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PV production longest day


Johnnyt

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Here's my production profile for today 21 June.

10.02kW array over 3 orientations.

God I wish I could get hold of that bloody Solar edge battery and DHW divert.

 

You can see the clipping as my inverter is 6Kw but the benefit of the dc coupled battery is that the excess energy can do direct to the battery uninverted.

Interested to see what other have produced today.

 

1525866804_PVproduction21June22.thumb.jpg.d94e754a61989a3c1471f3d060f4ec72.jpg

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39 minutes ago, Johnnyt said:

Here's my production profile for today 21 June.

!0.02kW array over 3 orientations.

God I wish I could get hold of that bloody Solar edge battery and DHW divert.

 

You can see the clipping as my inverter is 6Kw but the benefit of the dc coupled battery is that the excess energy can do direct to the battery uninverted.

Intersted to see what other have produced today.

 

1525866804_PVproduction21June22.thumb.jpg.d94e754a61989a3c1471f3d060f4ec72.jpg

That's pretty amazing. Is that a 10kWp array? 

 

That's the equivalent of 16 quid today if the kWh price is 0.27p right? 

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That's right but I only currently use about 12kWh  in the day and have a overnight usage of about 5kWh.

I am exporting circa 40+ kWh with no fit and no SEG as the system has yet to receive MCS sign off as I am awaiting a battery and hot water divert.

I got the installers to get it up a running last November as the cost of electricity was rising but the system needs finishing off.

I  am turning the immersion heater on manually, it's a 4.5kW element so I only turn it on when I am at max generation otherwise I would be paying for the shortfall from the grid.

That said though a have a 500l tank full of water at 55C today

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21st June.

3.8kWp array  - appears to have shunted  13.42kWh into our SunAmp ( its max capacity is about 13.7kWh).

Luckily the SunAmp was 'empty' at the beginning of the PV generating period.

 

I say ...appears to have...  because I don't trust the Eddi data-reporting system.

21stJune.thumb.jpg.82508c86fd5cf948aa842cc873412646.jpg

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I got 35kWh of solar yesterday.

 

Accidentally exported 2.5kWh

14.5kWh went into the 300lt HW tank (was 80degC in the middle)

5.4kWh went into the Heating tank

5-6kWh went into the car

The rest must have gone to running the house between 4am and 9pm when I was generating. 

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18 hours ago, Johnnyt said:

That's right but I only currently use about 12kWh  in the day and have a overnight usage of about 5kWh.

I am exporting circa 40+ kWh with no fit and no SEG as the system has yet to receive MCS sign off as I am awaiting a battery and hot water divert.

I got the installers to get it up a running last November as the cost of electricity was rising but the system needs finishing off.

I  am turning the immersion heater on manually, it's a 4.5kW element so I only turn it on when I am at max generation otherwise I would be paying for the shortfall from the grid.

That said though a have a 500l tank full of water at 55C today

 

Very nice. 

 

As someone who is looking to get panels, the 5kWh overnight seems way more than I thought. Do you have loads of things running?

 

I'm also amazed at the immersion heater power needed. I really didn't know it would be as much as that. I was thinking of just getting a wifi switch and trying to do something clever with IFTT or something like that to make sure it cuts out if there isn't enough excess, but I've no idea if that would work. I guess it's OK with a battery if that + generation provides enough and the battery would have enough overnight anyway. One guy who came around said that there were loads of issues with automatic diversion so they don't want to touch them, but they'd install a wifi switch (without it being part of the contract / guarantee) as it's easy. 

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We have an 8.5 kW array with Enphase micro inverters, and managed over 50 kWh yesterday. Looks like about the third best day this year for us (best was 52.2 kWh on 14 June).

 

Much better than the same date last year (the line on the same graph).

image.thumb.png.4ecf2a1fce2ee7c3de16c86f1fec7b64.png

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2 hours ago, MrTWales said:

One guy who came around said that there were loads of issues with automatic diversion so they don't want to touch them, but they'd install a wifi switch (without it being part of the contract / guarantee) as it's easy. 

 

That's strange. It's such a simple bit of kit to design... So simple I recently designed my own. The problem with just using a smart switch (apart from switching a 3kW load) is ensuring that you don't import power by accident. You need to turn off quickly in response to the balance of import/export. This requires keeping track of the energy buffer (sometimes called a Joule bucket) that's part of every electricity meter.

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1 minute ago, Radian said:

 

That's strange. It's such a simple bit of kit to design... So simple I recently designed my own. The problem with just using a smart switch (apart from switching a 3kW load) is ensuring that you don't import power by accident. You need to turn off quickly in response to the balance of import/export. This requires keeping track of the energy buffer (sometimes called a Joule bucket) that's part of every electricity meter.

 

Just looking at my notes, he referred to Immersun as something that has been used but they'd clearly felt it wasn't worth the hassle given the issues people have had. Fair enough really, at least they were honest.

 

My take is that I only use the gas for 30 mins three times a week to heat the water, so I don't want to overengineer anything. The water tank is quite new so barely loses any heat, but I'd still want to use any excess solar if I can. If a battery can provide 4kw max output and will be full by the evening then I think I'd be OK, even if the panels are providing not that much as the panels + battery should cover the power draw? 

 

I've never used IFTTT but if it works with the inverter and wifi switch then maybe it's possible to set up some clever triggers?

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5 hours ago, MrTWales said:

 

Very nice. 

 

As someone who is looking to get panels, the 5kWh overnight seems way more than I thought. Do you have loads of things running?

 

I'm also amazed at the immersion heater power needed. I really didn't know it would be as much as that. I was thinking of just getting a wifi switch and trying to do something clever with IFTT or something like that to make sure it cuts out if there isn't enough excess, but I've no idea if that would work. I guess it's OK with a battery if that + generation provides enough and the battery would have enough overnight anyway. One guy who came around said that there were loads of issues with automatic diversion so they don't want to touch them, but they'd install a wifi switch (without it being part of the contract / guarantee) as it's easy. 

I do have quite a heavy load overnight, 2 fridges and 2 freezers and I don't tend to switch tv's etc off at the wall.

The immersion load is through choice as my intention was to maximize excess generation as much as possibl5e so I opted for the 5kW diverter from solar edge rather than the 3kW, that is when it arrives!

 

As the diverter would use the excess power upto 5kW my choice of immersion was the higher the better as if I fitted a standard 3kW immersion there would be power going back to the grid anything above base load plus 3kW.

 

Generated 59.78kWh today and exported for sweet FA 46kWh 🤥.

 

Perversley, I may be. looking forward to winter.

 

.

 

 

 

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9 hours ago, Johnnyt said:

Generated 59.78kWh today and exported for sweet FA 46kWh 🤥.

 

Which other people near you paid £14 to consume. You desperately need that diverter. As you already know, once the weather shifts to anything less than predictable blue skies you run the risk of unnecessarily burning electricity. I only mention it because other people may be thinking of resorting to manual divert.

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Yeh, as above, get a diverter! I have a Solic 200 and it's been great so far. It only handles up to 16A though and does tend to throttle if it gets too warm so care needed where you site it.

 

It put 335kWh into my HW tank in May. It paid for itself in 2 months! It even managed to put a few kWh in in December looking back!

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16 hours ago, MrTWales said:

Just looking at my notes, he referred to Immersun as something that has been used but they'd clearly felt it wasn't worth the hassle given the issues people have had. Fair enough really, at least they were honest.

 

I believe there were several documented problems with the Immersun unit, at least in its older incarnation. Its design may have been updated since.

 

Mine (bought about 7 years ago) died in less than two years, and wasn't covered under warranty because the original company had gone under and had its assets bought out in the meantime.

 

My electrician installed several Immersun units over the same period, and then stopped recommending them after several failed in service.

 

I think it's a little narrow-minded to reject an entire product category just because of historical experiences with one particular product. In the right installation, some units have a payback period that's shorter than the warranty period, so you have little to lose.

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21 minutes ago, Conor said:

I hit exactly 2MW yesterday... Installed in early March so on track to hit the PVGIS prediction of 4.5MW per year. Tho April was the sunniest ever here...

How big is your array, 2 hectares.

Think you mean MWh.

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I’m going to win this contest !

Doubling my pv array as we speak with optimisers and SE battery going in . Suck on that fellas . Around 12 month wait for batteries now ( facial expression of me going ‘ waaaaaa ‘ and doing wanky hand movements ) 

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Not going to lie, but I'm amazed at the comments re water heating. For a typical family, is this really such a huge deal? I get that diverting excess to an electric car can be huge, or to a garden pool or something, but if you want water at 56 degrees (or whatever) and have a well insultated typical sized water tank then do you really need to divert loads of power to maintain this?

 

When I looked at gas useage, it was a tiny amount in the summer so the water heating (3 x 30 mins slots a week) + gas cooking on the hob was a small fraction of the overall use even though heating isn't on for around half of the year. I get the feeling that I'm probably understating how long an immersion heater has to be on, perhaps.

 

Just to expand on this for fun, my usage over a year was as below. There is some holiday in the summer which distorts, and the wife + kids visit my inlaws a lot and when I'm home alone I get loads of take-aways and hardly ever put the water on (so hardly any gas useage), but still the huge variance in gas use wasn't something I expected. 

 

    Electric Gas Gas
Start End kWh m3 kWh
22/08/2021 21/09/2021 269 12 134
22/07/2021 22/08/2021 192 4 45
22/06/2021 22/07/2021 274 1 11
22/05/2021 22/06/2021 231 24 268
22/04/2021 22/05/2021 305 84 940
22/03/2021 22/04/2021 340 123 1,376
22/02/2021 22/03/2021 300 183 2,047
22/01/2021 22/02/2021 405 212 2,372
22/12/2020 22/01/2021 448 246 2,752
22/11/2020 22/12/2020 328 184 2,058
22/10/2020 22/11/2020 372 117 1,309
22/09/2020 21/10/2020 298 75 839
Edited by MrTWales
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50 minutes ago, jack said:

 

I believe there were several documented problems with the Immersun unit, at least in its older incarnation. Its design may have been updated since.

 

Mine (bought about 7 years ago) died in less than two years, and wasn't covered under warranty because the original company had gone under and had its assets bought out in the meantime.

 

My electrician installed several Immersun units over the same period, and then stopped recommending them after several failed in service.

 

I think it's a little narrow-minded to reject an entire product category just because of historical experiences with one particular product. In the right installation, some units have a payback period that's shorter than the warranty period, so you have little to lose.

 

I actually called them up yesteday, just chasing for a quote as they did visit well over a month ago, and the guy said that they get loads of calls from people who had installs from companies that no longer exists and need something fixed. I'm guessing that they see issues with diverters fairly often, but as you say I'm sure that some of them work fine now. 

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13 minutes ago, Johnnyt said:

Mr Pocster

 

How big before and after, your array that is.😉

When did you order your energybank, I've been waiting 12months plus already.

An excellent question ! 😁

Array around 4Kw before ; so by end of tomorrow 8kw ish ( (expletive deleted) off @SteamyTea - unit appear as however they want ) .

Optimisers should make a difference to 1 side as it suffers from some shading .

Because I’m a clever sod I ordered my pv and solar edge battery about 8 months ago .

12 month wait is common now . Problem going forward according to installers is they’ll have plenty of work but no kit ……

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