Brilliant news! The UK's Labour Government are going to make "plug in solar" legal.
Grab some panels from Lidl, hang them off your balcony or out your window, plug them in to your mains. Done!
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-to-go-further-and-faster-in-becoming-energy-secure
@Edent
For anyone reading this who thinks "you can't buy plugin solar panels from Lidl!" here's a link to Lidl Germany where that is definitely a thing:
https://www.lidl.de/h/stromerzeuger/h10031840?pageId=10067761%2F10067532%2F10031840&sort=price
OK. Want to give a reason why?
I am wary of ANY supermarket for stuff which needs support available in the long term. Not wearing out as aging, over 4 or 5 years, but failing next year.
If I'm reading this correctly this allows consumers to feed solar into the grid. Do they get paid for doing it or is it just a case of if the sun's shining you might want to put your washing on?
I look forward to the government ever making anything clear.
Oh, come on. I don't have to make sense when I take cheap shots, do I?
@Walrus Kinda, yeah.
I used to work for the UK Government. We spent a lot of time and energy publishing things as clearly as possible.
Then some cleverdick would complain that we hadn't done a good enough job when, in reality, they just hadn't bothered looking.
I think that press release is pretty clearly written. If you genuinely don't then, yes, you should write to your representatives and complain. That's the only way feedback gets heard.
@Walrus @Edent Aren't the issues with unlimited / random feed back in to grid related to the infrastructure to handle it.
I may be wrong, but I assumed the hassle to get the limit on what we can feed in to to technical, not political.
If it is purely political, then hell yeh. Feed in that sunshine, and battery,
@revk
Yeah, the DNO can object if you're planning to put dozens of panels up and they think the grid can't handle it.
But balcony solar is likely to only be a couple of panels per household. Results from Germany are encouraging (albeit a different grid to ours).
@revk TBH, it seems to change regularly. When we had ours done 5ish years ago it required DNO sign off, I think.
But, yeah, with all the grid upgrades going on it looks like it is just a regulatory problem.
@Edent @revk from the press release it seems the govt are working on making the process and regulations clearer to deal with (a consumer is going to have to tell the supplier to get the export enabled on the smart meter and the second MPAN allocated)
However DNO infrastructure isn't always the best (neighbour with 0 export, EV's or anything like that had a service cable failure, it took a month for UKPN to remove the temporary link from the next door house and rebuild the cable, which involved a week of having the road up and parking restrictions outside my house). There's also been at least one "make pumps 2" fire from an overloaded service cable on my street..
@revk @Walrus @Edent
I'm not an electrical engineer so this might not be the whole story.
As you add generation to the local distribution network, and assuming there's not enough local demand to consume it all, the voltage rises. Eventually it gets to 258V (230+12%) which is the upper tolerance limit. At that point, local generation starts to shut down.
1/2
All well and good, but folk then start to complain to their suppliers (and from there to the DNO) that, on sunny summer days, their solar inverter has shut down and they've missed out on savings/earnings.
The DNO limit / permission process is designed to keep export low enough that the local network rarely reaches 258V and they don't get deluged with complaints from their customers.
2/2
I'm still looking at TOU tariffs - I'm sure I could make bigger savings but it's a question of how quickly the initial cost would be repaid. For the sake of simplicity I currently assume all solar is exported though my spreadsheets do allow me to estimate self use savings.
Work in progress
@Edent @OneInterestingFact how would that work, I currently have a second meter on a feed from the inverter to export power and I get a lower price than I pay to import. It doesn't sound like plugin solar will have that and if it just runs the meter backwards then they are getting a better deal than I do.
Plus my system has to automatically disconnect from the grid in a power cut so as not to electrocute power workers.
@ianturton It won't physically run the meter backwards. Any SMETS meter will detect it as export.
Plug in solar also has to automatically disconnect.
@Edent @OneInterestingFact
Proponents of plug in solar don't necessarily expect to be paid for it and in many places where it is used exports aren't paid.
Plug-in solar is designed to be small and mostly just offset your personal demand.
If you're only contributing say 100W (after personal use) then it's not really going to move the dial on net metering benefits.
If you want kW scale exports then that's what a fixed installation is for.
Detail to check — the circuit breaker protecting the socket you plug in to.
Black-box Inverter between solar panels and socket gives safety.
UPS battery-boxes on solar-panel side of inverter can be used to store excess energy. Off-peak mains might be used to top-up those batteries hut there are AC <—> DC energy losses. USB outputs on these batteries can feed useful lights, tablets, and mobile phones.
I think I have all this right, but CHECK.
Reports from USA suggest fossil-fuel lobbying of legislators is happening there. Be alert! Britain needs lerts.
@OneInterestingFact @Edent
With 800Wp of panels this isn't a very important factor.
With a solar diverter to an immersion heater, even less so - make hot water.
With a battery even less less so. The amount of energy escaping is going to be trivial.
But I think generally the expectation is that you just plug it in and use it.
#solar #balcony #electricity
@OneInterestingFact @Photo55 @Edent a 3kw immersion element doesn't have to be run at a continuous 3kw
But more importantly most homes have a small continuous power draw for things like fridges and devices on standby
A small solar panel will avoid having to pay for much of this power.
The smaller the solar setup the less "problem" there is with "excess" free power.
So a small cheap setup is likely to be highly utilised without storage.
@annehargreaves @Photo55 @Edent
I'm sure you're right. Mostly with instantaneous hw.
@OneInterestingFact @Edent
The ideal is that you have an immersion heater at the bottom of a tank.
The 3kW rating is a limit, not a requirement. 200W makes warm water if that's what you have. We occasionally get up to 1.1kW into it.
Retrofitting instantaneous gas systems probably isn't worthwhile, but there's a gadget more used in Ireland with a small cylinder and heater, which you could use to preheat.
In truth though, small flats etc can just ignore the few watt hours that escape.
@OneInterestingFact @Photo55 @Edent i think that solar diverters use pulse width modulation to effectively supply lower power
I'm not sure of that - but my system definitely puts less than 3kw into the immersion mist of the time
@Edent It is good news but I can't help feeling that we're all about to be scalped in terms of pricing.
I hope not, but big retail in the UK has a nasty habit of artificial scarcity and price bumps.
@greem @Edent lidl specifically were very slow to raise prices when eg tesco jacked theirs up 40% overnight (and then again a few months later). Not that I think they're saints, but they seem to get that people plain don't have money.
Hopefully that means we'll start seeing them show up in lidl's aisle of shite
"The portable, plug-in solar panels can be placed in gardens or on walls and balconies"
Especially interesting since the price of a solar panels is competitive with the price of fence panels
@sean @Edent Solar fences are gaining in popularity, althoughly mainy in rural land. They use "bifacial" panels, i.e panels that have solar cells on both sides.
You dont get double the power, but if a one sided panel would get 400w, a bifacial will normally get something like 550w. They have other plus sides too, in that being placed vertically means they dont overheat like angled single side panels, so they keep producing steadily when its hottest even when normal panel efficeny starts to fall. They also do slightly better in winter, as they are ideally placed to catch "bouncing" sunlight from snow/etc.
The downside? Cost, but again its not 2x, more like 1.25x. Also the fence mounting systems all seem to be intended for commerical/industrial installers, with basicslly no residential options.
Still, if you need a new fence and are solar curious, DIY is likely still easier than a DIY roof install. Ive been looking at using standard notched fence posts and steel zipties, but havent taken the leap yet.
Oooooh! I was wondering whether that could happen at some point!
@Edent excellent news if it turns out they don't screw it up.
but.
"plug it into your mains"? really? how does that work?
edit: even if it does work — how would i know it was doing anything?
edit^2: the relevant search term here is "G98". i'm still very confused what the hell this is, but it is a thing, in some areas.
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