In our case the solar does continue to work and charge the batteries as well as power the house. But I don't know if the same is true of the three phase system. You'd have to double check with GivEnergy. I suspect it would though, if wired up correctly.

Yeah, I've seen that a few times, usually only for the first half an hour of the peak period at most. It is a bit odd. So far it's not caused me to import from the grid at that time and it generally picks up shortly after and exports at the full rate for the rest of the peak period. I have no idea why it would do that though.

Yes, it's a bit of a different style of tariff so it takes a bit of getting used to. Because the import and export rates are the same during the day it actually doesn't really matter that there is a lot of grid import, as long as it's balanced with a lot of grid export too. In fact you're better off using the grid rather than your battery outside of the peak hours because you then save your battery for exporting at that higher peak rate. I'm just about to publish my figures for IOF for May, as it happens, so you may be interested in that video too. It's worked out pretty well for us, I have to say!

No, not yet, we're still waiting too. That reminds me, I need to get in touch with them to see where we're at with that.

It's definitely a different way to use your battery, for sure. It takes some getting used to but overall I'm very pleased with how it's gone so far.

Ah, it's always a pain when you have to change your plans because of the DNO. I'm sure you'll get a lot out of your system regardless though.

Adding more battery isn't really necessary once you've covered your typical usage (for Winter, say). And if you have more generation you actually don't need as much battery anyway (well, you still need enough to get through the night as a minimum). But I agree that getting as many panels as possible is generally a good plan.

You imply both that you don't want to see me do a financial calculation and that you do? I'm getting mixed messages here. Don't worry, I've got big plans for a financial video that will blow your mind. You'll love it, I'm sure.

​@TimAndKatsGreenWalk I'm hesitant. It depends on the perspective you take and which calculations used. Previously with your battery discussion I suggested that the perspective of the whole system should be used to work out whether an investment is worthwhile. On that basis a bigger battery on my system return would be paid for in a couple of years - contrasted with a cost benefit of the battery in isolation which would take longer than the battery lifetime. You seemed to prefer maximising the rate of return and I suggested if it still pays for itself then it's worth it. You suggested I didn't understand your calculations - ouch! So let's not go there again 😂. But again the consideration of an extra investment and whether it's worthwhile is interesting. For extra solar PV a similar question arises. The extra PV has a high installation cost with scaffolding DNO approval etc. Naturally the cost is compared to the marginal benefit and tends to be dismissed. However if integrated into the whole system and if it pays for itself within lifetime then perhaps it becomes worthwhile? It may take longer to pay for itself but it pays more by then. Ultimately if you had an equal size spare roof you could repeat the whole thing again. Your whole system takes longer to pay for itself by the time difference of instalation but pays double by then. I have a smaller dilemma at the moment - should I add an extra £300 designer radiator into my wet system? It'll look nice and perhaps I can reduce my flow temperature from 40°C to 35°C and achieve 0.2 better SCOP? Even a marginal calculation pays for itself in two years. As a system calculation it makes little difference but at least a positive one. It's a lot of faf though. A Ripple investment pays a rate of return similar to a savings account and takes a long time to pay for itself with loss of deposit. Could the same money be better invested in increasing the size of a component part of an existing PV, battery, heat pump system? As I mentioned my system currently returns 17.5% p.a. paying back in 5.7 years, and even if increasing a component were to reduce that percentage and increased that time it would still be better than Ripple and you keep what's left. It also depends what you want to do with your savings. You might want to spend them on a holiday or landscape your garden instead. P.S. I suspect wind won't be worth doing but it's an interesting subject. I look forward to the prototype 😉

Haha! You know what, I've spent a good chunk of today looking more into how I could make the North roof work. You're probably right, but I think it's likely we'll wait another year or so. We shall see!

No problem.

Funnily enough I was just watching one of your videos when I spotted your comment. I'm impressed that you've had such good generation from your NW panels, that's very encouraging. You're soundly beating my combined 6.8kWp E/W array at the moment. I've not completely discounted the idea of using the North facing roof so perhaps I'll get in touch with my installer to see what he thinks. Cleaning the panels up there would be essentially impossible due to the tight space between us and the neighbour's house on that side so they'd be on their own once installed. I'll let you go through a full Winter first and see how you get on ;)

Well, I'm glad you enjoyed it!

That is odd. My battery has always reached close to 100% before 4pm. If it persists it might be worth a call to Octopus to see if there's something stopping it fully charging.

Ah, nice, I hadn't spotted that, thanks.

@@TimAndKatsGreenWalk you’re welcome. Open Solar is way better

Yikes indeed! Yeah, I might look into that, it could mean an extra panel could fit, potentially.

I recently discovered triangular panels are also a thing now too, although lower efficiencies than the rectangular variety presently. I might look into half width ones too as that might help fill some gaps.

We were actually aiming to buy that house next door but sadly it had already sold and ours was the only one left. But as it happens I don't regret it and the E/W array has worked really well for us. I did look into smaller panels but they are few and far between, and actually I couldn't really fit much more on, in terms of total wattage. I'll keep an eye on things and potentially the panels will become cheaper and more powerful, at which point it might be worth revisiting. We had very little peak draw over Winter (see my extra battery video) and I reckon we could reduce that further next Winter with a change of strategy. I hope you're able to achieve your aims too.

I'm a big fan of West facing panels for exactly the reason you described. I have neighbours with great West facing roofs and I'm working on convincing them to add solar.

They sure do.

Possibly, although I think mounting them diagonally would be tricky. I did discover triangular panels are a thing although they are expensive and low power compared to rectangular ones, so probably not worth it.

Sadly our garden really isn't big enough for that.

Indeed. In some respects I wish I'd added panels to those South facing triangles when we got the original system installed.

That was my original intention but that house had already sold. Although as it happens I'm pretty happy with our E/W system.

I don't like that aesthetically.

@TimAndKatsGreenWalk Needs must!! 🤣 After the first few days you won't notice them.

@@AndrewLumsden maybe I'd consider that for the West side as that's the back of the house, but I wouldn't do it on the East side.

I think you're right, eventually all roof tiles will be solar tiles as they'll be the same price, although I expect that'll take a little while yet. I like the idea of solar fences too. We don't really have any good places we could do that though, unfortunately.

We're not far off what we generated last year, although we're in Gloucestershire, so I guess the weather's been kinder to us.

@@TimAndKatsGreenWalk Glad to hear somebody's doing ok 👍 To put it into context, '23 moved back to Flux 2nd week of March. '24, back to flux 2nd week of April, and felt obliged to topup the battery 4 times. Normally its grid only until late October 😢

Bedfordshire, so not that far South of you; Jan-May 23 4048kWh generation, Jan-May 24 4037kWh. April and May this year are about 15% down on last year, but March was much sunnier

@@geoffreycoan Interesting thanks. I'll crunch the numbers properly tomorrow, maybe I'm being overly pessimistic when I said 25%, but I don't expect to be too far out

@@geoffreycoan So I'm 15.7% down from 1st Jan '23 to 31st May vs '24's equivalent. But 1st March to 31st May between years is only 6.5% difference. Blow me down with a feather

I wish we had a three phase supply and then we could have as much generation as we want! Oh well.

@@TimAndKatsGreenWalk Same here, speaking to National Grid at the Everything Electric North show, things should be improving in moving to 3 phase and plans are apparently in place to help reduce costs to do so.

kWh, yes. Surprising but true.

Sadly we have no suitable place for that. It'd be great if we did.

Erm...

The higher power panels are much larger so wouldn't fit.

Still waiting for hard data from those double sided panels benefit wise

@@stuartburns8657 Looks like we will wait for long; no significant difference when mounted on roof

@@serraios1989 That does make sense. I've read the main benefit when combined with certain micro inverters are that they start and keep performing in low light, much earlier than traditional panels. Not convinced with the additional expenses if it'd be worth it though. If Heatable ever provide the data and it looks good enough, they'd be on a mostly North facing roof. That is assuming any new panels + micro inverters would integrate with my existing Givenergy inverter. 7 panels on 1 string, and 8 on another. So slots maxed out.

@@stuartburns8657 Heatable are not trustworthy. They still say in their videos that without microinverters, if one panel is shaded the whole array is underperforming. That’s a lie. The panels have bypass diodes and the partial shading doesn’t bring down the rest of the panels

It's a new build site, the houses all have their own supply, not looped.

Sadly there really is no more space. I did try a number of different arrangements but that's the best I could do. Appearances can be deceptive.

Maybe one day.

Very impressive, that's a heck of an upgrade to do yourself. Our neighbours have a great roof for solar and are presumably on a different phase to us, so with any luck they should be good to get a 5kW limit too, hopefully.

@@TimAndKatsGreenWalk Yes, that's a good point they may well be on a different phase. When I added solar to the garage I also installed 8kW Victron inverter which gives whole house back up with 29kWh of storage and got G99 for 11.68kW export (8kW Victron and the original 3.68 Inverter).

I won't be replacing any of our existing arrays any time soon. Maybe in 10 years when panels are even cheaper and higher output, but not for a good long while yet.

I'm not sure how I feel about that aesthetically, tbh.

His is a bit more North-West, strictly speaking but yes, it's interesting to see a more Northerly facing array in action.

@@TimAndKatsGreenWalk his has been an interesting one to follow. I'm awaiting DNO sign approval (40 days in so far...) and will hopefully have 10 panels East, 5 South & 5 North for an 8.6kWp. Really odd roof so the North & South panels will actually be over 4 faces as it's a double peak roof. Got the Fogstar 15.5kWh battery arriving next week so exciting I'm getting closer to having solar! Been watching too many solar channels and being envious 😉

@steve_787 nice! Sounds like an interesting system. I waited ages for mine to get installed but once it's done it feels great. And then you can start doing your own videos 😉

@@TimAndKatsGreenWalk think it'll have a bit of everything on it (except West facing panels), bi-facials with the Tigo's all round, although fork isn't getting much benefit from his but I need them to get the North/South panels on one string. I have considered doing some video's once it's up and running and my mate has done a fly over for me with his drone as a "before" just in case I feel brave enough to go on camera with my dull voice 😅

@@steve_787 there's always room for more stories to share. Give it a try!

It maxes out at about 50 deg after about two and a half hours then settles down. Seems ok, but I'm keeping an eye on it.

I think they want it for their own panels!

I like the trees, tbf, they provide good shade for the patio in the Summer.

Always thought that's where "brass tacts" came from.

Sadly not, I tried all sorts of arrangements and two per triangle was the best I could manage.

Ah, that's a shame. I'm lucky that our arrays pretty much max out at about 5kW because they're East/West, so no clipping.

There's no way I'm getting up on that roof.

An interesting thought. We really don't need the extra living space though, there are just the two of us and we already have more than enough rooms!

You can also reduce the panel roof gap. I did this on my PV system. Although depending on a survey.

Yeah, it's a big hassle changing them, for sure. Maybe in a few years when the price is super cheap and the panels have even higher output!

Not really, the garden isn't that big and the South facing fence would be heavily shaded, unfortunately. Nice idea though.

@@TimAndKatsGreenWalk Yes, I am thinking of doing so myself. With prices for solar very low a garden fence is almost more expensive per square meter. The other option I am considering is building a semi transparant solar roof next to the garden shed with double sided solar panels, although getting that water tight would be a challenge.

@@SolAce-nw2hf very interesting. Yeah, a solar fence is a great idea, it's a shame we don't really have a viable place to put one.

Would adding a solar fence mean creating another string input to the inverter? I’d like to add a solar fence but My GivEnergy inverter can only take 2 inputs and I have east and west panels

@@iancollyer9995 yes, you'd probably need an extra inverter for any new strings. Or you could use micro-inverters on the new panels which would then go straight into your AC supply.

No, sadly landscape didn't help either. I tried all sorts of orientations and it seems two really is the maximum on each triangle.