@sarahwilla I do charge the battery overnight on a tariff designed for EVs. I don't know how much it costs to have solar installed but if I didn't have it already, I would have definitely paid for a solar and battery install. It is a true synergistic pairing.
@ghaynes I had that setup installed, they estimate ~1,000 per year return but 9 months in I'm looking at nearer ~1600 per year return. I expect it will go down in efficiency but charging over night at 12-14p and selling it back between 4-7pm for 32p has been helping
@choinggam Are you on Octopus Agile with Outgoing? I wanted to get the Outgoing fixed tariff as I generate a reasonable amount of excess solar in the summer but it's not compatible with Octopus Go
@ghaynes I'm on flux, I don't have an electric car yet.
I think my night charge just moved to 19p so I want to swap to a more profitable import tariff over winter (apparently eon do a great deal but can't remember the name) r/SolarUK and r/octopusenergy has some good advice
@choinggam Eon Next Drive. Rates are good, but it has been a right hassle to switch. If I had known that Octopus was going to open up the Outgoing tariff to Go customers I probably would have stuck with them.
@ghaynes That's great, and all off a 3kw system and 175m2 house! Awesome. How old / new was the house?
We're considering renovating an old house 210m2 so will need to invest in insulation but considering a similar option. Thinking we will need 6kw solar, 2 batteries, and ASHP. Our boiler is knackered and we have no radiators or plumbing so bit of a blank canvas.
Can I ask what your average electricity bills are per month? Appreciate the savings figures but the final bill would be super interesting?
@ayopoker Worth checking out the YouTube channel “Gary does solar”. Loads of great videos and resources about solar PV/batteries etc.
Ref your thoughts on 6kw PV, you’d need to have an inverter that cope with that much max generation. There will be losses in the system which bring the max generation down, but you could end up clipping quite of of generation out because the inverter can’t handle it.
If I could do our install again I’d double our battery capacity (10 to 20kw), as this would enable more generation in summer months to be captured and in the winter more cheap early more electricity to cover the day/evening.
Highest bill in the winter was £120, in the summer it's about £25 (standing charge alone accounts for £15 month). If I averaged it out over the year I think we'd be paying about £50 a month.
@ghaynes A 2021 build makes sense for this sort of setup. We'd love to switch to an air source or ground source heat pump but with a mid-80s house with 2 extensions, the insulation just isn't good enough. So solar + battery is as far as we can go without nearly knocking the thing down and starting again.
Our dream is to build our own eco friendly home on a slightly bigger plot but finding a plot is nigh on impossible where we live!
@cupofdaisies We were in a house built pre-war before this and I had given serious consideration to having external insulation cladding added (I recall being quoted £10k at the time). Don't know if it would have made enough of a difference, but I'm glad we decided to move instead.
@lifeforfreddy I have no idea but have noticed this view point is generally unpopular with both sides of the issue.
I think the renewable supporters have been brainwashed into supporting scheme without really thinking about it. I think DG is actually more of a way of the government shifting responsibility from themselves and their corporate friends by making it out individual problem instead.
@lifeforfreddy Exactly right. People get sold on this idea of being "off grid" and "green" but it's just wrong. The ratio of roof space to floorspace in most UK homes means that there just isn't enough insolation no matter how many batteries and LED light bulbs you buy.
I think the clue to people should be that basically all the state incentives to buy your own PV have been removed a long time ago. It's simply more efficient for the government to put that money towards utility scale production, although from the recent wind power auction it seems like they are screwing that up too now.
We're in a 110m2 house built in 1920 which we've insulated to the max since we moved in, and in December we're replacing our oil boiler with a 9kw Daikin heat pump (installed by Octopus), 20 PV panels (so about 8kw of generation, and an 8.2kwh battery. We're hoping that except for 2-3 months of the year this will mean we're 100% offgrid, and exporting enough in the summer to offset our winter usage. I'll try and remember to report back how that goes this time next year.
OP, Have you considered the Octopus Agile tariff? Or did you find octopus go better for your setup? I'm trying to work out the maths etc to see which will likely give us the best benefit.....
@therese1234 Octopus Go (and Intelligent) have much lower rates during off peak hours which are fixed for the contract length (1 year) and I prefer having the certainty of cheap rates at specific times. I recall the winter rates for Agile being quite high on average as well. My new Go rate has a slightly higher off peak at 9p, but the on peak is lower at 29p now.
It's a little bit chicken and egg because I've adapted our usage to be cost effective with a Go style fixed off and on peak rates. I believe the GivEnergy controller can integrate directly with Octopus Agile and you can get it to charge based on some rules like "only charge when price is less than 10p", but I've not tested it or seen an example.
