You are my sunshine...
We've just had a solar/battery system installed, and because I've spent a lot of time planning and thinking about this over the last year and a half, and because it has some slightly unusual aspects, I decided to create a video about it.
This starts off as a pretty basic introduction of solar power, and ends up going into some detail about why mine is arranged the way it is. This means that it's longish... but I hope it might be of interest to anyone considering installing, or expanding, a similar system.
Comments
Hi Geoff -
Yes, I realise I should have gone into a bit more detail about that... but it might have made the video a bit long!
Some systems have a separate inverter/charger for the batteries, but with the Sunsynk, it's all in the one 'hybrid' unit. The DC world, both batteries and solar, are on one side, and the batteries can be charged directly from the solar. And the AC world is on the other.
So the unit is bidirectional: at any one time it is either operating as an inverter, if the net flow is from DC to AC, or as a rectifier, if the net flow is from AC to DC, when you're charging the batteries from the grid (or from other AC sources such as a generator).
Best, Q
Thanks Jim -
yes, I'm in touch with the installers - I think I can claim with validity that it was a casualty of the installation!
Q
Hi Tim -
I don't monitor the water temperature directly - there is an add-on board for the Eddi which can do that, but it's remarkably hard on my tank to find a place to install the thermometer! However, the immersion heater has a thermostat built in, so when it gets to a suitable temperature, the Eddi finds out it can't supply power any more.
At present, if all the batteries are charged and the water hot, I export power to the grid, for which I currently don't get paid, but hope to get a few pence in future once the last few relevant forms have been filled in!
Hi Antony -
Yes, the payback period is hard to guess; it'll depend on future energy prices, and on how efficiently I manage both to capture sunshine and to use cheap-rate electricity, and so on... most of which only time will allow me to tell!
It was, of course, also more expensive than some comparable systems because of using in-roof panels etc. I'm assuming it'll probably be around 15 years, but it's also quite likely we will have moved by then, so the other question is what difference it might make to the value of the house!
Quentin
Ha! Splendid! Sadly, I no longer have the hi-fi amplifiers of my bachelor youth, and I fear that "Alexa, turn the volume up loud enough to shake the roof" would have the desired effect! 🙠Q
Well, you could almost construct such a system, but the car manufacturers don't currently allow you to connect anything to the charging circuitry while you're driving. You could have a battery and an inverter in the boot, but you'd have to stop and plug it in to the external socket, and charge rather slowly!
As someone who's been driving only electric cars for over seven years, I can say that I've never run out of power. In fact, in my lifetime I've run out of petrol more often then electricity! One key thing people forget is that, in extremis, almost every single 13A socket in Europe can be used to charge your car, albeit slowly... but you could get enough to get to the next fast charger that way!
The other thing is that, though a modern car and charger might take you 20-30 minutes to fill up instead of 5-10 when on a long journey for a holiday, you can be in the car watching a movie or in the cafe enjoying a coffee at the time; you don't have to stand by the car! And think of how many times you don't have to go and stand in a smelly petrol station for the whole of the rest of the year... it actually takes you less time over all. And so on...
My postman does have an electric van, BTW...
Hi Antony -
Thanks - yes - I should try to do that. It's been an educational year, and I'll try to put together something useful about it - maybe in a couple of months...
Q
Hi Darryl - forgive a brief reply as I am travelling. I think the key issue with using the aux connection for an immersion heater is that it is just an on/off switch. If you have a 3 kW heater, you can either have zero or 3 kW. With the Eddi, if you have 500 W of excess solar, you can just supply 500 W to the immersion heater. It is basically a giant dimmer switch. The downside, of course, is that you have to buy an Eddi!
Mine was connected to the aux output Because I was using that output in a different: On my system, it is just a battery backed output which will switch off automatically when the grid is off and the battery is below 50%. So I'm not using it to control the water in the way that Sunsynk are suggesting. Does that help?