It’s January in Ireland in the middle of winter – now our Solar Panels are supplying all the power needed for our house and even exporting a little to the grid. In 2021 the system generated a total of 3000kWh of renewable electricity meeting about half of our power needs and all our hot water needs.

42 comments

  7. I wish our house had them installed properly. Max I got today was 70w.
    New build and they installed on rear of house but just about scrapes by on enough generation per annum as part of part L building regulations.

    Sometime in next 5 years I’ll install new ones properly facing south.

  9. Nice. I’ve 14 340w panels and a 5.2kWh Battery. Adding another 8.2kWh battery shortly. Only had the system since end of May this year but has generated 3,000kWh and over half of that has been exported to the grid.
    Waiting for the charge-back system to come into place so I get paid for that export.

  10. Wait a minute! I didn’t think it was possible to sell excess back to the grid in Ireland. Could you give me info on that please, as we already have one panel and if we could sell back I’d get another one.

  11. Do you have to provide much of the power to the grid? I hear all sorts of varying opinions on this!

    Is it possible/legal to have a closed energy system for a house? (Generating and using all your electricity)

  15. 587watts is a small amount of energy but it was more than our whole house was using at the time I made the post, so comparatively it’s a significant amount of energy.

    The panels peaked today at about 2500watts of output in the early afternoon, the excess heats our hot water tank which is currently at 57°C. If we want to use the washing machine, iron etc we just use it like anyone else.

    Thanks for your opinion but I’m not aligned, IMO every house should have Solar PV installed and many are opting to do so through retrofit as we have done, and most new houses have them installed for Part L compliance which is great, with many households now doing their bit but also seeing the benefits which we have to.

  17. Ours went in in May, only 8 panels (3kWp). It was nice to see the battery getting a charge today, though!

    1.9MWh generated last year, and only 0.5MWh purchased.

  18. How do you calculate the payback?
    I consume electricity worth €800/year
    And If I’d spend 7k€ on solar , payback would be about 9 years
    If average price hike is 4% annually, payback could be 7 years
    .. what’s your formula?

  21. Is this a sign of how good solar is in Ireland if you set it up right or a sign of how screwed we are from climate change that solar panels are this good in the middle of winter?

  22. God I love real world examples.

    Will you ever look into battery storage or is there no need right now?

  23. Have you considered a small wind turbine for the rest of your power needs? I’m not sure of the viability where you are but just interested because hopefully one day I’ll own my own home and use fully renewable energy for all my power and heating needs.

  30. We have a self build and didn’t opt to install PV when we were building, the payback didn’t seem worth the investment at the time (4 years ago). I’d consider retrofitting if it was made financial sense. We have underfloor heating and a heat pump that we run at night rates, as does the washing machine, dishwasher etc. Is there some calculator that I could use to see if this would work for us based on what we use during the day? I see that they’re planning to pay for excess sold back to the grid from later this year (though capped at 150?) so this might help though I expect demand therefore costs might increase too for the panels as a result.

  31. How big is your array? I have a limited roof area on a new build (back faces south perfectly) but not sure if solar makes sense, or battery storage during cheap hours.

  32. You must have a low usage requirement

    For instance in my house we used over 13,000kWh last year and the solar generated 4000kWh(19 panels). The biggest issue with solar now is the installation companies are ripping off home owners to massive amounts so the pay back period is poor

    Now circa 4000kWh was for an electric car so you can take that off but still a long way off keep me ticking over. Mind you, for those 4000kWh I did over 26k km’s

  36. Just wondering if birds can damage the panels as I have very annoying seagulls/crows/magpies which like to peck at anything (they put holes through a felt roof, sorry if this is a stupid question.

  38. Sounds like a great system, read all your responses, thanks for the transparency. The frame itself, is it custom? In your case was this a difficult install? Welding, weight considerations?

  39. This is probably a stupid question but is your power only free while there is sunlight? i.e. is any energy consumed in the evenings from the grid?

  40. I have a 4kWp system installed too, got about 10% of today’s usage covered but we have large electricity needs due to some electric heaters and electric car. I suspect if we had more traditional usage patterns then we’d have covered maybe 30% of our electricity today.

    With the energy crisis ongoing I’m looking to maximize the plant size without planning permission at 6kWp this year, and hopefully get more use out of the 1 kWh battery pack I have installed. PV solar is in a bit of a weird place in Ireland, it’s almost worth it with the grants, but with energy prices increasing it’s starting to look more and more appealing.

    Edit: more stats for 2022…

    * Generated: 3500 kWh
    * Self usage rate: 83%
    * Battery discharge: 542 kWh

  42. One other question; if you installed something like this in a Summer house where the electrical usage would be periodic, would you essentially be putting energy back into the grid and getting paid for it (eventually)

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