Hi guys - I am also trying to figure out if it makes sense to go with a solar / battery combination.
The biggest challenge I have with regards to electricity (I have plenty of other non-electrical challenges, but we won't go into those here! ;-) is that I use too much of it - around 11,000 KwH per year. I have looked into how much per day, and it is between 26 - 32 KwH per day.
I have had a couple of solar quotes - and it seems my roof is not ideally set up for solar: too many velux windows / dormers etc.
So the best they seem to be able to fit will generate around 4,500 KwH per year (obviously with much of that generated over the brighter months). So that is around 6,500 KwH short of my needs
So I am wondering what my options are? I was naively thinking I can just get lots of battery storage - say around 30 KwH and simply charge the batteries using a low overnight rate and live off the batteries / solar during the day.
However, I have just been told this might not be so easy to do as my batteries may only allow me to power a certain amount of things at once... and once I go over this amount (which might be around 4KWs) I will be drawing from the grid.
Is my plan foiled? Or is there something that can be done - someone mentioned I might be able to set up a second inverter in parallel and thereby double my power output... This sounds like it might work...But would appreciate your thoughts - especially if any of you have done something similar.
Or should I simply try and move over to Octopus Agile and fit enough battery storage to allow me to run off battery during the expensive evening hours and just live with the Grid for most of the day, with its hopefully lower rates? I guess if I were to do this, we would need to try and make sure not to use heavy loads during the time we are on battery power... Right now I do not have a smart meter, so it is difficult for me to know what my maximum power usage is like.
Anyway, if anyone does have any thoughts on this I would be interested to hear them as this all seems to be less straightforward than I would like!
Many thanks!
The biggest challenge I have with regards to electricity (I have plenty of other non-electrical challenges, but we won't go into those here! ;-) is that I use too much of it - around 11,000 KwH per year. I have looked into how much per day, and it is between 26 - 32 KwH per day.
I have had a couple of solar quotes - and it seems my roof is not ideally set up for solar: too many velux windows / dormers etc.
So the best they seem to be able to fit will generate around 4,500 KwH per year (obviously with much of that generated over the brighter months). So that is around 6,500 KwH short of my needs
So I am wondering what my options are? I was naively thinking I can just get lots of battery storage - say around 30 KwH and simply charge the batteries using a low overnight rate and live off the batteries / solar during the day.
However, I have just been told this might not be so easy to do as my batteries may only allow me to power a certain amount of things at once... and once I go over this amount (which might be around 4KWs) I will be drawing from the grid.
Is my plan foiled? Or is there something that can be done - someone mentioned I might be able to set up a second inverter in parallel and thereby double my power output... This sounds like it might work...But would appreciate your thoughts - especially if any of you have done something similar.
Or should I simply try and move over to Octopus Agile and fit enough battery storage to allow me to run off battery during the expensive evening hours and just live with the Grid for most of the day, with its hopefully lower rates? I guess if I were to do this, we would need to try and make sure not to use heavy loads during the time we are on battery power... Right now I do not have a smart meter, so it is difficult for me to know what my maximum power usage is like.
Anyway, if anyone does have any thoughts on this I would be interested to hear them as this all seems to be less straightforward than I would like!
Many thanks!