Thanks. Yeah, the price rises in the UK last couple of years have been scary, especially for those already struggling to make ends meet. Great to hear your solar/battery installation is paying off handsomely! :-)

Where in the west do you live? What batteries did you get?

Wow - thanks, Greg! I'm highly flattered. Really appreciate you taking the time to write this :-)

I dont think experts ever call themselves experts, i dont think just bad etiqueette I think it is actually a given title generally lol

​@@PazLeBon I have plenty imposter syndrome at work... in my hobby I'm definitely more of an expert than some "professionals" I've dealt with. ;-)

That is pretty cool, Michael - it's a little too early to tell with my own installation, but if I can get anywhere near that, I'll be well happy :-)

My pleasure - glad you like it :-)

Thanks Chris - and yeah, the utility seems to be getting more and more popular. I'm being asked for lots of new features all the time (which is great, but I just wish I had more time). Hope all is well with you!

Wow - that’s for the kind words 😀

Thanks - great to get feedback like this! :-) I'll keep the videos coming...

Thanks Peter - glad you enjoyed! I'll keep going as long as I can :-)

Thanks :-) Yeah, I tend to agree. And I think we might even see that kind of price drop soon... :-)

Waiting to see what Tesla do in the UK as the products they sell here lags the US market. An LFP model would be lovely for those of us who don't care about density -And I do think the Tesla software is way ahead of the competitors.

The price is much less marginal if you can get a time of day tariff.

Why not use a forklift battery? Far cheaper and easy to recycle.

not close to being marginal , not really

Many thanks! It's been a while since I released a video (whole family was ill for a while) but good to be back!

Great to hear that I’ve been helpful to you 😀

Thanks Oliver :-)

Really great to get such positive feedback - thank you! :-)

Great to hear this feedback - thank you, and all the best with whatever you decide to do!

You’re very welcome - thanks for the great feedback!

Such great feedback to hear - thank you 🙏

You're most welcome - thanks for the great feedback :-)

Thanks Dan - I totally agree! And so I think you and I will have plenty to talk about in our videos for some time to come yet :-)

You're most welcome, Richard - very happy to hear you'e getting something from it. I'm working on a follow-up battery video shortly...

Thanks Jean - that’s really great to hear 😀

Thank you 🙏 I’ll keep the videos coming 👍🏻

Thanks very much for the great feedback, and thank you for sharing it with your friends - hope it's useful to them as well :-)

That's really kind of you to say, James - thank you! :-)

Great to get feedback like this - thanks! :-)

Thanks for the great feedback, Brian :-) Next video coming soon!

You’re most welcome - thanks for taking the time to let me know! 🙏

Hi Peter - your comment has made my day - thank you! :-)

My wife and I are new to solar here in the US and none of the vendors here supply info on their products that even come close to what I have learned from you. Thank you Gary for easing my frustration and building my confidence that I have made some good choices so far.

Wow - that’s praise indeed, Tom - thank you! 🙏 😀😀😀 and all the best with your solar journey!

Thanks Steve! :-)

1. His videos are great, only sometimes could be a bit snappier with quicker speech then again it can be sped up. 2. Btw you're wasting money if you have 2 EVs you shouldn't need a huge battery. I'm getting a single house battery installed and a V2L enabled car and having this linked up so I can plug in and it will act as additional battery storage or discharge. This is possible now and V2G enabled EVs are also another option with install of a V2G charger/inverter.

@@aldozilli1293 Very true about V2G, unfortunately neither my Tesla nor my wife's Mini support this.

Thanks Ben - high praise indeed and I'm very grateful for the feedback. Really great to hear about your situation and plans. I have a 19kWh battery, but no EV yet.. One day (sigh)... :-)

You’re far too kind with these words, but thank you! 😀😀😀

I spent +25 years in Export Sales, doing trading courses at dealer conferences around the world. OHP, slides & flip charts 🤣🤣🤣🤣

@@nicflanagan6662 Well, you've given me high praise indeed - thanks again!

Hi Les, wow - that's quite a complement - thank you! I'll keep the videos coming :-)

You’re most welcome 😀

Wow - thanks for this comment, Tony :-) I'm humbled...

That's really great to hear this feedback - thank you! :-)

Cheers Chris - that means a lot to me :-) Don't worry about the Patreon - I'm just happy that you're getting something from my videos etc. :-)

That's such great feedback to receive - thank you! And all the best with your system when it's installed :-)

Cheers Mark - great to hear this feedback! :-)

@@GaryDoesSolar I jam just waiting for your video on three phase vs single phase batteries; just for me 😁

@@mark_just_mark I'll get there one day, Mark 😃 The issue I've got is that I've got a backlog of more than 20 video ideas, and I need to select from those, that will have the most appeal - such is the workings of the KZfaq algorithm. I'm hoping that as the channel grows, I'll have more bandwidth to cover topics, that are a little more niche, like three phase 👍

@@GaryDoesSolar Completely understand, it’s working well so far 👍

Thanks Cheryl - that's fantastic feedback! :-)

Thanks for the great feedback 👍

Thanks - and I feel the same about the video as well. And so far, it seems to be resonating with KZfaq viewers - lots of new subscriptions - very happy about that :-) I'll try to keep the content quality up!

@@GaryDoesSolar Every year this subject will evolve and become main stream. Will have a play with the Solar Utility… was looking for something a few weeks ago. This really make me feel like becoming a Patreon 👍

@@zjzozn Yeah, let me know your experiences with the utility - hope you like it, and I'd be honoured to have you sign up as a patron would you decide 🙂

Hi Doug, thanks for the great feedback. And yes, much of the world is jealous of the amount of sunshine you are getting! :-) Really great to hear my utility has been useful to you as you plan your solar installation - and it looks to be quite a large setup too! Good luck with everything and I'd love to hear how it all goes! I think we'll see a lot in the way of steps 4 and 5 over the next year. It seems the world is waking up to solar and battery :-)

Wow! And great to hear 😀

How much did that cost? Forklift batteries are about a quarter the price of similar capacity lithium.

@@codprawn yeh I did look at that but I wanted my system compact in a room I had built especially for it. I’m about £40k in on batteries BYD - premium

Thanks Dave, and great that I've given you food for thought. All the best in whatever you decide! :-)

Cheers for the feedback! :-) Same for me too, my battery a similar size!

That’s very kind of you, John - thanks 🙏 😀

Wow - that's high praise indeed - thank you, Bryan! I'll keep the videos coming... :-)

That's high praise indeed - thank you! :-)

Hi Don, thanks for the kind words, and great to hear the utility is mirroring what you're seeing with your setup :-) Your strategy sounds good.

Thanks, and great to hear you decided to increase your battery size. Is it sufficient now, or do you think you'll need to upgrade even more?

The pleasure is all mine, Graham - it's certainly a lot of work making these videos, but comments like this make my day. Thanks for taking the time to let me know - it means a great deal to me that my videos are helping people :-)

Graham, you are going to be so pleased long-term (as long as you’ve actually purchased your system). We broke even on our system before 7 years. We chose good parts and panels, and at 12 years they’re still producing well over 90%. So after 5 years of free energy, we’ve saved some $6000. Solar rocks.

Great to hear, Ryan! Thanks for letting me know 👍🏻

Thanks for your very kind words, John :-) Here's a link to the spreadsheets I have: garydoessolar.com/utilities/fluxcalculator/ and: garydoessolar.com/utilities/solarcalculator/ Hope they're useful to you!

Thank you! 😊

Thanks for letting me know. Great to hear my videos have been useful to you :-)

Cheers for the feedback, Adrian. I'm wondering if there needs to be two separate schemes; one for battery owners and another for everyone else, as the rationale for each group is slightly different, and worse, not compatible...?

Very kind of you - thanks 🙏 😀

Thanks, and yeah - I’m looking to cover V2H/V2G at some point 👍🏻

@@GaryDoesSolar Look forward to it.

Thanks for your kind words :-) And great idea amassing lots of data, which will absolutely help you make the best decisions going forward. Data is sooo powerful these days, and we now have the computing tools to assess it extremely well... All the best with you decisions!

Out of interest as I'm getting a battery, you say it's mostly full but is that not because we've had plenty of sunny days recently? What's it like in winter? You sound like you may also not have high demand at your property, at my place everything is electric including sewage pump, ASHP for water and heat and an MVHR system, plus an EV to charge.

Enjoyable read. Thanks for posting.

so you go offgrid to end up at the mercy of the energy company pricing?

Thanks for the kind words, Ian. And thanks also for your experiences - I hope that Agile works out well for you - I really do see these price plunges happening more and more. The world we're living in seems to be getting more chaotic, not less...

@@PazLeBon With Octopus agile, you are using electricity from the grid at wholesale rates not energy company rates like you do on standard rates where you pretty much pay a flat fee or fixed rate per kWh. You get these wholesale rates 24 hours in advance at half hourly rate. Obviously these rates go up and down over the 24 hour period, with highest pricing in the high usage periods of the day (Generally 4 - 7pm). As Ian mentioned you can get plunge pricing where too much electricity has been generated so the price goes in to the negative, so you get paid to use it, or charge your battery. You can though run the risk of high prices (capped at £1 per kWh). I expect in the winter time I may change to Octopus Flux and then back to Agile in the spring. I have also considered getting another battery. It is also not really offgrid as you are still paying standing charge, my last few months I have paid more in standing charge than electricity from the grid. The whole system just makes you more aware of what you are using but also you have a lot of flexibility on how much it is costing you. You get a bit obsessed with checking wholesale prices 😁

That was interesting read. I installed (all myself in late 2021) 4kWh of PV power combined with a hybrid 5kWh inverter and batteries with a 11kWh capacity. Total cost @£2750 +@£250 for incidentals. The inverter will draw grid power but we don’t export. I clicked on this link as the heading was ‘reasons to get a bigger battery’, I tried a few different battery types (small scale) but ended up with 8x Trojan (used) T105 = 6v / 225ah for my 48v system. I also have 8x spare set too. I was going to add the spare batt’s to double the capacity. Now everything works great during the summer months but with the nights drawing in - it’s not so good. Now I find that there is insufficient daylight to charge the batteries as it stands without trying to double the capacity up. We do not use grid to charge the batteries and we do not have company smart meter. We have our own smart meter or one we can trust. At first when i plumbed everything in, we were getting up to elec usage of 6kWh from midnight to 06:00. That was the inverter drawing grid to recharge the batteries. That link was isolated and now we see less than 1kWh for the same time slot (summer usage) due to the batteries having sufficient capacity to run the large fridge/freezer during the night which is the biggest hit. Now with November in a few days, we see that the kWh usage is nudging 1.5kWh for the same period and expect it to top out at 2kWh+ over winter. Trouble with using lead batteries is their output and you need to keep an eye out on the 48v draw supply. Sometimes we isolate the batteries before they get too low to prevent damage. With that in mind my original costing is now probably going to double in price as I will probably go with a shot of replacing the T105 with a bank of Lithium’s. Hopefully that expense will be recovered within a few years and they have a 10y life span and they will charge quicker and discharge for longer. Let’s see if I do find that they are an upgrade vs price. Trouble is once you get the bug, you just go for it.

Sounds great! And for a peak export period, a West array must be ideal :-)

FYI: I have Sounth and North arrays (identical on the garage roof) and in our greyer british weather they perform almost identically! I cant comment to when the sun is lower in autumn or winter as I expect they will be more impacted then. I'm suprised though how well the north panels perform.

Cheers David :-) And that all sounds great! Be careful what you wish for re. sunnier countries - the way things are going, we might have to move to the North Pole! Good luck with the new charger. I'd love to hear your experience with it...

Cheers Daniel - that's high praise - thank you :-)

Hi Jim, thanks for taking the time to comment. Sounds like Agile has been a great tariff for you. I don't have much experience of Gas tracker, but it's something I should really start thinking about, I guess. You've prompted me to do that. I hope you're able to get someone to look at what solar options you might have. I'd recommend joining this group for a while, to see if others are in the same situation: facebook.com/groups/2197329430289466

That's really kind of you to think of me with the referral code, and great to hear my work is helping you make informed decisions! :-)

50k to save 2.4c electricity costs . its clearly gone wrong somewhere right?

if your ower goes out, you cut back and really prob only need a day or two of power. folk on here saying they have 30kw batteries are not people like you m8

Cheers for the kind words - and great to see that you're getting good use out of it! Yeah, ROI is a tricky one - it's almost always better to buy the system you eventually end up with (after all the upgrades) right at the start, but hindsight is a wonderful thing. I'm hoping that videos like the one I just made, get people thinking ahead (budget notwithstanding) :-) My next video will be about choosing the right battery and calculating ROI etc.

Thanks :-) And agreed, as the video was getting a little long - I'm planning a follow up video to cover off those points and a few other things...

Thanks for the great feedback :-) Yes, this is the perennial question with any kind of technology, really... with technology continually get better and better and prices consistently falling, when is the best time to take the jump? The way I look at it is that whatever you do, the following year, the technology you bought will likely be better and cheaper. So, as long as you're happy with your decision at the time (on what ever criteria you use, e.g. financial) then it's all good. For home batteries, because of the likely effect that CATL will have in the market in a few months' time - see my video here: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/g5hjhpCjupPOg2w.htmlsi=hDDDPTKHCpSeUuqV - it's worth waiting a short while, as there might be a notable financial benefit.

Wow - that's such great results! Well done - many would have shied away from such an endeavour to get your hot water solution, but you made it work! :-)

Wow, that’s some battery, and I guess with a 100% charge you could go maybe 2 or 3 rainy days without drawing from the grid…?

@@GaryDoesSolar It smooths out all the peaks and troughs, two or three day with trash solar output easy! In fact its been so effective it has even eliminated the need to reorganise when appliances are used, thus making it for the most part invisible day to day. I was aware that 90% effectiveness can be achieved with less, but what you said in the video is absolutly on point for bigger batteries!

You’re very welcome and it sounds great what you’re planning! I’d be very interested to hear how it all goes 👍🏻

Thank you

You're quite right. You *could* add another 7.5kWhrs and what that will do is expand that 8 months by, maybe, a couple of weeks(?). You've no doubt already have worked out that it's more or less impossible to have enough batteries and enough panels to be self-sufficient over the winter months. Don't know what batteries you have but right now the capital cost of batteries, and their longevity, means that they cost about 10p per kWhr every time you use the battery (this is just capital cost). I'm looking forward to the new battery tech (iron-air and flow batteries for example) where the capital cost per kWhr moves down to, hopefully, 2p per kWhr. Have you considered a 'solar diverter' to heat your water? They are a good way of using the excess solar.

Thanks John - yeah, having an EV complicates matters slightly - I reckon your battery size is just right 👍🏻

@@GaryDoesSolar Thanks for your confirmation. As I said above, you do a good job.

@@johndoyle4723 That's so great to hear. I'll keep the videos coming 🙂

This is great to hear - thanks for sharing! I'm not quite as into the automation as you are. I think automations are great (I mean, that is what computers should be doing for us all the time - worrying about these things so we don't have to) but I wonder if the hardware/software you're using to create all this is reliable and dependable? I'm guessing the answer is heading towards "yes'" but of course, you're on hand to investigate/diagnose/fix. But what about the average non-technical person - they would not know what to do at all. Interested in your thoughts around this conundrum given your first hand experience. And maybe it could be the subject of a future video. What technology do you mainly use? HA?

Great news! Hope the installation goes well - and you're still in time for a ton of sun :-) All the best!

Thanks for the kind words, Stuart. I have the Gen 2 GE batteries, and yeah - even 3.6kW charge/discharge rate is a bit low for today's typical appliance usages. I'm always jealous of people with 2 x Tesla Powerwalls - essentially 27kWh and a 10kW charge/discharge rate! Golly! Great to hear you're earning some monies from export too! :-)

You're welcome, Simon :-) Now, with regard to the charging/discharging, do you mean discharge up to and down to settings? If so, these are present in the Pro edition I mentioned in the video. Yeah, I'll have a think about V2L and V2G...

@@GaryDoesSolar Yes the charge and discharge settings. Sorry I missed the mention about the pro edition. Excellent!

Thanks Kevin - there are actually quite a few videos out there where people share their ROI calculations on their solar setups. I’d recommend you watch Anthony Dyer’s channel, for example - his setup is near Aberdeen.

Can I ask where you got your 15kWh battery for £3k ? I've had solar for a week and - even in our grey climate - find that I wish I had a bigger battery already... (I have 10kWh)

Cheers Lee, and on the heat pump topic, you might be interested in my friend's KZfaq channel, where he covers his own heat pump installation, which as been so successful, he's recently had his gas supply disconnected: kzfaq.info

@@GaryDoesSolar thanks for your message. Regarding a Heat Pump- I'm more than happy to enjoy all the heating and cooling benefits of Air 2 Air as Air Conditioning and wished many more saw these benefits too. There are a number of reasons I will not remove the Gas Boiler and actually having a new one installed while converting to LPG later in the year, these being: 1) UK Energy Security is precarious, especially at high demand times such as Summer with others running their 'unsupported' Air Conditioners and Winter when demand is high - the Demand Response evenings of glorious CashBack schemes. Its a lot easier to heat a house with a Gas Boiler running from a battery than try to use the battery to run a Heat Pump to heat it, 100watts against 3kwh-5kwh. 2) Heat Pumps are being sold as 'Greener', not strictly true as there is not enough renewables available on the Grid during times of low Wind output. For over three weeks of June and many times over Winter the UK was not only burning a lot of Gas, but also dirty high CO2 emitting Coal to run those Heat Pumps. So, I am not convinced right now that spending £1,000s on one at this time has much environmental impact compared to driving an EV charged by the Sun since March and aiming for Grid charging on Windy days when there is high renewables in the mix. Then the house apart from 3600Kwh of annual gas, I think I contribute more than enough to Climate Change. It's a long calculation with COP and power station efficiency but on par- little CO2 savings to just burning the gas here when needed. I've met many with Heat Pumps who consumed a ridiculous amount of expensive electricity over Winter for cold houses compared to Gas. Controversial, I know but getting millions of more homes fitted with Solar should be higher priority than lucrative Grants for Heat Pumps for biggest bang for our buck on Climate. Have you seen the latest E-On advert - the world is falling apart. Quickest way to switch anyone off. Do thet truly believe scare tactics will make people rush to install Solar, move to EV and Heat Pumps to save the planet we've known is collapsing for donkeys years? Maybe they should advertise the hard cash Solar would save and earn- the Climate benefits by default. Link to it here: www.thedrum.com/news/2023/06/20/eon-starts-the-countdown-climate-change-latest-sustainable-ad Just convinced my neighbour to install Solar- not to 'save the planet' but the fact he'll make £1200 profit on Export and enjoy saving £1300 per year on electricity. Here's another one - "smart meters can help reduce our reliance on foreign gas". How? You have no idea where the electricity is coming from via a Smart meter and the only ones that would have a clue is those on Agile who notice the Import price rate rocket. I help reduce our reliance on foreign gas by quickly checking a website that takes one minute to decide if out of conscience, that I should charge the car or run the washer or wait until tomorrow. All without looking at a Smart meter screen. If, during Winter I can run the washer at a better time to avoid 250g/CO2 then I will. I am raising a complaint with the ASA and likely is will be upheld due to mis-selling.

@@VinoVeritas_ Now that is a shame.. sounded like a great price, perhaps too good.

Please tell us about your 15kwh battery configuration, brand and supplier!

Thanks for your detailed comment. I can’t provide advice (for liability reasons) but I can give my views. If I was on the FiT scheme and it wasn’t working out for me, and if my panels were installed say 5-10 years ago, I’d perform a cost analysis of replacing them with much higher efficiency panels, coming out of the FiT scheme and moving to one of the Octopus Tariffs - particularly one which offers a high export rate (Flux for example). We’re moving into winter and a tariff like Flux is really for the summer, so depending on when my new panels were installed, I’d either move to Flux immediately or go on a tariff like Agile in the meantime. I have made videos on both these tariffs so you can get an idea of the pros and cons of each. All the best with whatever you decide! 😀

@@GaryDoesSolar Thank you for your reply Gary, I will investigate the octopus options and look at your tariff videos, appreciate your comments.

36Kw that’s a nice big system. Well done for that

Thanks for taking the time to comment and also your kind words, Bryan - Good insight in what you say - and something for me to think about for future videos...

@@kevxsi16v I was in my 60s when I put them in. I was lucky in that I knew an electrical engineer who had run power stations in the CEGB era. I thought the FIT scheme was incredibly generous and asked him if I was missing something. He told me that I wasn’t but it wouldn’t last (wise words) I wanted to put in all the systems in at the same time. That was where my education started- I made the mistake of applying for all of them at the same time which enabled the local DNO to restrict me to 3 slightly reduced systems because the local grid couldn’t cope. We discovered that the local system was operating at a voltage close to the legal limit and in summer when the sun came out, they cut out as our generation pushed the voltage over the upper limit Eventually the rules for connection to the grid changed and we could install the rest of the systems. Of course the FIT rates had been reduced as had the capital cost of the installation The cynic in me does wonder how much power we could save in this country if we operated at the bottom end of the voltage spectrum rather than the top end - or am I missing something?

This is just brilliant, and a perfect example of why home batteries are so useful. Thanks for sharing :-)

The power rating of your solar is expressed in kilowatts the energy storage rating of a battery bank is expressed in kilowatt hours. That keeps everything straight so people are talking the same language.

Nice idea, but perhaps impractical to set up? I do like your thinking though for hot water heating - that makes a lot of sense to me, and likely easier to determine solutions for.

@@GaryDoesSolar The setup is really simple. There are tonns of warm water heat pumps on the market. Mine works really well. The system is a combination of a heatpump and a big water tank. If you don't have a ventilation system in your house, the distribution of the cold air might be the biggest challenge... but not bigger than installing AC in each room.

Cost benefit analysis on this approach doesn't pay as of yet. That is a rather technical endeavor to recover a relatively small amount of heat.

Hi Ray, you raise a great point! And I believe that many battery management systems allow for that kind of behaviour. I didn't want to get into too much detail on that in this particular video. I'll need to check my app again, just to make sure it behaves in a similar way...

what's the deep cycle lifespan of your battery?

@@occamraiser they state 6,000 cycles which should be about 16 yrs

Cheers, and sounds like you're doing all the right things, but yeah, doubling your battery capacity could work well for you - all the best! :-)

Thanks Tony, and I wish the AIO was available when I had to make decisions only 6 months ago! Oh well, at least you'll benefit from what looks to be a great battery. And agreed, the government should remove VAT from home battery-only installs as well... We can but hope!

I honestly wish I could spend more time working on solar/related topics 👍🏻 I’ve got a full time (and taxing) day job. I totally agree though - the next generation would be able to push adoption and innovation a hundred times further if they’re exposed to the challenges at an early age. Let’s see what happens…

I agree in principle, but then it all comes down to the export rates that energy companies are providing.... There's an ROI to be calculated for both scenarios, which I'll try to cover in a follow-up video I'm making. Thanks for taking the time to comment.

Hi there Jean - and thanks for your kind words :-) Yeah, if you already have electric storage heaters, it's a good use for excess solar as we head into winter. If you have to buy them, then there's an ROI calculation to be performed, but as they're essentially 100% efficient, they probably still make sense.

Thanks Vincent - I love this comment, and I agree - having a solar/battery/EV setup brings a lot of satisfaction, way more than just financial considerations :-)

Sounds great - I have an almost identical setup (Octopus Flux, 2x Pylontech us3000c and Home Assistant). And I have my own code managing just enough charge to cover the until the sun can take over, plus export what's spare from X minutes before 7pm, based on calculated spare and discharge rate. Next I'm going to make it look a couple of days ahead to avoid export when we need it for the day after... It's super satisfying. Looking to add a new battery or two in the autumn, 12.8 kWh usable takes us though 90% of days.

Thanks Michael. I'll be looking at SolCast myself, as I want find a way in the utility to calculate the solar profile across multiple array orientations. And one of these days, I'll get into HA - everyone seems to be having a good experience with it :-)

@@GaryDoesSolar Solcast (and its home assistant integration) already supports multiple arrays at different angles. You can run HA on your laptop to start, just to kick the tyres and check it out. You'll be amazed what it can find on your network to integrate, monitor and control. Then before you know it you'll be installing it on a little server and building new automations and dashboards to do cool stuff without writing any code. Beware: it will become something of an obsession 😅

Thanks, and you're right - these export restrictions can really get in the way of a profitable installation :-/

Thanks for the kind words, Chris, You'll be pleased to hear I'm covering costs and ROI in a follow-up video to this one that I'm working on now...

Apologies, my comment was too short to be clear. It was intended to be about tariff selection rather than ROI. The lifetime of other solar hardware is expressed in years so battery is the only variable cost. If I charge at, say 7.5p per kWh, have 5 % round turn loss and using the battery (as above) costs 8.5p then I need 16.1p per kWh to make it financially viable. Fair enough if I am replacing 21p import (though by much less than it seemed) but no good at all if I thought a 15p export rate looked good. Not having this variable cost in the modelling utility could lead to the wrong tariff being chosen.

@@ChrisChurchill-by7ek Thanks for the extra detail - I understand your point now 👍 Ok, I most definitely started a debate with the utility by using the term "profit" in the calculations - and of course, it can only ever be profit once all the expenditure is taken into account, including the battery. I'm thinking the best way to handle matters is to remove the sense of profit from the utility and instead just consider expenditure and income wrt the utility bill. Then, in a separate utility, I can look at ROI factors, including the battery cost/kWh factor you mentioned. So much work still to do on all this and limited time,... but I'll get there (slowly) 🙂

Thanks for your kind words, Robert. Yeah, you're right - good installers should know that once a customer gets an installation, it's not long after that want to extend it if they can. And so, this really should be pointed out before the customer commits to a lesser setup. Hey, maybe installers like the fact that they can derive additional revenue via multiple work packages?

@@GaryDoesSolar From a number of post-installation conversations, my installer did suggest increasing the battery capacity however, at that time, I wondered if adding more Solar panels would be a better option. Of course, as I've learned subsequently, the Inverter would still have the same limitation.

@@robertsprigge5535 Yeah, there are a few "traps" when it come to designing solar and battery installations, and actually, it's what prompted me to start making these videos; to give people a certain level of knowledge of the topic, so they can make better, more informed decisions - not least because of the amount of money involved these days...

Thanks Tony. Yeah, longevity is certainly a consideration - and I note that my inverter (GivEnergy) gets super hot when force discharging for a couple of hours - so it's not only the battery that is affected... I have a 10-year warranty on both, and maybe technology will be a lot cheaper/better then anyway?

Batteries are about winter? Summer is easy no matter where you are or your direction/angles/array size. Bigger batteries mean you will get through the diurnal high rate energy company charging in winter without too much difficulty. Also this is about hedging against future price rises (or gouging as its labelled in Australia). The current drop is long overdue and only because the cap they can charge (in the UK) has been artificially lowered. Its still grossly elevated compared to European pricing. No doubt the UK distributors will be lobbying furiously for it to be lifted come October regardless of the excuses (war pandemic cost of living) for their profiteering.

@@rjmacf0015 you reap what you sew for sure and youve been sewing tories there for decades :(

@@PazLeBon greed has nothing to do with political parties. Read Simon Montessori's biography of Stalin?

That’s bizarre, sounds like you are in exactly the same position as us. I also considered wall mounted south facing ‘winter sun’ panels but struggled to find anyone prepared to install them. We ended up investing in Ripple (co-operative wind farm) which has the advantage of decoupling generation from consumption entirely. Maybe worth considering?

Thanks, and I agree with you on the expense - it'll take a little more time yet before prices drop within a wider range of budgets, but the great thing about technology is that it generally only ever gets cheaper... :-)

I'll try to cover topics like this in my planned follow-up video. There are services like solcast.com which many inverter manufacturers tap into.

True. This video was all about why you want want a larger battery, not the barriers and complications that might arise when getting one. My aim is to cover those in a planned follow-up video.

You're most welcome - and thank you for taking the time to give me feedback. It all helps improve the channel performance as time goes on! I'm in a similar position to you - I'd love to have an EV, but they're just so expensive at the moment (although I see prices are starting to come down). If I did, then I would be looking at Intelligent Octopus, most likely - for the lengthy, cheaper, off-peak rates. But I'd most likely have to experiment with a few tariffs and check online forums to see how others are getting on with their EVs...

Thanks Peter - it's on the list (but it's getting to be a big list - lol) :-)

but surely a 28kw battery is tens of thousands??? and if power is only 2.4c youd need like 56 years to make that investment back

28kWh battery - sounds great!

@@PazLeBon 28 kW is essentially 32 280Ah LFP cells that go for about $100-110/pc + $700 for BMS, cables, cabinets and shipping. So about 4-5 grand if you go full DIY.