for free since late morning!!

I'm not looking to hold them to account over "lying" as lots of people in all walks of life including large seemingly professional organisations get their knickers in a twist over things they should fully understand. I'm hoping that repeatedly going back to them with a solid argument as to why they should accept non MCS export will eventually land on the right desk and trigger a memo to all their teams clarifying their TS and Cs. It's hard to see a more solid argument to accept non MCS export than their own TS and Cs so let's see how that plays out. Just weighing up adding more PV if its a goer:)

Not sure what changed today but those Ts and Cs are dated 18 July and seem to be the same ones that were around in the linked article above??

The terms that Google sent me to were last updated 18th July 2023. The email I sent went to seg@octopus and the email received came from hello@octopus and was dated 3 August- "Hello Phil Thank you for your email. We currently do not have any plans to change our terms and conditions for solar tariffs. As such we only offer Solar tariffs to customers who have a MCS certified installation. If this ever changed we would update our website and solar pages accordingly. Kind regards, Harriet Octopus Energy Ltd is a company registered in England and Wales. Registered number: 09263424. Registered office: UK House, 5th Floor, 164-182 Oxford Street, London, United Kingdom, W1D 1NN On Sat, 22 Jul 2023 at 10:51, ******************* wrote: Hi. I have a bit of dialogue with you customer services team who suggested that I contact you directly as experts in SEG. My query is do you have any plans or existing mechanisms to buy PV export from non MCS installations. Whilst the general industry view seems to be that it is mandatory for SEG payments to be paid only where the installation is MCS certified(or equivalent). OFGEM guidance that I have read seems to suggest this is not the case and suppliers are free to buy PV generated from non certified installations. Let me know what you think please. Regards, Phil 07737 ******"

That's a bit puzzling. After emailing them about this very topic I got the following in the last few days- "Thank you for your email. We currently do not have any plans to change our terms and conditions for solar tariffs. As such we only offer Solar tariffs to customers who have a MCS certified installation. If this ever changed we would update our website and solar pages accordingly. Kind regards, Harriet" I'll email them the link above and see what they say.

If your current 3kw system is split equally east and west youll get nothing like 3kw at any one time but you'll get a lower output over a longer period. If you add 3kw to the south, again youll never hit 6kw but will get a much longer spread of generation with a peak around midday. Youll not need to ask for 6kw export as youll never hit that with 6kw of panels spread over 3 compass points. You can get a good idea of the max generation by taking hourly figures from PVGIS for each of your 3 arrays then combine the hourly figures in Excel for the same hour, then see what the highest hourly figure is of all the combined figures. That's your highest DC output for the year. Look at your annual FIT generation figures and run the figures for the 2 best years youve had. Our second system has 8.5kw panels facing SE, SW and NW and max generation is around 5.2kw so way lower than the 8.5kw panel capacity. Since 2021 OFGEM have allowed FIT systems to be altered so you can add capacity to your existing system. You only get paid for the original registered capacity so if you added 3kw to a 3kw system you get paid for 50% of what the new 6kw system generates, but... Your existing east/west split will be underperforming compared to if it was all facing south. If you now add 3kw facing south it will more than double your output so 50% of the new system will be more than 100% of what you get now. It's not going to buy you a luxury yacht but you may be better off adding to your FIT system and upgrading its inverter, if needed, rather than adding a second system??

As mentioned above, you'll almost certainly have a dedicated generation meter to measure the generation from your FIT system, and nothing else. Your service meter has nothing to do with the FIT generation payments unless you've opted for metered export rather than deemed export payments. If the company saying you couldn't have a 3ph meter didnt explain that then you might want to put them at the bottom of the pile of potential suppliers??

You're welcome. Even with a FIT system you can chop and change pretty much what you like since OFGEM changed the FIT scheme rules 18 months ago. You can change components not like for like, increase or decrease capacity and add batteries with some restrictions. About the only thing you can't do is move a system to another property. If you add capacity you only get paid for the original accreditted capacity. Once youve changed stuff just let your FIT payer know

That's only the case if youre altering the FIT accreditted system. If youre adding a second system, as the OP is, it doesnt alter the accreditation of the FIT system so no interaction with your FIT payer is needed. Different matter with the DNO who has to preapprove anything more than 16amp potential export, with potential being the important bit. Whilst you can say your battery pack is set to zero export, your DNO will likely need proof. In our case SPEN told me it would be £350 to come out and witness the export limitation was actually compliant with G100. That's on top of the G99 fee. No need for an MCS install to connect to the grid, just a part P spark

I registered without doing any academy modules and so did my son in law.

I registered as an installer to set up monitoring. Yet to configure everything but have installer access. Son in law did the same to set up monitoring for the system we installed for them. If youve added a second battery to an existing system then you might hit problems if the original system is already being monitored. The original system will likely be set up under the original jnstallers account. You'll likely have to get SE to move the inverter to your account but maybe 2 accounts can access the same inverter??

That's an interesting conversation. I've had a similar conversation with Octopus and was told they couldnt accept combined export from both MCS and non MCS PV through the same meter. I just found similar statements to those youve found in OFGEMs guidance for SEG licensees that allow them to pay for non MCS export. I think I'll go back to them and ask again

Never heard of easy PV so just googled it and it seems like it's a midsummer wholesale product and they welcome suggestions for improvement. If it doesnt do what you want, maybe call them and let them know what the issue is. Maybe you're missing a trick??

The batteries would still be charged from an oversized array so total export would still increase aside from efficiency losses and the users ability to self consume more with a battery. Same total kwh with batteries just pushed through the meter at different times?? The risk of it being checked/monitored is hypothetical but fairly easy to do

Adding panels facing any direction still bumps up your generation and if the self consumption proportion remains the same then your export will go up over what a typical 2kw system would do. Whether it's detectable or if anyone even checks is another question.

You do know that youll only get export payments on the MCS registered capacity?? You can add as many panels as you want but if your annual export is equivalent to a system obviously larger than 2kw then its easy for your SEG payer to spot and stop all payments

OPs mentioned "feeding the house first" and repeatedly said grid tied?? Having the PV hooked up just to a diverter seems a waste as theres no where for the PV to go once the DHW tank is hot, or is that not how it works??

Yep, MCS(or equivalent) for paid export. I'm sure someone posted about there being another outfit that does the certification but can't remember the name.

No, you can DIY the lot. I know of a 100% DIY install with a G98 signed off by the DIYer. DNO accepted it. It's not legit as it should have a spark test and certify but it's seems DNO doesnt care/notice. Other DNOs may be more scrupulous but I think they're likely to be pretty appreciative that someone's bothered to notify them regardless whos signature is on the form??

Maybe I missed something but OP has/wants E7, so grid tied??