FiT after March 2019

[Jeremy Harris]

8 hours ago, Triassic said:

Could we also have a photo of this.

 

It's shown in this post:  https://forum.buildhub.org.uk/topic/7405-sunamp-not-heating-the-water/?do=findComment&comment=127385

 

 

There's also a source for the neon I used in this post: https://forum.buildhub.org.uk/topic/7405-sunamp-not-heating-the-water/?do=findComment&comment=127404

 

I'll take a photo of the two energy meters later today and post it.

[Jeremy Harris]

Just taken a photo of the two energy meters that I have connected to the Sunamp.  One is connected to the PV diverter, so records the energy we get from excess PV generation, the other is connected to the boost time switch so records the energy used when we boost the Sunamp during times when there isn't enough excess PV generation.

[ToughButterCup]

15 hours ago, ProDave said:

[...]

An EV and only charge it in the daytime should wrap up any excess.

 

EV ?

[newhome]

15 minutes ago, recoveringacademic said:

 

EV ?

 

Electric vehicle. 

[Triassic]

@JSHarris, sorry to be a pain, but do you have a wiring diagram and a kit list,  as I need to start buying the kit and could build it during the dark nights!

[Jeremy Harris]

Here's a rough and ready diagram, with the PEs (earths) left off for clarity (all PEs need to be carried through each box):

 

 

Some items, like the the time switch and the PV diverter, only switch the line, so the neutral is just passed through the box.  The boost switch is a 20 A DP isolator with a neon indicator, that allows the timed boost to be turned off in summer, when it most probably won't be needed, as there should be enough excess PV generation.  Using a DP switch with a neon on the load side is useful as it will light up as the PV diverter pulses power to the Sunamp, and will stay on continuously when the time switch is in boost mode.  The boost time switch is a standard, cheap, immersion heater one.  I have ours set to come on at 03:30 and off and 06:00, just to make sure that the Sunamp has enough charge for our morning showers.  If the Sunamp is already charged from excess PV generation the day before it won't draw any power during the boost time, as it will just keep it's contactor closed.

[Square Feet]

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/dec/18/solar-power-energy-firms-government

[Dreadnaught]

24 minutes ago, Square Feet said:

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/dec/18/solar-power-energy-firms-government

 

Interesting article. Choice quote (my emphasis):

 

"The government is understood to be preparing to announce a market-based replacement to the export tariff early in the new year, which would write the rules for how energy suppliers could buy the excess power, though they would not be mandated to do so."

[ProDave]

27 minutes ago, Square Feet said:

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/dec/18/solar-power-energy-firms-government

I was more interested in "The change is one of a double whammy for solar power in the UK, with energy regulator Ofgem also announcing measures on Tuesday that will see solar households pay more for their energy."

How will that work?

 

On our old house (where I am still collecting the FIT) the FIT and electricity supply are with different providers. I doubt the electricity supplier even know the house has solar PV.  I can only guess this change mentioned will probably be in the form of some network charge deducted from FIT payments?

 

[Square Feet]

21 minutes ago, Dreadnaught said:

 

Interesting article. Choice quote (my emphasis):

 

"The government is understood to be preparing to announce a market-based replacement to the export tariff early in the new year, which would write the rules for how energy suppliers could buy the excess power, though they would not be mandated to do so."

 

Yes, it does sound like it would be best to hang on and see how this plays out, though I can't see it paying anywhere near as much as FITs.

[Square Feet]

22 minutes ago, ProDave said:

I was more interested in "The change is one of a double whammy for solar power in the UK, with energy regulator Ofgem also announcing measures on Tuesday that will see solar households pay more for their energy."

How will that work?

 

On our old house (where I am still collecting the FIT) the FIT and electricity supply are with different providers. I doubt the electricity supplier even know the house has solar PV.  I can only guess this change mentioned will probably be in the form of some network charge deducted from FIT payments?

 

 

Yes that is worrying alright.  I have no love for our present Westminster Govt and no faith that they will be anything other than bastards on the side of corporate greed.  Battery storage is starting to appeal more and more....

[scottishjohn]

has anybody done the calculations on CHP units run on mains gas ,as it appears that my plots can have mains gas now -

and from what I have gleaned from here if you have mains gas its still cheaper than any other solution at this time even if only to heat water .

[Triassic]

I did wonder, given that smart meters are becoming more widely available, if the end of FiT would provide a small technology type company the opportunity to buy excess solar generation, to be sold on in bulk by them. 

[PeterW]

40 minutes ago, Triassic said:

I did wonder, given that smart meters are becoming more widely available, if the end of FiT would provide a small technology type company the opportunity to buy excess solar generation, to be sold on in bulk by them. 

 

I worked on electricity deregulation back in 1997 and back then you could set up an electricity company with one man with  just a fax machine and a phone. The core of the DTC hasn’t really changed since then, and it’s only the access rules and requirements on entry to the systems that cost money.

 

The bigger issue is now the way the spot market has changed and trading can be done by the minute, and you could find yourself on the end of a huge liability if the price went to zero or below on a sunny, breezy day where the renewables input overtook the market capacity. If you’ve agreed to buy at 3p yet you’re getting zero back, it wouldn’t be long before you could end up several £k in the red. 

[Jeremy Harris]

29 minutes ago, Triassic said:

I did wonder, given that smart meters are becoming more widely available, if the end of FiT would provide a small technology type company the opportunity to buy excess solar generation, to be sold on in bulk by them. 

 

The problem seems to be that, although "smart" meters can measure export (as can many existing ordinary digital meters) none seem to be certified to do this, and there are no plans to enable them to do this, AFAIK.  The pressure to implement "smart" metering is coming from the suppliers, who want to be able to introduce 30 minute tariff changes on the fly, to remove the risk they currently have when they buy wholesale energy on a 30 minute variable tariff and have to try and predict ahead what the mean wholesale price will be, over something like a year, when setting their retail tariffs.

 

One reason some smaller suppliers have gone to the wall seems to be that they either weren't good at predicting the wholesale price that they would have to buy in at, so set their retail tariffs too low, or that they haven't had a big enough capital buffer to allow them to ride the peaks and troughs of the market.  There are a big swings in the wholesale price, from zero up to a price not far off the retail price at times, so although it tends to average out to around 5p/kWh or thereabouts over the long term, it can be very volatile in the short term.

 

The export payment that exists at the moment, which is separate from the Feed In Tariff subsidy, is around the mean long term wholesale energy price; IIRC I think it's currently just over 5p/kWh.  I can't see any good reason why export payments shouldn't continue when the FiT subsidy stops, as it isn't a subsidy, just a legitimate payment to small-scale generators.  Before the FiT came along small-scale generators were paid for the energy they provided to the grid, so there is a precedent for this from before the subsidy system was introduced.

 

A properly certified export meter costs around £20 or so (they retail for around £30) and would be very little hassle to install (an hour's work, at the most, I'd have thought), for those who wish to be paid for the actual energy they export, rather than the deemed 50% of generation that is assumed under the FiT regime.  I'd happily pay, say, £100 for an export meter to be fitted, and then be paid the wholesale price for any energy we export.  Seems fair and reasonable to me, as I know we export more than 50% over the course of a year, so the meter would pay for itself pretty quickly.

[ProDave]

I will be fitting my own export meter.  More for curiosity to see how much "escapes" back to the grid.  That will just be an ordinary generation meter wired backwards so it only counts up when exporting.  Of course no supplier would use or trust what it says, it is purely for my own interest to see how well I am doing at self using.

[Jeremy Harris]

3 minutes ago, ProDave said:

I will be fitting my own export meter.  More for curiosity to see how much "escapes" back to the grid.  That will just be an ordinary generation meter wired backwards so it only counts up when exporting.  Of course no supplier would use or trust what it says, it is purely for my own interest to see how well I am doing at self using.

 

 

If you fit an Elster A100C (about £30) you can very easily just fit an IR receiver over the IrDA transmit port on the front and read out all the internal registers into the device of your choosing.  The neat thing about the Elster is that it continuously transmits serial data from this port, and you can read both import and export energy from this at any time, along with a fair bit of other data.  There's a guide giving the data format here: https://www.rotwang.co.uk/projects/meter.html

 

I have one fitted in our incoming supply and can read import and export data and log it to the house monitoring system.

[newhome]

I think that once the FIT payment goes and battery storage prices decrease those with solar will be more inclined to want to add battery storage. To that end some energy companies may start to look at ways of retaining that ‘lost’ energy that previously would have gone back to the grid. This offering from EDF is along those lines, although I’m not sure how many people will want EDF to take their storage at their convenience! 

 

https://www.edfenergy.com/for-home/battery-storage?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=cpm&utm_campaign=powervault

 

[ProDave]

17 minutes ago, JSHarris said:

 

 

If you fit an Elster A100C (about £30) you can very easily just fit an IR receiver over the IrDA transmit port on the front and read out all the internal registers into the device of your choosing.  The neat thing about the Elster is that it continuously transmits serial data from this port, and you can read both import and export energy from this at any time, along with a fair bit of other data.  There's a guide giving the data format here: https://www.rotwang.co.uk/projects/meter.html

 

I have one fitted in our incoming supply and can read import and export data and log it to the house monitoring system.

The ones I have bought are Landys & Gyr E110.  I set out to buy 2 generation meters and found this guy on ebay selling 4 of these at hardly any more than it would have cost me to buy 2 from anywhere else.

 

All I want is something I can just take a weekly reading from to log my generation and usage.  I might look at the irda readers later as a curiosity project though.

[Jeremy Harris]

16 minutes ago, newhome said:

I think that once the FIT payment goes and battery storage prices decrease those with solar will be more inclined to want to add battery storage. To that end some energy companies may start to look at ways of retaining that ‘lost’ energy that previously would have gone back to the grid. This offering from EDF is along those lines, although I’m not sure how many people will want EDF to take their storage at their convenience! 

 

https://www.edfenergy.com/for-home/battery-storage?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=cpm&utm_campaign=powervault

 

 

If you generate a lot more over the course of a year than you consume, then battery storage is only a partial solution, as during the summer the chances are that you'd still be exporting a fair bit to the grid.  At the moment, our total generation since the PV was fitted is around 3.3 MWh and our total consumption from the same time is around 0.9 MWh, although the latter figure will increase a bit now that I have a car with a larger battery capacity.

 

Where battery storage does seem to offer a really useful benefit is if you're on E7, or similar, and can charge the battery up in winter at the cheap rate.  This then helps to offset the relatively low PV generation in winter.  I'm still doing the sums to see just how all the various options add up, but the combination of E7, reasonably high PV generation plus battery storage looks like it would be worthwhile.  The aim is to try to eliminate grid import during the peak rate all year around, or get as close as possible to that.

[Square Feet]

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jan/08/solar-panel-users-excess-power-scheme

New update re the situation after March this year.

Edited January 8, 2019 by Square Feet

[Jeremy Harris]

I suspected this was going to have to happen when the FiT scheme closed, as there used to be an export payment scheme for small energy generators before the FiT came along.  The issue is really going to be around metering, I believe, as few (if any) import meters, whether smart or otherwise, are certified for use as export meters.  Pretty much any meter manufactured in the last few years can (and probably does already) measure export, but this feature doesn't seem to have been certified on many of them, so can't be used for billing. 

 

Fitting an export meter will probably cost around a years worth of export payments for an average size domestic installation, at a guess, plus my guess is that the government will tie any export payment scheme up in so much red tape that the price charged to domestic microgenerators to have an export meter fitted may well be two or three times the price that it should be, but perhaps that's just me being cynical.

 

I will also guess that the only meters that will get approved for export measurement under any new export payment scheme will be "smart" meters, and that will lead to a price hike that will be introduced once "smart" metering is well enough established as to allow wide spread adoption of variable rate billing (which is already being offered - at a significantly higher tariff than something like E7...).

 

As an aside, our E7 meter was fitted yesterday.  So far (with no car charging yet) it looks like we use around 60% off peak, 40% peak, after a bit of tweaking of time switches and setting up the timer on the washing machine.  A full charge for the car should take around 4 hours and the car can be programmed to only charge during the E7 period (you can set the times for this, either on the car app or sitting in the car).    Also interesting that the chap that fitted the new meter carefully got all his PPE out of his van (big gloves and face mask) to pull the company fuse, laid it on the wall by the meter box, where it stayed.  He didn't bother to wear it and pulled the fuse holder out with bare hands (safe enough, in theory....).

[ProDave]

Interesting.

 

What's the betting to be eligible you still have to have it installed my an MCS registered installer?

[Jeremy Harris]

Just now, ProDave said:

Interesting.

 

What's the betting to be eligible you still have to have it installed my an MCS registered installer?

 

 

Exactly my thoughts!

[ProDave]

My guess re the PPE is he didn't know what service head he would find.  A modern one like you have is usually perfectly safe, but if he had found an old cast iron one, I'll bet the PPE would have been used.