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I use octopus watch..... But if they have not committed to back dating they don't automatically and even even it's wurh the caveat they can retrieve the historical data
Just got estimate through for this years Solar Together scheme… £8.5k for 12 panels + 3.2kWh battery, £10.5k for 9.6 kWh battery. Price seems reasonable, need to do some research on the installer now!
Flux up and running properly now. Last week up until today has been great - averaging £9/day net income.
I have been onto Solar Edge to tweak the battery profile so now it's going to charge between 2 and 5am and then maximise self-consumption between 4 and 7pm so any solar is exported. I'd like to be able to tell it to discharge a few units at peak time too but that didn't seem to be an option. It was all or nothing. That might mean getting to the evening with an empty battery and needing to import anyway.
The relatively similar prices for the off peak import and export means that this is probably not worth too much effort but i thought i'd try it out. With wholesale prices dropping, it will be interesting to see if these levels stay the same. I guess the best outcome for me is selling high this summer and buying cheap(er) in the winter when the import prices drop.
Price seems reasonable, need to do some research on the installer now!
They telling you ? Usually goes to reverse auction after your all signed up.
Also getting about £15/day net with Flux too.
Albeit it’s somewhat exaggerated because there appears to be an issue with the way their system interrogates my meter but they say they’ll honour the overpayments. Quietly hoping that it takes as long to fix as everything else related to smart meters usually goes on for.
Missing the 5p overnight rate for car charging but will go back to Intelligent Octopus for the winter.
Getting about £5 a day currently (22kwh export). Clipping for around 4/5 hours by about 1.6 KWh. I used the hardware throttle on our car charger over the weekend so it charged at 3Kwh. By starting this before the sun hit the side properly I pull 70% of the house battery into the car then got a good period of 5Kwh production with 3 going to the car, a bit to house usage and the rest to the battery but slower.
Not exported anything as I am "off-grid", but I have only bought 34 KwH fromthe grid while using 521 Kwh for the month. At the 60p a unit I currently pay that means I have saved £290 for the month. I'll take that.
Well, May’s numbers are in. 5.4kWp array, South facing, in the SW, 19kWh of storage.
841kWh generated! 562kWh used, 21kWh imported, over 300kWh exported (and not paid for). Electricity bill for the month is £6.79. Standing charge £15.75. So less than £30 inc vat.
Appointment for final issuance of export certificate tomorrow. Had we been able to export, we’d have earned a net profit of ~£50.
731kWh produced, 382kWh consumed and 364kWh exported. £21 income for the month despite payment only starting on the 20th.
So, I've signed up for Flux and the tariff has registered as Flux Import and I can't see any export data at all - it this what happened to others when they first signed up?
My kit is all signed off with DNO approval and I have my MCS certificate, all of which have been given to Octopus.
@Daffy, yes exactly that. It took weeks and weeks after Flux import showed up before Flux export came online. Once it is up and running you can see export data in both the app and website. You'll also not get paid for anything exported until setup is complete.
itll be 4-6 weeks most likely before you see the export data.
They will backdate it till the date they can find - i signed up april 4th , flux import went live on the 7th and flux export went live on may 17th but they backdated to april 19th as thats when flux had data for my export.
That was moving from an existing SEG provider .
the previous 68 days of billable use inc standing charge have cost me £2.54 - including 12 days of no flux export.
over the time exports been live I'm on £-11.316
The month of may which was pretty dire for sun its £-6.95 - in may we only generated 444kwh - of which we consumed 309kwh
Hopefully we will start getting some sustained sun for the summer. -But flux has boosted my business case for some north facing panels to take advantage of their 31p rate.
Ah - okay, I'll stop fretting about it, but will try to record my export meter readings in the hope of some form of reclaim.
Today is crunch day (final day I can accept my Solar Together quote)! I am minded to go for it, with 12 panels & the smallest battery option (3.2 kw) as they are modular units (Pylontech) and I gather you can just add more yourself if you like later (assuming you can source them)?
One thing I've just thought of which might tip the balance - we have a massive issue of overheating in the bedroom of our chalet bungalow, as (I guess) there's no loft-space above to act as a buffer... would solar panels on the (south facing) roof absorb enough energy to make a significant difference? 🤔
After much to-ing and fro-ing with our provider, our order (placed Oct last year with a verbal installation date of March this year) has been scheduled for Week 32-36 this year. Maybe, probably.
This is a relatively small installation (12-16 panels and a 5 KWh battery) and their excuses have pissed us off enough to look at cancelling and re-ordering elsewhere. This installation promise date was the result of us getting very annoyed with them.
Fingers crossed they actually manage to keep to a date this time.
Wilard, I think I landed lucky… ordered Jan 2023, fitted end of feb 2023.
Battery size is a funny one. We have 12.8kWh of Greenlinx batteries and with Octopus Flux we fully charge and discharge them each day to max the peak/offpeak price gap. I guess if we had a smaller battery then would still use flux tarif and charge to 100% overnight which is easier (and pretty cost neutral) on set up/management than charging batteries from solar I think. At the moment the solar is making 37-40kWh per day and domestic usage is c10kWh (though doubled this week with portable AC!). So battery usage is low.
Will be curious to see how batteries help in winter. I expect they will just help keep us on the 19p per unit overnight leccy.
Very impressed with solar so far. P4Solar in Ilkley, recommended from this forum.
I’d look very hard at the cost vs benefit of adding extra cycles to your battery by doing a full charge/discharge cycle on a daily basis. Given that the net income is about 85% of 35p/kWh at best, it must be pretty marginal in the long run if you need to replace the batteries (and probably the inverter) halfway through the predicted life cycle.
The manufacturer almost certainly publishes degradation data and yours will be at the bottom end if you’re discharging and charging at the full load of the inverter. Certainly for mine (Fox ESS) it wasn’t worth it in the long run and I just take the solar output which is already generating £10/day.
I’ve done the same calculation as flaperon and have decided not to force discharge my batteries on a regular basis. My paired batteries did discharge down to 13% during the winter, but in spring that had disappeared and late spring summer, we rarely get below 60% no matter what is happening.
An extra few ££ a day for at most 6months a year isn’t going move the needle much. At most, it might cover 50% of the battery cost over 10y.
Edit: 85% of 15p/kWh if you charge from the grid.
<p style="text-align: right;">Flaperon and Daffy, you are probably right from a profit/loss perspective. However I like the idea with helping with national load shifting (combined with solar if its sunny my system pushes 6-7kW continuously to the grid 4pm-7pm), if we have enough of that nationally then thats fewer gas powerstations revved up. Based on c£1.50 a day extra from having the charge/discharge cycles its c£5000 extra over 10 years. Payback on whole system is c6 years and then £2000+ profit per annum. If I have to spend a few £k in 7-10 years on replacement kit then thats not disastrous. The wear on inverters is a funny one. As its an AC coupled system I have three inverters (one dumb one for panels and twin Lux Squirrel pods that give 7kW flow between them). The panels inverter runs at 3.5-3.6 kw for large parts of the day when sunny, so if any will fail its this. The Squirrel Pods charge at full rate for two hours each night, then sit there doing not much if its sunny till 4pm when they are set to discharge at 45% rate (c1800w) so they get down to 15% DOD by 7pm. The 15% covers us till 2am when they charge up again.So the squirrel pod inverters have a fairly easy life most of the year as the are dormant whenever the sun is out. Will report back over the years as batteries age, but right now cant see why I would have the capacity and not use it.</p>
I have been discharging some of our battery capacity for a couple of hours some days for similar reasons as above in that we have the capability to do so so we may as well use it. In terms of load on the inverter an extra few kwh at a low rate is negligible compared with what the system will push through on a long sunny day; in terms of battery cycles it does not cycle anywhere near as much as the full charge / full discharge every day over winter. I discharge ours so by 2am they're still at at least 30% so it's not doing a very deep discharge. I wonder about the opposite, actually; if it weren't for doing this the battery would spend the summer over 90% pretty much all of the time and 100% for most of that, which isn't good for the battery in itself.
What I wonder about is recharging the batteries again; even though the overnight rate is very slightly cheaper, doing it from solar is currently lower carbon (overnight grid power isn't particularly low emission at the moment), solar tends to recharge it slower which I assume is better for the battery, and on a good day we can charge the battery with DC power above the AC rating of the hybrid inverter so it's "free" power that we couldn't export anyway.
I'm happy that we're essentially off grid and fully green for 97% of our energy requirements at the moment, even if there's a rainy day or two, there's enough reserve capacity and generation capacity that we're still off-grid. That, in my opinion is the best thing I can do. Charge the house, charge the car, export the extra. It's enough for the moment. I wanted to do more this year, but I need to save the pennies for the impending mortgage hammer that will happen next year. £5-7k extra a year is a tough pill to swallow.
Octopus have told me that the export will go live tomorrow morning. Really good given we only switch to Octopus on the 8th and then onto Flux on the 10th. Whoop!
Octopus have told me that the export will go live tomorrow morning. Really good given we only switch to Octopus on the 8th and then onto Flux on the 10th. Whoop!
have you asked them if you can backdate ?
I do have readings, so assume that they could, but it's not the end of the world as we're talking £25-£30 from the point of transfer, but I will ask once its live.
We just had a quote through where the installer mentioned cutting down the boiler flu and sticking a panel above it...every other installer said there was no chance we could have 9 panels on the roof due to the flu, this nut job said it was fine to remove it as there was no repercussion to it.
Told our gas engineer who installed the boiler and essentially thought I was joking at first as someone cant be that stupid. Told me to run a mile.
He did quote £8k for a 4.2kWh system with a 3.6kw battery - both of the other installers were similar price but with larger batteries and said we'd have to have a south east split between the two roofs. Located in Norwich
Money is now going towards the mortgage repayments 🙁
Longer days so more generation but peak is lower. Is this to be expected, pitch of roof Vs sun position perhaps?
That's flux lowering their import and export prices.
The exports coming down a larger % which will skew things slightly
Still better than basically every other export.
muddyjamesFree Member
Longer days so more generation but peak is lower. Is this to be expected, pitch of roof Vs sun position perhaps?
My system loses quite a chunk of generation due to heat. It’s nominally an 10 year-old 2.25 kw system. In short sharp periods of sunshine I have had 2.4kw out of it, but on longer hot days I get a peak of around 1.8kw.
It doesn’t help that my inverter is in the loft, so that gets too hot as well.
Longer days so more generation but peak is lower. Is this to be expected, pitch of roof Vs sun position perhaps?
the panels will be MUCH hotter which reduces their efficiency. You’ll be losing between 5-10% of peak power (dependent on how they’re installed), especially on days with lower wind, so less convection cooling.
Mine are in-roof and can lose 10% on VERY hot, still days. On roof should be lower losses as air can get underneath.
Damn look to have some kind of issue. Checked the app this morning to find the battery empty. Quick flick through the days shows that generation dropped suddenly to 0 at 3:30 in Wednesday. Battery held out to midday yesterday but now pulling from grid! That the battery discharged suggests the inverter can still produce DC.
I've become aware of DualSun combined solar leccy and water heating panels. Their own website doesn't suggest a large deployment in the UK (French company) but does anyone have any knowledge or experience of them? A forum search didn't return anything to me but I'm bound to have missed something. The marketing fluff seems logical but the reality may be a long way from ideal.
So I have an error code of 18x61 vin buck max at the time production stopped. Sounds rather dead (assuming the text refers to voltage in buck pack). Installer was straight onto logging it with SE and then mentioned 3ishnday response currently and that they (SE) may just supply a replacement. One plus side is we might get to see if the new SE battery management will force charge during the cheap period (assuming it is clever enough to recognise 0 generation).
Silly question, but have you tried turning it all off and then on again after allowing for a discharge period?
I have yes, twice now.
@nixie I tried to fiddle with the new battery profiles in the app but they don't do what I want. I'm sticking with the custom setup i asked SE to do which force charges the battery at 2 am and maximises export in the evening. One thing I cant seem to get it to do yet is to use the battery for house needs during the 1600 to 1900 peak. At the moment if, eg, I put the oven on, the power is diverted from production so export is reduced, but i'd rather it came from the battery, which can be charged later.
Did all Flux users get the news of reduced rates from July? ~10% drop in payments is disappointing but understandable i guess.
@lodger yeah I'm not convinced by the battery control options. I'm going to run with it for a bit then ask SE to do something custom if it does not do what I want. I'm also looking at seeing what I can do with home assistant.
One thing I cant seem to get it to do yet is to use the battery for house needs during the 1600 to 1900 peak.
Is this not a limitation of the invertor. On our setup the inverter can only output 3.6kWh. If the oven or any other device is put on then it will use some of that output and therefore reduce the export. The battery cannot be used to to maintain the export level as the power still has to be converted by the inverter. If our inverter has to be replaced I'm going to try and get a bigger model installed (if they will let me pay the cost difference) and just throttle it. Perhaps then I can relax the throttling at points when we won't be exporting (e.g. when array output is > 3.6 and the car is charging).
Did all Flux users get the news of reduced rates from July?
I did yes.
That makes sense - although there are times/days when we are below the inverter peak (ours seems to be 6) when it might be able to take up the slack.
Did all Flux users get the news of reduced rates from July? ~10% drop in payments is disappointing but understandable i guess.
its not so much the 10% drop in payments - you can live with that when the cost of lecky drops similarly.
but they have closed the gap between import and export slightly at the same time - that sucks
I wonder if it will change again in the autumn. At the moment there’s far more power being generated in Europe through nuclear and renewables than is needed.
I wonder how many people will stay on Flux as we get nearer winter; in summer the high export rate is great, but in winter the import rate matters more, and there are other tariffs with lower night time rates.
Come October or so, when most of our power will come from off-peak import instead of solar, we'll be switching to Octopus Go or something.
Depends on how much storage you have and if you can fill it in the nighttime rate.
We’ll be grid charging the batteries in December and January - the best we can do in the 3 hour window is 11kw, so £2ish a day. That means our maximum power cost in the winter months will be £100, probably less. We’re currently exporting an average of 15kWh a day, so £3 a day at current rates, that’s a net gain of around £500. Even force charging on flux, we should be approaching cash neutral by year end including the standing charge. I think it works for us and should continue to do so.
To my suprise our battery fully charged during the cheap period last night. Not as good as having an fully working system but at least it's taking the sting out of it being down.
With an EV the cut-over for me on Flux will probably be about September. Fortunately I can shuffle across onto Intelligent Octopus.
Overall I’m £240 in credit over the last 30 days on Flux, with a 4.6kW array split east/west. The bulk of the income has been late afternoon on the high rate.