Any power bank whores about?

[V8Granite]

I need to find one of those electricians

I want to maximise the return and treat the money invested in my own solar set-up like a dividend return. X amount saved a month and x amount earned compared to what the money would have earnt in interest/ investments.

Dave!

[Nefarious]

Part of the game is being clever with the timing of energy usage. In theory, I should be able to fill my battery in an hour and a half at full power, and in summer I should get 6 hours of peak sun, just at the time when my consumption is low, so, without feed-in there will be quite a lot of wastage.

One strategy I'm planning is to rig up my electric hot water cylinder to run directly, and effectively use it as another 4.5kwh battery. I have 2 old-skool storage heaters too, and all the wiring already in the house from the old economy7 set-up, so I may add those as well. I need to see how it all performs in wintertime and see if the numbers make sense (I suspect they won't).

[V8Granite]

Winter is a shit as depending on panel location you could be down to 10% of your summer production easily. I think either maximising what you can achieve in the summer or changing how you run the system in winter is the best bet. For example if in winter you see your battery storage as just what you need to run the base load of your home each night then thats a good strategy as its doable and shouldn't need a lot of messing about or monitoring.

Currently I have more storage than needed and less panels but the aim of it all isn't to just throw panels at it, it's to use what you have the most efficiently. I think i'll even run a dedicated charging station supply to the house as I know when its cold or wet the kids will just plug their devices into any old socket. It's like the thermostat police but for USB cables

So when do you buy a Nissan Leaf and mounted it vertically in the garage for cheap storage ?

Dave!

[Barry]

Finally got my Sigenergy setup installed/running this week, 8 PV(3.8kw)/9kwh battery, including the gateway. Nice app too, and while it's only grabbed a kw or two today, it all seems to be running at least. Neat hardware too, stackable/modular battery/inverter kit, gateway wall mounted, and the EV charger routed through the Smart port so I can choose to trickle excess solar into an EV if needs be.

[V8Granite]

I ordered a similar set-up today, should hopefully be here at the end of next week.

Our usage is different as we only went for a 2.5kw inverter as our loads are relatively small and a 10kwh battery.
I will sort out the solar as I only want it on the garage roof and haven't decided which way to do it yet.

You can get the intelligent Octopus Tariff can't you as you have a wall charger installed ?

Dave!

[Barry]

You can get the intelligent Octopus Tariff can't you as you have a wall charger installed ?

Dave!

I've got the 6kw inverter as I'm hoping to add another 9kwh battery next year (it'll pull 4.5kw on a single battery)

My current Octopus tariff runs to Feb '27 so yeah, will need a fancy new tariff now, with FIT and Intelligent etc. I'll need to consider if I'm getting another EV before then too, so we'll see how annoying the Jazz gets in the meantime (55mpg is working in its favour at present I must say)

[V8Granite]

My friend does really well with his tariff. It works out when to buy and sell plus free periods of electricity etc. he needed to prove he had an electric charger or EV I think before he could get it though.

I'm just getting Octopus Go with 5 hours of cheap electricity from 12:30 to 05:30.

Dave!

[V8Granite]

The shed wasn't getting enough sun before 14:00 in the dreary winter days before its shaded by the trees next door. I like the trees so wanted to capture more of the winter sun. Our house faces SE so decided to fit the spare panel on a moveable stand I made, it means if it's windy I've not got a sail on the shed and also means I can be at 80 or so degrees which will be pretty perfect in winter. You can also stop it wherever you want and it won't move.



Also my Anker Solix turned up, annoyingly the extra battery didn't but that will arrive next week apparently.



Just to get it hard wired in, decide how I want to do my solar and then fingers crossed, half my electricity bill.

Dave!

[IanF]

https://driverevolt.co.uk

Sell parts for DIY and reusing car batteries

[dinny_g]

I know this thread is at the larger capacity end of the market but I picked this up recently:



Highly rated - it's 10000 mAh and surprisingly light, given the capacity. £16 on Amazon.

[V8Granite]

Using car batteries is great, well sealed from the weather etc.

The Solix is working well, my smart meter for it won't be installed till tomorrow so up to now I've just been putting 600 watts into the house instead of it following the load. So for example if you say the battery is 90% efficient which includes the charging and discharging, it cost £3.05p to run on Sunday.
If it wasn't the battery it would have cost £5.42p, which is saving us £840 a year and it will be even more when the extra battery gets fitted taking it to 15kwh.

3.5 year payoff without solar, which I will fit myself in the spring and then it'll probably drop another year at least and mean we can run the AC for free all summer.

Barry's system will run much bigger loads for electric cars, heat pumps etc but for Neanderthals like me and my lot, this works really well.

Dave!

[Jobbo]

I know this thread is at the larger capacity end of the market but I picked this up recently:



Highly rated - it's 10000 mAh and surprisingly light, given the capacity. £16 on Amazon.

Why does it need three fast ports? Surely all it does is charge other devices, no data throughput at all.

[dinny_g]

I didn't give it much thought - I wanted a light power bank to carry in my trouser pocket for when I go to London to watch the football

It recharges itself and also, charges my phone far quicker than any of my other powerbanks. I had assumed that was what it means.

[Beany]

I'd assume it means fast charge ports, not data. IE anything better than 5volt/2amp

[V8Granite]

You can get 80 watts from some so is very handy.

Dave!

[Beany]

The one I've got will do 120 or so, which is great for boosting laptops etc, assuming you have a sturdy enough cable.

I think 240w ones are the latest power standard, which presumably need an even thicker cable.

[Mito Man]

This gives me an idea, maybe I should upgrade my off grid system to 24 volts then I can run everything off DC with USB C and that should provide ample watts to realistically power everything. Going from 12v dc to 240v is horrifically inefficient, I bought a fancy Victron inverter but I reckon its closer to 80% efficient rather than the claimed 95%.

[V8Granite]

This gives me an idea, maybe I should upgrade my off grid system to 24 volts then I can run everything off DC with USB C and that should provide ample watts to realistically power everything. Going from 12v dc to 240v is horrifically inefficient, I bought a fancy Victron inverter but I reckon its closer to 80% efficient rather than the claimed 95%.

Are you using the Victron shunt ? It is only accurate with higher loads and sucks for my pumps only being on etc. my 500 va inverter is incredibly accurate. 55watt output and drawing 58-60 watts from the 12v battery.

Also the Victron shunt needs to be calibrated once a month so I'm pretty much ignoring it now and only looking at the battery Bluetooth.

Dave!

[Mito Man]

No, I only pull 15 watts total, but I believe the Victron inverter uses 4 watts idle so it's wasting 1/4 of the output. Total use of almost 0.5kwh per day and my battery only has 1kwh usable capacity. It works fine until theres 3 days of dense fog or cloud in a row

[V8Granite]

You realise this requires a huge system to fix this tiny issue ?

Dave!