Kelvin

These cable monkey cabinets are on the dearer side but they are very well made. I bought a previous one from Amazon you had to assemble and it was made from tin foil so returned it. The issue I had is I couldn’t fit a full depth cabinet as the MVHR unit is in the way. This is a 320mm deep cabinet but it only has 230mm of working depth inside from the mounting rails to the back of the panel which made cabling it hard work with CAT6a cable as it’s a bit inflexible. If also doesn’t have any inbuilt cable routing that some of the bigger cabinets have. It’s not as tidy inside as I like. At some point I’ll tidy it up. Winter weekend job.

The technicians that do the work are generally always fine. It’s the bureaucracy within the organisation that is painful to deal with.

Loads of people round us have Starlink. None of them have any technical knowledge and a few asked me if I could install it for them. I explained that it’s so easy that they’d be more than capable of doing it themselves and all bar one managed it. The one that didn’t had a slightly more complex network setup and requirement so I did all that for him. It is very easy to install, the support is pretty good just a little slow and it’s also surprisingly reliable. It’s also fast and has gotten faster for us over the last three years particularly latency.

If the external junction box for the ONT has to go on an outside wall that rules it out going on the house as I’m not having them drill through my wall. Therefore bringing it into the garage will be my best option. However OR are an awful company to deal with so I shan’t be holding my breath that any of this will happen anytime soon.

That’s not true. Their support is ticket based via the app. It’s not the quickest process but it works. I had a problem when we moved the Starlink dish from the rental to the house (it was randomly disconnecting) they sent me a new cable FOC (which I knew wasn’t the problem but they have a process) and then sent a completely knew system (router, dish, mount, and cables) This ended up being also FOC. While waiting on that to arrive it started working reliably again but they still sent the replacement and told me to keep it just in case. It really is very straightforward to set up and use and quite used friendly. We’ve had it for almost three years and that is the only problem we’ve had with it. The issue it can have is it can lose connection in very heavy rain (like torrential) and I expect it will struggle in heavy snowfall. Neither happens often though. Regards OR. Interestingly out of nowhere their subcontractor has been all over our area laying ducting and pulling fibre cable. We now have it relatively nearby and the OR status has changed from no plans to we are building in your area a will update you soon. Not expecting anything to happen anytime soon but it’s gone from never to possibly. I extended a duct to the roadside of the house just in case and can take that out to the boundary do they care what type of duct it is though? It’s smooth wall flexible electric cable ducting. I could also possibly get it to the garage via a pole.

Do you mean the Loxone cabinet or the comms cabinet? The Loxone cabinet was from @Rob99on here. The comms cabinet, shelves, patch panel, and PDU was from Cable Monkey. I have abother one in the garage. All the other kit was from various places or I already had.

I just had a portaloo that was serviced weekly and I hosed it out in between if it had been particularly wet and therefore muddy. The trades all sit in their vans. Even when the garage was up right at the beginning and I said they could use it they never bothered. It was warm, had a table and chairs, power, running water, a kettle, coffee machine, fridge, microwave and a decent internet connection. It was just me and my dog that used it.

We live on the North side of a valley. We can see the rain work its way across the valley towards us. Typically it takes 30-40 minutes from seeing the rain way off in the distance to it hitting the house. It was great when we were building as it gave you time to get stuff packed up. One advantage of timber kits is you can get to ‘weathertight’ pretty quickly.

It’s certainly weather related. But we get a lot of weather here. Admittedly it’s been incredibly dry for a while (getting on for a year of well below the mean rainfall*) but it can still be very overcast. We also can get a lot of morning mist so I was expecting to miss the morning sun on a lot of days. However it’s generating enough to power the house and charge the batteries most days. In fact yesterday was the first day I had to charge the batteries from the grid in the cheap window for the next day since it was installed. * Off topic (but weather related) I fret a bit about water as we’re on a borehole. It’s generally assumed that boreholes are a more predictable and reliable source of water. This depends on the geology of course. I was chatting with someone recently who is converting an old hall. His builder lives on the south coast. He’s been on a 120m borehole as his primary potable water source for 10 years. It’s run dry. Chap I was chatting with didn’t know any of the specifics about the borehole so it might be in poor location or always had a poor yield or was badly drilled etc but nevertheless boreholes don’t often dry up. One swallow does not a summer make and all that of course.

As there’s an ongoing water supply constraint in parts of Scotland (East and North East mostly) I’ve been doing a bit of reading about boreholes more just to understand a bit more about them as we have one and water security is an increasing worry. I came across this excellent report. https://www.icrc.org/sites/default/files/external/doc/en/assets/files/other/icrc_002_0998.pdf

No the top of the cliff faces south. Best orientation for bee hives is south east or south to catch the morning sun and get them active. On the PV. My current East/West array is doing better than I expected. It’s generated 1.15MWh since 15 July.

The extra £2k was just for the battery system. Roughly the cost of a whole other battery module for the system we went with. The PV quotes were all very similar.

I tried really hard to ground mount ours but while we have a reasonable amount of space none of it is ideal for ground mounting. I even had a go in the digger and created a level flat area on top of the cliff and built up the bank to hide it. Put down gravel and dropped off three bags of ballast for the console tubs. Other half adamant they mustn’t spoil the view. However, our cliff is soft sandstone that is always moving a bit with bits falling off it. Therefore running cables down it and across the burn then 80m back to the garage isn’t the best idea. I’m thinking of putting some bee hives there instead. I have since cleared the top corner of the plot which is much closer to the garage and an easier run back to it and I reckon I can get 10 panels in there south facing and maybe a few more at the front. But I’m with Gus if you can avoid them on the house roof and keep the batteries out of the house then do that. We have friends whose new self build went on fire due to a cabling fault with their PV panels. Had to rebuild the house and then couldn’t live in it.

We had a scary moment fitting the first long 3G one. I was in the inside and two guys on the outside. As we hadn’t quite understood the guide we didn’t fully understand how to set it properly. One of the lads on the outside opened the window at angle and we heard a loud click like something had broken. So I’m on the inside holding it up with one of the other guys holding the instructions up for me to read and then yelling at them to do the same thing to the other side. RTFM before fitting it.

The principle is sound, the economics marginal although with our system we were able to get it financed through Home Energy Scotland so for us the economics are fine. The longevity who knows. 10 year warranties are great but 10 years is a long time both for the technology and for the energy market.

As far as which system to go for it’s a bit of a minefield and depends on what you want from it, cost, and what the local installers to you typically fit. I got 6 quotes for five different systems. I did originally want the GivEnergy AiO that @JohnMo has but I couldn’t get a local installer to quote as they have all pulled out of installing them citing too many issues, poor support and a difficult commissioning process. The company we went with said they’ve removed two GivEnergy systems and replaced with something else. I got quotes for: SolarEdge - very dear and would have taken up a lot of space for half the battery storage but the 3 phase system is modular and better designed imo. Supports whole or partial backup. Very good PV optimiser solution. Givenergy AiO - Couldn’t get a local installer to quote. Contacted Giv and they put me onto a Manchester based company so that was a non-starter. Was the cheapest quote by far. Expandability of the AiO system didn’t seem possible but I didn’t investigate it further. They do stackable batteries and 3 phase inverters. Very good warranty. Tesla Powerwall 3 - Much better than the PW2. Safer too as it uses different battery chemistry. The inverter size can be changed in software so no need to replace the inverter if you got a bigger export limit from your DNO for example. It supports 3 phase but can only backup a single phase. You’d have to buy a PW3 for each phase if you wanted wholehome backup. It also doesn’t switch over instantaneously during a power cut. Was very good value for money. I was expecting it to be dear but it wasn’t. Fox - The dearest quote I got by almost £2000 after haggling. This was for their EP11 battery system which took up a lot of space. The home backup option was a bit confusing as I couldn’t get a straight answer from the installer. I also found the Fox website hard to navigate. Sigenergy - I got two quotes for this system and they were within a few hundred pounds of each other and priced quite competitively at very slightly dearer than Tesla (this was for a 16kWh battery system) I eventually went with this option and added an extra battery which was still cheaper than both the Fox and SolarEdge quotes with twice the storage and a home backup gateway. However Sigenergy are very new to the market (2022) and their kit has consequently less real World field testing so there’s some risk there. The installers love it because it’s very easy and quick to install and commissioning is literally minutes rather than hours with the other systems. They have a comprehensive range of options for single and 3 phase. The battery safety systems seem quite comprehensive which was a big plus for me. They do have a warranty requirement where it needs to be connected to their cloud service and if it isn’t for 90 days then it automatically goes into a safe operating mode whatever that is. It is very popular at the moment and some of the kit is in short supply. All of these systems need to be connected to the internet if you want to use their app to communicate with the system so you’ll need to provision a connection in the garage if there isn’t one WiFi or ethernet and ethernet is likely better. You also need to ask the installers to be clear on exactly the cabling each system needs and how that translates to your situation especially if the system equipment is split between the garage and house as mine is (inverter and batteries in the garage, gateway in the house) The Sigenergy system seemed to be the easiest to cable.

We have a Sigenergy system. 12kWh inverter and 24kWh of batteries and gateway (for power cuts) 19 panels mounted East/West on garage with a plan to add more ground mounted. Our peak load with everything on can hit 9kW. Background load is 600W. We consume around 18kWh of electricity per day right now. Those last two figures will obviously increase in the winter months. I’ve set some limits on our battery SoC so we have 20kWh available. The gateway provides wholehome backup as an uninterruptible power supply and it works seamlessly and the inverted can peak to more than 12kW for 10 secs on switchover. Mounting the PV panels on your garage roof is a good decision. I wouldn’t fit the batteries outside. While some of these systems can be mounted outside I’m unconvinced over the long term unless they are sheltered in some way. Some batteries have heaters built in (not all and not all within the same range so make sure you ask) The Sigenergy batteries have a fairly comprehensive physical safety system that they market as 5 layers of safety. They also need to have free space around them rather than mounted inside something. A lot of the newer systems are modular and are actually quite compact. Ours is 84cm wide by 124cm high and sits 33cm off the wall (batteries and inverter) We’re on Octopus Intelligent Go and their Outgoing tariff so we get paid when we export.

https://www.futureautomation.co.uk/Enclosure/Loxone-Lighting-Enclosure Comes with a door and a screw on panel. This is the door fitted.

Envirograf CV30/8 from here: https://passivefireproducts.com/category/passive-fire-protection-products

I’d put in a request for a mains supply to Severn Trent to get confirmation whether it can be supplied or not and an idea of the cost. I’d definitely look to have my own water supply. In fact I wouldn’t buy a plot without it. I have an elderly neighbour who gets her water from another neighbour. That supply has run into a problem and she currently has no potable water. It’s been fine for years and now it isn’t. She can’t drill her own borehole as there are two very nearby and none of the companies are willing to do it. Boreholes can be expensive as it depends on how deep the hole needs to be and what needs to be done to secure it and what equipment is needed to pump it out and get it it into the house. Ask the farmer for details on the current borehole that provides the supply. It’s no guarantee that a new borehole will be the same design, ours is very different from our neighbour who is a few hundred metres away below us. For example ours is 147m deep his is 80m. To drill ours the vendor paid £18,000 and I paid £9000 for all the plant. A shallow hole with a simple install could be half that or less. I was chatting to a builder when I was in Stratford Upon Avon this weekend. He lives near Hastings and lives off grid. He has a borehole at 120m. Been fine for 10 years but ran dry last week. Boreholes aren’t a guaranteed water supply unfortunately. Personally I’d prefer to be on a mains supply given a choice. Water insecurity is a bit stressful. Another neighbour with a private supply loses sleep over it. I don’t so much as I’m relatively confident our supply will be fine but it’s not guaranteed and we don’t have an easy plan B.

Our architect put in metres of the stuff in the drawings. Thousands of pounds of it. I questioned it and then spoke with my BCO and we went through the regs and what he needed to see to comply. Saved us thousands of pounds. BCO was very pragmatic.

I assume a full G99/G100 application rather than fast track? I have some options on adding a ground mounted array. I could add 20 panels on top of a cliff at the bottom of the garden. It has some complication being 80m from where the equipment is and has to cross a burn. Alternatively I have another couple of areas where I could add around 10 panels in two different groups which is beside the garage. Just need to do the sums on all the options. Alternatively I do nothing and just use what I have.

What did you do to get the limit removed?

We’ve got a 6kW export limit. The max generation I’ve seen is 7.5kW In theory in might go a touch higher than that but with an East/West array there’s only a small window where both sides of the roof are at their maximum output. The inverter can take four strings and I plan on adding an array on some ground in front of the garage and possibly another string behind the garage (both would be South facing) so we will then reach a point where we are generating more than the export limit unless I can get it raised. We did a fast track G99 application so I might have another go next year.

I just applied for outgoing so a few weeks away before I can start getting paid. At the moment I’ve mostly been self-consuming since 14 July when it was installed. It’s generated 1.01MWh and of that 227kWh has been exported. I could have reduced that a bit by having the EV connected all the time to consume some of the excess. I did put the system into AI mode for a while to see what it did. Starting from 100% SoC it exported the majority of the solar production. Then a few hours out from the cheap tariff period (Intelligent Octopus Go) it discharged whatever was left in the battery to the grid and charged it back up during the cheap period and the house load was grid supplied. It varied the times it did all of this depending on SoC of the battery and it seemed to learn our consumption pattern. One of the problems I see with this is it will cycle the battery much more so not sure I’ll use it.