Yes it was sunny, yes we put the washing machine on loads when the battery hit 100% and unfortunately yes we did send free electricity to the grid as we've not sorted tariffs yet (waiting on certificates etc), but it is a great feeling nether the less to use no grid (effectively) in 24 hours. It does make me want to double the battery though! (6.2kW PV, 8kW Sig Inverter, 9kW Sig Battery, will be an Octopus tariff, bit lost on all that currently, Go or Flux etc, when, how, where!)

Just about to order.
£3400 fully installed (subcontracted)
Includes outdoor installation including enclosure.

Very unlikely to ever get solar (wife prevention. )
MCS install was £4600 with same battery and 6/8kw solis inverter but without solar, export just didn’t seem to cost in for another £1200.

IOG 6.6p and 34.29p fixed for 12 months.
We have tesla plus wife’s electric car. Wife’s electric car is purely overnight off peak charging. Charger will be shifted to its own connection so will never see the battery.

Anyone have experience of equivolts “managed service “?
It syncs with IOG for the Tesla so battery can recharge during IOG slots via the api
Outside of a few re-charges with IOG daytime slots there isn’t really any more clever ways to game anything for extra savings so this is pure night/day arbitrage.

Daytime average baseline peak usage is 12kwh so shifting that 12kwh @26p ish is £90+ a month saving. So about 3 yr pay off.

Is there anything I need to check or be wary of before I order? Especially in regards to equivolts £6 monthly managed service (this is optional. I can control via home assistant if I want) or the G98/DNO notification for no-export install ?

Apologies for the very specific question but I'm stuck and getting a bit desperate...

I could really use some help and advice as I try to install modbus integration for my FoxESS inverter as part of my Predbat (Home Assistant) install, something which I understand I need to do so that Predbat can read data and send instructions, which apparently cloud integration is not fast enough for. Basically, I am really uncertain about how to plug in and set up the Elfin EW11 I have bought specifically for this task into my FoxESS KH10.5 hybrid inverter, and I have really struggled to find clear instructions on how to do this.

What equipment and tools do I need to be able to do this? I bought the Elfin kit off AliExpress, but now understand I probably need things like an ethernet cable (or an RS485 cable, whatever that is), properly-rated USB cable power source, and maybe even other things. Do I need an external power supply or can I power the unit directly from the inverter? And what’s the process for me doing this? 

It has been a challenge for me with no proper experience of coding to set up Home Assistant and install and configure Predbat, but I am now left feeling incredibly frustrated as for weeks I have been stuck unable to overcome what I believe is the last big hurdle. I feel confused about what I need to do- do I need to splice strands of cable, solder things in or what? I am extremely nervous about the possibility of causing damage to my inverter and want the system to work as-is. 

If you can shine any light at all on my issues I’d greatly appreciate it, it will help me finally start taking advantage of the amazing benefits Predbat seems to offer. And if I’ve missed anything out that you need to know please let me know.

Thanks so much!

Hi all,

Looking to get solar panels installed.

I have a quote for 12 panel system with panels, battery, and inverter.

To me it looks good and a quick research suggests that the hardware is also good and reliable . Looking around independently for hardware seems to be expensive so this seems like a good deal. This is the first quote I’ve gotten from a specialist company.

Just one thing is bugging is that the software isn’t that great compared to something like Tesla. Is it worth it to change to Tesla or is software not a big deal?

Also, maintenance, service, and replacement is covered as long I have a plan with the financing company. Planning to go with 5 years which is the lowest offered.

Not really got any experience and have limited knowledge on solar panels so would appreciate for some tips or advice.

Edit: Thanks all for the advice and for saving me from a nightmare. it seems I am getting ripped off with this quote and I would be stupid to say yes to this. I’ll have the company give me a new quote based on the response and also look at other companies. I’m in the midlands area so would appreciate any good companies you have used.

I own just over half the carport, it’s east/west (with the house to the north) I think on half I might be able to get 6/8 on each side.

I assume the installer would ensure it could handle this weight?

Looking for a sense check of the quote below.

For context, this is an array on the main house roof, an array on the garage roof, as well as cabling between them.

A couple of other quotes were cheaper, but desk-based and avoided the hassle of garage installation which would be much more practical for us - so not really comparable.
This company get great reviews, did a site visit straight away so are clear on what can be done including garage installation and electrics, and have been really good at communicating and investigating queries.

- 16x Aiko Neostar 3S+ 545W Dual Glass All Black ABC N-type Bifacial P .V Panels*
- 8x Aiko Neostar 3S 490W All Black ABC N-Type MonoP .V panels
- Sigenergy Sigenstor Battery Module - 9 kWh
- Sigenergy Sigenstor Energy Controller Single Phase - 10kW

Quoted price £17,500

Includes
- cabling to garage (c.20m, mostly clipped along wall - DC, AC and data cables)
- electrical work including probably new consumer unit
- bird protection
- scaffolding
- MCS certificate

Current usage c 8,000kWh (including ASHP - no EV yet but hopefully in next 1-2 years)

Estimated annual generation 10,080kWh

Expect to move to Octopus Cosy

Estimated payback : 7.9 years

I have a terraced house that faces south west (rear roof) and north east (front). 5.2m wide and roughly 5m high with a 45 degree pitch.

My roof is currently made up of just dreadnought clay tiles and is unfelted. This is why I need a re roof. Most reputable solar installers won't go near an unfelted roof for fear of leaks and damage which is fair enough. Therefore my route to solar won't necessarily be easy or on the cheaper side.

So to try and keep costs down I'm looking to have the roof stripped and felted/breathable membrane fitted with integrated solar panels as this should help with labour cost as tiles will only need to be fitted around the solar panels, with hopefully re used tiles that are still ok.

I'm looking to do both front and rear as I would like the front felted anyway therefore may as well have panels that side as well. No they won't catch anything like the power of the rear panels but something is better than nothing in my opinion.

I know integrated will suffer more with heat but a full on new roof will not come cheap, then to add solar afterwards to me just seems uneconomical.

I would like a single company that can do both. Rather than having to organise a roofing and solar company to work together. I'm hoping I can get some recommendations for companies who can carry out this project or just get some general advice from people who have also had similar projects and what worked for them. It's possible two separate companies worked easily and were cheaper.

Ultimately I would like to go over to a heat pump and thermal battery from my gas combi, so I want to maximise how much solar energy I get and store (battery) what makes sense to keep costs down and effectively be as energy independent as possible.

19 panels and 2x 10kWh Battery comes to £13,273.85

31 panels and 1x 10kWh Battery comes to £15,710.77

I did talk about Sig Energy with the chap and he told me he would quote the same panels and battery with the Sig gear but hasn't!

I felt like he was really pushing for me to go with Solis/Fogstar do you think the reasoning for this is he can make more money from that brand?

Would appreciate any feed back on price and brand.

This is the third quote id have but the only that will do my west facing roof due to poor garden access. It could go to 16 panels if i modfiy the flue pipe.

Tentative about getting ev in the near future (prob when i pay this off over 3 years)

Have not negotiated price yet but will aim to.

[ Removed by Reddit on account of violating the content policy. ]

Hello,

Just initially looking in to solar and would like a second opinion please.

Basically, do you think that I will get a real benefit from the solar panels. The house faces a general direction of NE so there is no south facing wall. Also there is a chimney on the house and one next door which will cast a shadow on the panels throughout the day. The sales man said has recommended these panels to address it. No EV at all. Do you think it is worth it and there will be a sufficient drop in monthly bills? Do you think the estimated generation of 1392kwh is correct? It seems low.

I’m on a good Electricity rate at the moment until March and then it will rise quite a lot. All opinions welcome and thanks in advance.

Our gas boiler is currently not working so we are using an immersion to heat the water in our Unvented Cylinder. I want to have the immersion on during the 8p overnight rate however whatever setting I have had on the mode scheduler the Immersion drains the battery and the battery doesn't charge. I have a 7kw Inverter and the immersion heater is 3kw

I have asked Gemini AI and it suggested two different settings, neither of which worked and it says there is a known glitch in the Fox software which is causing this issue. 

Can anyone advise what mode setting I should have the system set to to both use grid load for the immersion whilst charging the battery using the overnight rate?

Edit: thank you for the clarifications, advice and questions, you've helped me to focus and stop overthinking! Your comments have helped me to just get on with it. I'll leave the post up in case any other extreme newbies do some desperate searching in the future.

Hi solar people, really helping someone can help unpickle my brain here!

We've just had our solar system installed:

• Panels - LONGi Solar Hi-MO X10 LR7-54HVD-485M 485W
• Inverter - Solis S6-EH1P5K-L-PLUS 5000W
• Battery - Dyness PowerBrick Plus 15.27kWh

Due to some life circumstances, I wasn't able to be present during the quoting stage, but am now responsible for sorting out tariffs and I have genuinely no idea what I'm doing or looking at with tariffs. It seems that competitive companies like Octopus and Eon don't support our solar set up, so I'm looking at standard energy tariffs + setting up a separate SEG export tariff, but standard tariffs don't take into account having solar at all when I generate quotes.

Has anyone else had experience sorting separate tariffs like this? I've been on their websites and phoned up their teams and all the regular tariffs are more expensive than what we're currently paying due to the price cap change (but we're up for renewal at the end of October anyway so something has to be done) - and when I phone people, they tell me they can't make any adjustments because these are estimates based on previous years' usage.

Am I being messed around? I really don't understand why I'm going to end up paying more expensive bills now that I have solar and, to be honest, I'm completely in over my head. I suspect there is a lot of user error on my part.

I know that after a while of significant difference of energy usage does alert the energy company to change the direct debit, but I am struggling with the confidence to actually take that step to move onto a tariff that, right now, is more expensive when my gut says that can't possibly be right.

Don't know if this will be covered in the comments, but it looks like I could still choose something like NextOptimise which is import/export, but without the compatibility it doesn't have the smart element, so we'd have to choose when to import/export against wholesale price changes live throughout the day which isn't going to work when I'm at work all day. Or am I just scaring myself? I have yet to decode most of the manufacturer's app, the documentation to understand it is not great.

Thanks in advance for your patience - and hopefully your kindness, as I clearly have no knowledge or experience!

Have had about 6 quotes and this one is the best value of them all,

Had a few quotes and trying to decide between best two, wanting to be future proofed for a heat pump in future too, larger house with ~5000kwh usage currently. Not currently on time of use tariff as no EV charger and mainly charge at work:

• Option 1 £12850 - 9.66KWp

  21 Astronergy Astro N7 2.0 460W

  SolaX X1-IES 8kW 1ph Hybrid inverter

  SolaX 18.4kWh battery storage

  All the normal bits (bird proofing, G99 etc)

• Option 2 £14,250 - 11.64KWp

  24 × Longi Hi-Mo X10 485W HVB All Black

  2× Sigenergy 10.0 9.04kWh Sigenstor Battery

  Sigenergy Sigenstor 8kW inverter

  Same bits as other quote - but ability to put on CC so take advantage of interest free periods

  Potential to add extra 9kwh battery for £2600 taking to 27kwh total

I would want an EV charger regardless, the Sigenstor system has the potential to add a 12KW DC bidirectional charger for £2100, allowing V2X with my car. It would be £800 for a regular 7kw EV charger for either system.

Both well reputed firms as far as I can tell.

Currently leaning towards the larger system with 3 batteries and the DC charger, but £19k is a big outlay! With various AI usage I calculate a ~£2100 yearly benefit with system 2, with a ~9 year pay off. Slightly less than this if I leave off the EV charger though at ~8 years.

Any help/advice appreciated!

I got 6 panels, fox inverter and 10kw fox battery last year. I feel it’s worth getting a gateway (annoyingly I didn’t consider at the time of initial install).

I’ve contacted a local company to come add this and they’ve said fox now has a gateway and the quote to come add it is £1040? I’m in northwest.

Seem reasonable to people?

Use 3500kwh of peak energy, have an EV and load as much as we can onto off peak. Want a battery charge during the night and use during peak hours.

I'm currently setup with Fuse Energy (electricity import at 19.37p per kwh, electricity export at 13p per kWh and standing charge of 46.76p per day.

I've been running Home Assistant for a few years and have setup Predbat over the last few weeks.

We have no EV charger or Heat Pump at the moment so on average over the last couple of months we've been exporting circa 12kWh per day.

I've setup the "compare" in Predbat to pull from the following tariffs.

I've got a couple of questions though:

1. Is there a way of pulling in the standing charge - price per kWh (import and export?) into Predbat? How do I know if it's included or not?
2. Does anyone have the full API URL for EDF FreePhase Dynamic?
3. Are there any other dynamic pricing tariffs I'm missing?

(just to note that I've included Intelligent Flux but it's not available to me as I've not bought panels/battery from Octopus).

Thanks!

I’ve been quoted on a Hinen 15kWh battery with 5kW inverter built in that seems like a good price compared to other makes and companies.

Anyone got any info (good or bad) on them? It will just be the battery only, no solar.

Thanks

What do we think of Good Energy in Maidstone? Awful reviews as an energy supplier, which makes finding reviews for their solar installs is hard. I only want the solar install from them.

Short version: Tesla PW3 inverter, extra PW3 battery (27kwh total), 16 Aiko panels, Eddi for Immersion/HW. £13930.

All Solar Works in Worthing refused to even quote against this, and verbally said they would be north of £20k. Another supplier out of Tunbridge Wells also supplied no quote, said he'd be £25-ish for the similar kit.

In terms of the other suppliers I'm suspicious this is too cheap and I'm wondering why? But in terms of other quotes I see on here (mostly north of the UK perhaps?) this actually doesn't seem that cheap at all. It's certainly cheap for down here.

Any thoughts please chaps and chapesses?

Long Version: As you can see, my house is dormer-tastic, but i have a double garage and brick/steel orangery, both flat rooves, which are in the process of being replaced/renewed. So the plan is to mostly use the flat rooves, and just the pitch under the Velux at the back of the house. I also am pondering another two panels where the red dots are but scaffolding costs seem to make this less viable financially. I still want to though - more panels equals better, surely? The sun starts top right of the picture in the morning, sort of from the direction of the silver car, and comes around to bottom left. The garage gets sun all day, the orangery panels from about 10am, if that helps. So those extra 2 panels seem like a good idea to me. Any thoughts on these extra 2 panels?

By the way - all the solar kit is going inside the garage - it appeals to me to keep it dry and out of the elements. There is an armoured 60A cable between house and garage already, with a small fuse board in the garage (will need to be replaced, i am sure) and newer electrics in the house.

I'm still waiting on my MPAN but I was wondering do EDF pay you into the account you pay your bills with or can you get paid into your EDF account? I'd find it interesting to leave it all in the EDF account over a year to see if summer export outweighs winter import or not (I know I can keep track myself but it would be good to see at a glance)

We're quite decided on getting solar. For the obvious benefits, but I'm also quite excited to run it as a little ecosystem, managing when I export and how I run the house and watching the performance etc.

So my question for those of you that do get stuck in with managing it in a smart way, potentially exporting at peak, maybe charging the battery when it's cheap... do the apps let you see the benefit you're getting? Can you see how much you'd have spent if you didn't have solar? Or you need spreadsheets and to keep your own log?

In terms of acting on the data, is it easy to manage things like what time the battery should charge versus what time you export? Or is it quite difficult to keep on top of the rates and timings? Is it too easy to find yourself having to use expensive grid energy because you accidentally exported everything? Or is it more of a set it up and then you don't really need to think about it thing?

Would love to see some app screenshots as well if anyone doesn't mind.