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One month with a solar battery - real statistics (shkspr.mobi)

submitted 1 year ago by edent@lemmy.one to c/solarpunk@slrpnk.net

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A blog post about my London-based solar panels and battery.

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[-] poVoq@slrpnk.net 25 points 1 year ago

Some interesting data, although given the high initial cost of installation I feel those "we paid only 1£" are a bit misplaced.

Anyways, I finally scraped together some money and also got a 5kw LiFePO4 battery system yesterday. Still need to install everything DIY, but I will probably hook up some statistics monitoring system as well as the new hybrid inverter has a cool integration with the Home Assistant software.

[-] solariplex@slrpnk.net 5 points 1 year ago

I've been thinking of getting a hybrid inverter (rather than manually moving loads between grid power and inverter/solar power). How much did it set you back?

[-] poVoq@slrpnk.net 5 points 1 year ago

Slightly above 1000€ 😖 (made by FoxESS like the battery system)

Don't take it as a general recommendation as I have yet to test it, but spec wise it seems to be a relatively good value for money.

[-] cybermatrix@slrpnk.net 2 points 1 year ago

I'm curious what type of Statistics monitoring system you aiming for @poVoq. I have ordered a 3.7kw panels + special type inverter for direct heating of a boiler and a secondary boiler/other item. And i am intrigued what the monthly differences are in kWh generation and would like to track those. Only I have no idea what I can hook up between the panels and inverter to log.

[-] poVoq@slrpnk.net 3 points 1 year ago

The hybrid inverter I got has a ethernet connection that can be connected to Home Assistant: https://github.com/nathanmarlor/foxess_modbus

Not sure yet how I will analyse that exactly, but it might be nice to automatically publish some stuff to a website via it.

[-] Igotz80HDnImWinning@kbin.social 13 points 1 year ago

TIL electricity bills in London are a fuck ton cheaper than in the US even before the solar installation.

[-] poVoq@slrpnk.net 16 points 1 year ago

I doubt it's the cost of electricity itself, but rather that the average European uses a lot less electricity (mainly due to more energy efficient appliances and no AC use).

[-] Riven@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 1 year ago

Smaller houses probably help too

[-] frezik@midwest.social 0 points 1 year ago

The appliances are basically the same--no, American appliances don't generally run on 120v--but I'll bet average house size is the biggest thing.

[-] lewis6991@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

Atm it's about roughly 35-40 cents per kWh. That's much higher than most places in the US which Google is telling me is 16 cents per kWh.

[-] danielquinn@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 year ago

"Our solar power feeds into our local grid for our neighbours to use. We sell the electricity at market rates - which change every 30 minutes. This made us £13."

Some more details on this would be interesting. We're currently with Octopus and get just 15p/kWh when we sell back to the grid, but have to pay 25p/kWh when we buy from the grid.

What kind of rates (average?) are you getting, and who's your supplier?