A blog post about my London-based solar panels and battery.
TIL electricity bills in London are a fuck ton cheaper than in the US even before the solar installation.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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?
I’ve been looking to get solar installed. Unfortunately not much for options around me. Prices are not viable.
“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?
