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

submitted 5 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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[–] mikey@feddit.uk 12 points 4 days ago (2 children)

just had ours installed and even today when its cloudy and raining we are producing enough to run the house (low usage). couple of things to be aware of - On a normal system, if the grid goes down you cant use you solar or battery(may not be a problem for you), for this you need a back up box with off grid capability. There will likely be an export limit set by the DNO so the excess may get wasted anyway. 180 watts isnt much, possibly run a fridge on it

[–] blackn1ght@feddit.uk 5 points 4 days ago (2 children)

On a normal system, if the grid goes down you cant use you solar or battery(may not be a problem for you), for this you need a back up box with off grid capability.

Is this because there's no way to dump any excess electric back into the grid? I don't think this is too much of a worry for me though, I don't recall a power outage in the past 8 years of us living here! touch wood

[–] Hugin@lemmy.world 2 points 4 days ago

It's a safety requirement. If the power company powers down a part of the grid for workers to safely perform work they don't want your solar to kick in and kill the worker.

If you want your battery or solar to power parts of the house when the grid is down you need islanding. That disconnects part of the house grid from the street grid keeping any workers safe.

[–] mikey@feddit.uk 2 points 4 days ago

If there is nowhere for the energy to go the inverter will lower the output from the panels. I think the main reason is because if they turn off the grid for maintenance, you cant start exporting and potentially kill the workers. There are also other complications like the inverter needing power before it can create power

[–] Serinus@lemmy.world 3 points 4 days ago

you need a back up box with off grid capability

I thought this was usually included with a battery install.