Wil

Interesting as an option, but as I'm due VAT, it makes the Squirrel Pods £16,800, so a whole £250 more then having someone install and certify. I was under the impression each PW could discharge at 5kW sustained, 7kW peak? WPD have written and confirmed I can have 11.04kWp of generation and battery units (nil export) can be connected. Which my installer seems to be taking to mean infinite batteries as long as they don't export. Given that I can self consume it all a lot of the time and save it for a rainy day on others, this doesn't seem to be a drawback unless there's some sort of decent FIT for installed systems suddenly appearing.

But wouldn’t that be the case with any cells I chose? If I cycle them on offsetting for 10 years, that’s all I can expect from them? So I’d need to install that 26kWh of capacity for under £10k to break even at current rates. As mentioned before, it’s not all about breaking even though. What I probably should look at is, what’s my option after 10 years- can I directly swap the cells in the PW or do I have to start from scratch. Hopefully by then V2G will be a functioning beast and I won’t need much home storage.

Cost the difference of E7 and day at 18p/kWh or price the day unit of electricity at 18p/kWh?

Responding to an earlier question around Solics, I have the solic diverter which is great, but overheats in the electrical cupboard and self-limits the amount it puts into the immersion resulting in occasionally not diverting as much as it could. I need to find a way to move it to somewhere where it doesn’t overheat. Otherwise it’s been excellent and has paid for itself in around 2 years. I also have a Shelly 1PM in parallel (previously a simple timer) so that I can boost the DHW or run it for a couple of hours at E7 to make sure the DHW is in place for the morning. Seemed like the easiest way of diverting but retaining the ability to boost/ timed DHW without pressing the green button on the front of the Solic.

I have a EZ-VIZ doorbell (and a couple of Shelly 1’s to control my gate) in direct line of sight, outdoors, about 40m from my nearest AP (a UniFi LR disc). It’s constantly reporting cr4p signal and it regularly goes offline if it rains. If I could hardwire it, I would every time. I just think the design of the doorbells compromises the antennae and most are designed for distances like yours, within the coverage of a single Wifi network. Sorry that doesn’t help much, but until you’ve experimented by moving the UDR to the inside of the door (probably easier than moving the doorbell?) then it’s going to be hard to identify the culprit for interference.

It’s complicated. 🙂 I have 3 phase. Self installed 5kWp solar on phase C (along with House and most loads). Two massive 3phase ASHPs and a couple of 3ph bits of kit lying around which are very sporadic use. So net metering is currently a part of my life. I’ve just never been sure that my Elster A1140 meter is actually set up to do it. I have approval (or rather G98 gives approval) for 3x3.68kWp but this still doesn’t cover a single PW, let alone 2. @Nickfromwales Can you declare what your kit cost would be for the Iconica strings and AGM storage (if you were buying on the open market rather than any favours/ supplier rates that may apply)? I’ve just checked and I’m actually on 20.7p Night, 30p Day. So assuming I could offset all 26kWh every day, just using offsetting would give £949 saving per year and therefore pay back the FIRST PW in 10 years. This is likely to only get better with upcoming tariffs, so assuming the installer can sort the G99 (he’s still looking for the paperwork!) then I’m pretty tempted.

They are WILDY irritating to deal with both for install and any ongoing issues (and don't get me going on their value for existing customers vs new customer deals). However the service once it is installed is pretty much excellent and well worth having. Overall worth the initial pain. I think.

Now there's a good question. I've asked the installer to ensure compliance and his approach is export limitation. While I know a lot about it, I'm outsourcing responsibility to the installer for this. I know he applied last year but I've seen none of the conversation between him and the DNO. The DNO gave me a G98 limit or upgrade the T/X option (survey and costings to be paid by me) when I asked previously. Agree on £7.5k buying a lot of electricity! This is absolutely my dilemma. As above, in winter the battery would be empty by 10am 😞 One of the additional benefits of the PW I could see it that it works across 3phases. And will import on phases to balance export on another if need be. This obviously only works with net metering though and that's a complete unknown with my meter.

Hey, I just checked my quote. It was generated in April '21, so actually not that quick!! Shows how long I've been faffing with this! In winter I use up to 100kWh a day by the time my ASHPs have had their fill. Using up the full 26kWh capacity isn't an issue at all once the heating is on. I suppose this pushes my calculations to better payback for 2/3 of the year. The equations are always more complicated than any simplification but all of this should work to improve payback. I was trying to be deliberately pessimistic in my calculations to allow for some enjoyment of bettering it 🙂 The solar will make a big difference much of the time and in summer I'd effectively expect to not need import for days at a time. With the calcs above the capacity of a single PW is 13kWh so limits me to offsetting 91p per day so payback of 27 years.

Hmm, so I have a quote from earlier in the year for 2xPW2, first one with gateway at £9250 installed, second add on at £7400 installed. The installer now has them in stock and my place in the queue so it's decision time. I've been um-ing and ah-ing about it for so damn long, I'm still trying to do the maths to work out if it's worth it. I have 5kWp of solar, but discounting that and charging the batteries at E7 rate (currently 20p) and discharging to cover day useage at 27p/kWh. Most days outside of summer I use 20-30kWh 12-20 if I don't charge the PHEV (which is done at E7 anyway) and excluding heating, which I can't hope to cover with battery storage. Not taking solar charging and into account for worst case scenario: so for each kWh offset it's currently saving 7p. for 12kWh per day it's saving £0.84. for 365 days is £306 per year in saving if I purely offset E7 rates. so a payback of 54 years 😞 For 20kWh offset it's 32years. Now my rates aren't fixed and I'm going to get done in October. Also I do have the PV which will make a significant contribution through summer/ shoulders and I have the opportunity to add more (at additional cost). And I would get the benefits of UPS in a power outage etc. It's just can I justify these minor extras knowing it'll never pay back? Oh and plus, Tesla are about to launch something new and exciting, but if we never bought on the basis that there's going to be a new model along soon, I'd never buy anything!

Me too and I love it, however it’s water delivery has recently slowed to a trickle and all the descaling efforts don’t seem to be helping 😞

Me too and I love it, however it’s water delivery has recently slowed to a trickle and all the descaling efforts don’t seem to be helping 😞

My panels are about 30 degrees inclined and just W of South, so I usually see peak power in the 1-3pm zone. Having cleaned the panels, the only thing I can think of is either atmospheric (it's clouded over this afternoon) or the heat degrading performance. I have seen the panels hit 5kWp previously in cooler temps, but this tends to be between clouds. Hard to tell if they can sustain it as the sustained sunshine seems to come with some excess heat! I'd love to try the simple solar thermal, and yes, the paddling pool has been out all day and the only users seem to be the bees. Who then need rescued.

I've just been up on the roof scrubbing my solar panels. They were filthy after the farmer's harvesting around us coated them in dust but I still don't get much improvement in performance. They're on a tin roof and my 5kWp of panels is maxing out at about 4kWp during this hot weather. It's really irritating that there's a 20% loss in performance when they get warm. They are on a tin roof and it's cooking* hot up there though. * This being a standard unit of temperature somewhere after 'really' and before 'nuclear'...

Absolute madness. I’m awaiting our 3rd survey. 3 bats in and out in the first one, 3 in the second but ‘droppings indicate possible maternity roost’. It just seems like absolute theft to keep going with all these surveys. We’ll do our third in a couple of weeks time and then get planning in. Am dreading what the response is, even though the impact to the bats is minor and only during the roof alteration works and the space goes back to ‘as existing’ as soon as we’ve finished! Sadly it does seem we’re beholden to the ecologists and their wish to charge for another survey! At least there’s no mention in yours about preventing the works altogether.

Do you have a link to some information. Google brings me an awful lot of car rads but no JAG ones...

Hmm, needs some evidence that one, otherwise he's relying on 'she'll be right, mate' levels of advice...

My son is addicted to his channel. Basically I'd love to have half his skills and the time and sponsorship to come up with some ofhis batsh*t ideas. He was on BBC news a week or two as he finally got planning for all his underground tunnelling etc.

I second the CCA, have several of them providing whole house synchronised music with small type D amplifiers (Lepai if memory serves). Probably not audiophile quality, but more than enough for me.

Now that is good news, they might finally get around to changing our rubbish little T/x. I wonder how ridiculous the connection charge of getting our 60A fuses changed to 100A fuses will be then!

Despite asking for two, I was persuaded to have a single immersion for PV dump at the bottom of my tank. This means the 300l tank can sometimes take up to 14kWh of PV dump until it’s up to 80degrees (stat 2/3 of the way up) and the immersion stat cuts out on overheat. This works great for dumping loads of heat in summer and in winter I find that what little diversion I get tends to heat the top of the tank by stratification anyway. The lower the immersion, the more capacity it has to go at unless you have some way of overcoming the stratification (I’ve not tested that theory so maybe it doesn’t matter where your immersion is, it all gets to the same temp in the end for a given input). But having a second immersion at the top allows you to heat the top section quickly for boosting HW for additional guests etc.

Or the link to the oversized 4kW unit?

I have several Shelly EM and 3EM products and can confirm as standard they use the cloud. You can disable this and have them internal only to your network but you then need to run some sort of Home Assistant server to keep all the logging features. I have no issue with Shelly logging how horrendous my energy usage is for the ease. The HA server is a WIP. I have solar and a diverter as well and they seem to work well. I’ve not done an exact comparison so can’t confirm accuracy against the meter. I have heard some on the forums complaining about the 3phase metering aspect, but can’t remember exactly what this issue was.

I'm going through exactly this at the moment only with Natterjack bats. 'possible maternity roost' due to loads of poo. Actually 2-3 bats doing circuits each evening. The bats are awesome and we love watching them, but there's about 20 other perfectly suitable existing roosts around the farm for the little darlings. The heater has got to be taking the urine.

Sadly I'm already talking to the CEO who is insisting I send it back. But your point is exactly correct, I wouldn't take a boiler off the wall to RTB so why an ASHP. I'm lucky I have a second and the technical know-how to change them over. If I was a standard consumer I'd be screwed. I wish it was, I have one site which has had 8 compressors and associated PCBs go in the last year! I asked Chris about this before I bought it too. Ah well, they're still helping at least so I suppose I better go get on with palletising it...