Terence Eden2d ago

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

#Solar

Government to go “further and faster” in becoming energy secure

The Energy Secretary outlines measures to protect consumers and make Britain energy secure.

GOV.UK
Show threadEliza MB2d ago

@Edent

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?

Show threadTerence Eden2d ago
@OneInterestingFact
Yes. If you have an export tariff you'll get paid for every kWh you pass back to the grid.
Show threadJanek Bevendorff2d ago
@Edent @OneInterestingFact Plug-in solar is usually not enough that feeding into the grid is actually worth it (mostly depends on how many forms you have to fill, but you are usually also not paid enough). The main reason you want to have a solar panel on your balcony is to cover your own consumption. Add battery storage to it and you can be quite independent of the grid for a large part of the year.
Show threadEliza MB2d ago
@phoerious @Edent
The devil is, as usual, in the detail. If every smart meter is automatically configured to measure export then maybe we have a winner.
If you don't get paid for energy put into the grid then balcony solar looks like an expensive way to make very small savings for those who don't have a way to shift consumption to the middle of the day or to store the energy they would have exported.
Adding a battery to my existing 4.4kW(p) PV system would have saved <£70 last year. Not viable.
Show threadJanek Bevendorff
@OneInterestingFact @Edent Ideally, you use the battery to store your own solar production over the day to use in the evening. If your panels cannot fill the entire battery, you fill the rest with cheap energy from the grid (requires a variable energy tariff, of course). Such a setup should usually amortise within a few years. But 4.4kWp is already quite massive. That's not a plug-in panel for your balcony I suppose.
Mar 15 at 4:03pmPhanpy
Show threadEliza MB2d ago

@phoerious @Edent

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