Mastodawn

@ChrisMayLA6 scaling gets you. UK home battery lead times have jumped 30-60 days already since this kicked off. The lack of plug in solar/battery and DIY mini splits for heating also means we can't scale installers to meet existing vague targets let alone a crisis.
Needs Milliband to sort this. So many illegal installs they've lost the argument already.

Emeritus Prof Christopher May 4d ago

@etchedpixels

yes, the illegal installs could be seen as a form of civil disobedience?

Peter Brown 4d ago

@ChrisMayLA6 @etchedpixels I feel I need to more know more about these illegal instals ;)

@peterbrown @ChrisMayLA6 So properly you are supposed to have an electrician fit you a separate connection between the consumer unit and any generation equipment, along with a bidirectional RCBO, isolator and correct single line diagram and labelling. You then wire up to 3.68kW of type approved equipment to it and fill in a G98 form and you are done.

In practice people buy stuff like the Ecoflow Stream kit, put a plug on the end of the cable and plug it into the wall and maybe do the G98

@peterbrown @ChrisMayLA6 There are risks to that because you are sharing a ring main so could overload it, and the protection (RCBO or whatever) is not bidirectional so could get damaged.

Almost entirely theoretical but if a million people install them 1 in a million things start to matter.

Ecoflow originally provided kit with a plug, got told off and changed to a plug lead marked "do not use" 😀 and a lead ready for "wiring in" cut for a plug!

New kit just has a wire cut for a plug

The Penguin of Evil

@peterbrown @ChrisMayLA6 The other actually legal approach is to get non grid tie but grid chargeable kit, plug your solar into it, set it to charge on cheap overnight power as well and plug a bunch of appliances into it (often via extension cable spaghetti)

This is legal but arguably even more dangerous. It can be useful though in an apartment or if you've got some steady reliable power consumers (eg small air/air heatpumps) so you can make good use of the power without spaghetti

@peterbrown @ChrisMayLA6 Finally the techie folks just run a separate 12v or 48v circuit round the house completely immune to all the part P building reg annoyances, and more efficient and run all the lighting and USB and other lower power stuff off the DC circuit as if it was a US RV. That combined with the batteries being near bigger appliances covers a lot of load in many buildings.

Peter Brown 4d ago

@etchedpixels @ChrisMayLA6 I quite like the idea of the resilience provided by the standalone DC version.

@peterbrown @etchedpixels @ChrisMayLA6

For lower-powered stuff, 12/24/48 VDC is a lot better than using an inverter to replicate mains power too. It doesn't make sense to go from 12/24/48 VDC, to 120/240 VAC, and then back to 12/24/48 VDC for use with the whatever-it-is. If you go with a 12 VDC system, you can also use any car battery if your main batteries have gone dead and you're in a stupendously tight squeeze.

Tim Panton 4d ago

@kilroy_was_here @peterbrown @etchedpixels @ChrisMayLA6 In small spaces you are right - but over anything more than a few 10s of metres the losses over thin copper wires start to out weigh the conversion inefficiencies.

@steely_glint @peterbrown @etchedpixels @ChrisMayLA6

Right. I was talking about an installation in a house where the wire lengths would be kept short-ish.

@etchedpixels @peterbrown @ChrisMayLA6

"It can be useful though in an apartment"

I think this is a part of the renewable conversation which almost always gets overlooked. What about people who live in apartments? Even if they have the money to install solar (or even some wind too), good luck getting permission from the landlord to put it in. There need to be more systems that cover the territory between "no solar" and "full system permanently installed on and in your house that you own."

@etchedpixels @peterbrown @ChrisMayLA6

This is part of the EV conversation too. It seems to me that there is an unwritten assumption that the EV buyer has their own house that they can install a fast-charger in. The only home-charging option for most people living in apartments is slow-charging with a cord running out a window. Either EV batteries have to get better, to where they can be charged away from home as fast as filling up a fuel tank, or landlords have to install fast-chargers.

@kilroy_was_here @peterbrown @ChrisMayLA6 Solar will require that the balcony solar rules don't allow landlords or freeholders to get in the way. That has been done in some countries. For batteries it's less of a problem providing there's a safe location for them.

Not at all clear you need fast chargers everywhere, a lot of home charging is 13A or 16A - no hurry overnight.

For flats you need chargers in the parking, but for urban density really you need ebikes in most cases not cars.