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Those of you with solar panels, what's been your experience? (feddit.uk)

submitted 3 days ago by blackn1ght@feddit.uk to c/askuk@feddit.uk

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I'm thinking of getting solar panels and a battery for our house.

What's your setup like, and is there anything you wish you'd set up differently if you were going to install it again? What supplier are you with?

A company extremely local to us is offering 12x Aiko Energy panels (465 watt), with a Sunsynk 5 kW inverter and a 5.32kWh battery. Octopus Energy are offering a similar set up for a similar price, but they're using 450 watt panels, so with using 12 panels I'd be potentially be losing 180 watts vs what the other company is offering. Is that a significant amount or would it basically not really amount to much additional power?

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[–] thr0w4w4y2@sh.itjust.works 11 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I have had a 2.4kWp system for two years. Solis inverter, Pylontech batteries and a Myenergi Eddi.

The good: charging the batteries up at night (on an Octopus two rate tariff) means never paying more than 7p for electricity. In summer I maybe import 3kWh per day. Because the solar energy heats the hot water (via the Eddi) the gas bill has halved. The system I expect to last for >20 years and I expect full payback in around 7 years. A good investment. Since the inverter is chinese made they will probably remotely disable it before they invade, so I’ll get some advance warning and can brush up on my mandarin.

The bad: almost everything else I have installed (car charger, heat pump etc) has been more painful and required multiple visits from an electrician to sort out - I don’t want the solar batteries to discharge into the car when I charge it, and I don’t want the heat pump to drain the battery either. The installer was terrible and it took ages to get it all right. I had to hack the inverter with a modbus bypass to get it to work with Homeassistant. Thinking of getting aircon upstairs and dreading the conversation with the installer.

Overall: 10/10 recommend, wish the government would force everyone to have solar panels.

[–] Hugin@lemmy.world 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I've also got a solis inverter. Do you have any info or tips on your modbus bypass?

So far my only complaint is I hate the battery control settings. I haven't found a way to set it only charge from solar and only discharg when the grid is down.

[–] thr0w4w4y2@sh.itjust.works 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

this github has some good tips and a kit list for an example modbus setup with an ESP32. I know you can also make more advanced ones with a Raspberry Pi and Home Assistant.

Discharging when the grid is down I’m now so sure about. The inverter has an “off grid” mode but you’ll need to check the regulations about having a live connection since it might be dangerous to have your property and cabling still be live when there is an outage - you might injure someone trying to repair the damage at the other end.

[–] Hugin@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Thanks for the link.

I've got a islanded section for off grid and the balancer transformer. It's just the settings for the battery don't seem to allow for no battery export only local use.

I have frequent power outages so I want to export unused solar but save battery for the house. It feels likes there should be a setting allowing that.

[–] thr0w4w4y2@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 days ago

I guess my solution that would be a UPS that detects the power outage, provides 1-2 minutes of power while a connected controller (a raspberry pi or similar) forces the inverter into off-grid mode. When power is restored, a connected current clamp/CT sensor can tell the raspberry pi to cancel off-grid mode.

A bit complex but I suppose the other option is relay isolators / mains contractors which are a bit too “high voltage” for me