Solar on a budget part 2

[drjim]

I now have some ex Nowty batteries to add to the system. Decided to build a shed and run the necessary cables in a duct under the path. I will connect up to my shed solar array initially, then obtain some of those cheap Longi panels I posted a link to and get 4KW on the roof.

Planning to do a dormer extension to put bathroom(s) into two bedrooms, so I can get the building control guy we use for that to sign off the panels at the same time.

The sun has been shining for most of March which is making me even more determined to get this system set up!

[drjim]

Finally got round to submitting a G98 for solar part 1 and despite no official installer I now have an export MPAN, sadly my wife signed us up to a supplier that doesn't do export.

Now to sort the G99 for new kit and see if they accept me as the installer for that!

[nowty]

You can sign up separately to whoever you want for export but you won't get the best price unless you take their leccy.

[drjim]

Sparky came last week and connected up a very large new consumer unit with lots of spare capacity to my 6mm SWA's. One cable to a rotary isolator for the inverter, other to my brewery/shed area where I keep melting 13A sockets so now have a consumer unit running two 16A command sockets and four 13A for pumps etc. Moved the shedtop arrays over to it, 100M reel of 6mm cable was exactly enough for the new runs!

Obviously the sun then hid behind clouds, garden appreciates the rain though. Batteries started at 10% and made it to 60ish on sunshine. Yesterday they got to 85 I think, then my Daughter put washing on at 9PM and stuck the"urgent" stuff in the dryer at 11, no way the battery would run baseload overnight as in my original dreams! So I decided to charge them up to 100 from mains so we could have a run on battery today.

I had to strip some wallpaper so ran the steamer from grid rather than battery, but other than that period it's been battery all day. It is of course cloudy so minimal solar charging today, not on a tariff that will let me charge up in a beneficial way so after todays experiment I'll just leave it in load priority and see how we go.

Now looking at the roof and thinking how to get up there and fit some more panels. Shed arrays are not big enough!

[drjim]

Also noticed that the max battery in/out on my 300 quid growatt is 3000W already pondering expansion/upgrade in that department!