Solar Panel System in Ireland – it’s almost a year since I posted about this so here’s an update and some numbers. I’ve installed Battery Storage now to which is a great addition to the system.
Solar Panel System in Ireland – it’s almost a year since I posted about this so here’s an update and some numbers. I’ve installed Battery Storage now to which is a great addition to the system.
22 comments
That’s great.
Will take a while for society to start thinking in KW for every aspect of our lives.
Where did you install battery storage?
I’ve been looking at a similar setup with nearly 20m2 of panels and and a 6kwh battery. It’s really pricey, but the allure of not needing to pay another electricity bill in the summers is very strong. I’m saving up for it but it will probably be another few years before I can afford it.
Fantastic!
What energy provider is that? Bord Gais are offering 18c.
Also, any idea if you can switch provider and not lose the potential export reimbursement? For example, I’m with Bord Gais, and their first payment is March 2023 backdated to Feb 2022. I want to switch before March, but afraid I’ll lose all that potential export payment.
7.02 MWh produced
5.58 MWh used for own needs
What size system do you have?
How many panels?
How much space it’s taking up?
How is it positioned? All South-SouthWest direction?
Roof mounted?
How big is the battery?
And what’s the cost of the addition?
What was the cost of the whole system?
It is a good system, that said I don’t think many people can spend 15-20k, sure it will pay off eventually, then again, for most that amount will cover eletricity for 5-10 years.
It’s one of those situations someone buys Tesla etc, and they are like yeah it costs me 5e for a week, ignoring fact it cost 40-60 grand to spend.
Have you got paid of electric Ireland yet for your surplus? I haven’t
I’m really interested in doing this but I can never and I mean never come close to getting a decent ROI on paper without seriously grasping. 15kw/h per day average long term for 4 adults, 2 fully WFH. No electric cars yet but nobody is doing high mileage in the house so an electric car would never pay itself off but one will come eventually when one of the ICE cars dies. We are talking combined <10k km per year between us.
I just can’t see how they make sense for me without putting special value on the fact it’s green which of course is important but it’s not an easy decision yet. Unfortunately the way it’ll end up making sense is when there’s government meddling to create a tiny carrot and massive stick that the export prices will creep up to make it worthwhile and the price per kwh will be nordic so the maths will make sense.
We have a decent supply of reasonably priced local wood (for now 🙁 ) and a backboiler which is boosted with oil sometimes. Oil costs aren’t too awful because it’s just a couple of hours a day during winter for the morning and maybe to top up the tank for showers in the evening if it was a small fire.
House not fit for underfloor heating and they are small rads all around so swapping to a heatpump would include a lot of massive radiators and probably even more insulation. Most of the house has external insulation but not all yet. Haven’t got around to figuring out what the heat loss of the house is but I’m not sure we’d ever come close on solar producing as much as a heatpump would use for the months of the year where we would actually need the heat. So when it really is just looking at how long it would take to pay back 15kw/h per day. It’s well over 10 years and just forget heat pump so there’d still be decent other heating bills. If the house was to be converted to make a heatpump appropriate there’s absolutely no ROI on that because the house just doesn’t need a renovation except that it’s obviously not ideal heatloss. So you’d be spending €80k+ to save a couple thousand a year.
Went through the numbers with a work friend and they made great sense for him because his usage was on average over 35kw/h per day and they are doing decent milage per year with a plugin hybrid and are going to BEV so it’ll be going up. He’s had them installed already and it’s good for him.
Then there’s the issue of a slightly awkward L shape roof already with some Velux windows so the surface area is not ideal but there’d still be space for an acceptable number of south facing and then some east/west split for mornings/ evenings but from my napkin maths outside of the summer we’d probably never even be getting zero electricity bills with our current low usage and you just can’t count on the export prices being good long term (see Spain’s solar farms for hindsight on how that rug pull can go)
As for wind, my neighbour has a very large turbine that sits idle most of the time. Cost him more than 15k and I’d say in 200 years it would never have paid for itself. Smaller ones will randomly give you sustained 400w-900w power or nothing. When are you ever going to feel that sort of reduction, at least with solar you can say ok every day this week I’ll put the wash on during those hours we would be exporting. Wind will just chip away at your usage but god try to work out if it ever paid for itself.
Can you tell by the wall of text it was an unbelievably slow day at work
Did you investigate alternate storage methods to (I assume) lithium ion?
Great stuff.
What is the warranty like and what’s the expected degradation rate on the panels?
This is awesome, I love these posts, thank you
Good to see a post from you. Since your last post we conversed on, I ended up getting a 4kWp array installed on the front of the house. I would have liked larger but I’m limited by roof space.
It’s been a good investment as we got about €290 back via FIT and given it’s size we spent most of each day during the summer self sufficient. Even up to mid this month we cover 1/3 of our daily needs.
I don’t have batteries but will plan in the future. However an EV is on the cards and I’m hoping to dump excess into the EV. We’ve a zappi already due to be installed new year.
If I had more money I’d be getting all sorts. It can become an expensive hobby very easily. Though I do get a great serotonin hit seeing our generation and usage graphs daily.
> The grid is inputting 73w
It looks like you are generating enough capacity to charge the battery. Why is any power coming from the grid?
Just got a fairly standard 10 panels plus 5kWh battery installed before chrimbo.
Cost about 10.5k after the grant and includes hot water and car charging with excess power in the summer months.
System is only running less than 10 days but I can see the massive benefit of the battery. With the car charging, dishwasher and washing machine running on cheap nighttime electricity, our day time use is just 7-10kwh in the middle of the winter. This is mostly coming from stored electricity in the battery, which charges overnight meaning we get nighttime rates for our daytime electricity.
While the financial case for solar PV is obvious for the summer months, this use of the battery to store night time electricity in the winter months means you get some benefit year around. This aspect isn’t really discussed much.
Can I ask who you got to install your panels or did you do it yourself? We’re starting off down the house extension route and I want to try factor in adding panels to the designs now.
Sorry, but this is far to positive for r/Ireland by doing this you have nothing to moan about on the sub so I think you should leave and start your own sub, maybe r/irishpositivity 😁
Hijacking, but does anyone have any views on having PV and Thermal with the latter dealing only with the water?
I’m just way, way, way to old and Irish to be ok (without therapy) with positively deciding to use an immersion all the time.
I know it’s dumb, but something just bugs me about the combination of soaring electricity costs and the odd day where the diverter has nothing to divert and I’m on high unit costs.
I think really my main problem is a lack of interstellar thinking. Sure, some December days will be *monstrous* but balanced over the year, the saving should be clear…
But it’s those December days and the legacy of getting bashed over the head about electricity use all my life!
I’m at about 2.3MWh and just have the system in since mid June. Roughly 65-70% self-use, but expecting that to improve as there are a few tweaks to be made. I’ve a battery in the system also and during these last few months have been loading it on the cheap rate at night. That means that the usage I do have is mostly (75%) at the cheapest rate (sub 10c/kWh). Still waiting on Bord Gais to pay my export, they’re a right shower! taking a year to do it.
When I looked at the numbers it made sense for me, even despite the fact that I can’t get a grant. You do need to make sure you get plenty of quotes.
Just stopped someone getting absolutely reefed by a company who charges insane rates for it. It worked out almost twice the price that it should be.
Great system! A couple of tips for it, in case you haven’t looked into the possibilities below already:
With batteries you could enable the off-grid backup power function that comes handy when the grid has an outage. To use that function, you’ll likely need a separate panel for the circuits that are allowed to keep running on backup power, eg. lighting and fridge vs heating and other heavy users which would be too taxing on the batteries and the inverter.
You can set a schedule to charge the batteries from the mains at certain times of day. That’s good in winter when PV power alone wouldn’t get you through the day. Eg. You charge the battery during night rate billing time, then use the battery during day rate time. That brings the cost per KWh down to your night rate plus charging/conversion losses.