Hi from Worthing

[Tay]

Please be extremely careful of any council scheme, I have not come across a good one yet.

My experience is that the council, unless there is a dedicated solar & product knowledgeable member involved it will be a "spin the wheel" experience.

Each time a council logo'ed letter for this sort of scheme came through the door I rang the given number. ..the people on the other end fielded a call, but knew precisely sod all about solar, didn't understand the term "photovoltaic" monocrystalline, amorphous, polysilicone, batteries, orientation, inverter, etc etc ..so a complete shill.

The council were getting a bung of around £140 per person who took up the final offer.

Between them they were herding docile cattle to the slaughter, the excuse was "we won't discuss anything about the deal until we know how many people are on board" ...buying blind from dubious salesmen who if they knocked on your door you'd view with utmost suspicion, ..the cambridgeshire council were box-ticking for profit.

if you saw this played out on tv's watchdog (type thing) you'd think "mugs, how is that legal" !?

I think someone here had better luck, & got ok kit, but many people rely on honesty, & upfront detail, unless the kit is named that they stock & use successfully on a regular basis then buyer beware, there is no comeback to the councils from this, although they make the introduction you take up the offer voluntarily, they take the money.

In the end I rang the stupid effwit council & told them to take me off their damned marketing list(s) ..had to do that TWICE so far, hopefully me being very forceful to the point of rudeness & threatening them second time round has got us off ALL their mail out lists... they will likely also lie & say each dept would have to be contacted separately to be removed from any "random" council letters, such as fostering.

Clearly bull-crap on the part of a council & demonstrates the shady nature of modern councils feeding off us all like bloody leeches.

I've already said no to the non commitment quote, I was mainly interested to see what was on offer and wasn't ready to commit anyway (which I told them some time ago). It didn't actually look too bad from a kit point of view with mainly Growatt gear.

After spending a 6 weeks trying to get a larger general waste bin I know the feeling well. Long story short, council reduced the size of the general waste bins then the next year reduced the frequency of collections, I have my grand kids down here on a very regular basis and nappies pilling up unable to put them in the small bins isnt healthly, but the council still wont give me one. I know the feeling of dealing with the council well !!

[Mr Gus]

Our collection is 1x per fortnight for each bin variant.

This started when the kid was small, in nappies, prior to that it was weekly one jumble of crap in one bin.

Some moan 3 is too many (thats sorting for you, better with it than without) we have a Londoners landfill just down the road (awful) ..nappies in bins are no different to incontinence pads (home visit nurses) just bigger, modt folk dealing with that have the one bin for general waste & cope ok, so if you are having intermittent visits then just bag them well, squeeze the rancid air out, bin & sprinkle a deodoriser, no problem unless its a transit van 14 seater full of toddlers.

The lid is pretty good at keeping stuff both in & out if its a standard issue council wheelie bin

Flies? make a bottle trap & activate some yeast in water as the attractant, ..its what we have to do to offset the flies from that nearby tip, catches thousands (no joke)

A neighbour has 2 babies one just getting out of nappies, dog, 1 bin, no problem, we even when there were 3 of us, & dogs, put the refuse bin out every 6 weeks sometimes just to get it emptied, ..

Are the bins not the normal size?
Buy one on ebay? sometimes the shed diy have them for £20 too, most councils post out replacement sticker sets as required, so stealth option?

[Joeboy]

Welcome to the forum Tay. You can do quite a lot prior to installation of solar by checking what appliances pull how much load and when. This is hunting the power vampires. It can yield surprising results. As can insulation and sealing up holes/cracks.

It all adds up and can be quite a difference maker.

Hi,

I have an old fridge and a freezer that would be pretty hungry and both are 20 ish years old,

Interesting you should mention vampires, the following early AM spikes are proving difficult to locate. Even at peak performance (Except the gaming rig) the IT gear that is running 24/7 never spikes this high. Eg: the firewall is a low power HP thin client <35w, my Synology NAS powers down the disks when not in use, the unRaid server is a low power HP Elitebox mini PC, the switch is low power, My Macs/screens are powered off at night (Although do get used most of the evening). Everything IT related, bar my multifunction laser printer is through my UPS which which ties in to the sub 135w-200w continual draw.

The chart shows Electricity usage by the hour from British Gas. typical day time usage looks like the 12am-2am section then again 6:30am onwards, I can see cooker usage late afternoon/evening but the 2:30am-4:30am peaks have me flummoxed. I'm staying up late tonight (I'm a bit of a night owl anyway) to see if I can see it. But as BG's charts work 2-3 days behind its hard to trace.



Any ideas other than yanking every plug and sticking a meter on it would be nice.

Yanking every plug and sticking a meter on does the trick
I had a fridge and a freezer unit of unknown age and provenance. They were huge vampires as was a Yamaha soundbar which I'd left on for about 8 years... Got it down to a low of around 135W background load and that spikes pretty regular. Beats the 600 to 800W back in the day.

[openspaceman]

As Nowty says the south coast does seem to perform well with PV. My Daughter's install of 6kW exceeds mine 50 miles north by over 30%. Mixture of no shade, position and newer panels.

One thing we did not take into account is feral pigeons, best to treat while scaffold still up.

[Mr Gus]

What's more think beyond your roof, maybe lower level (easier cleaning potential) shaded gazebo / car port that provides extra power & helps balance out annual consumption maybe?

Have you read up much on permitted & sailing close to the wind regs development? ..any antagonistic whistle blower potential, what factors at play?

[Stinsy]

Have you read up much on permitted & sailing close to the wind regs development? ..any antagonistic whistle blower potential, what factors at play?

Remember a "ladder store" isn;t required to have ladders. And a chicken coop isn't required to have chickens. Neither requires planning permission even if they have solar panels. Whereas a "ground mount solar array" does require planning permission.

[Tay]

-Edited for brevity

Any ideas other than yanking every plug and sticking a meter on it would be nice.

Yanking every plug and sticking a meter on does the trick
I had a fridge and a freezer unit of unknown age and provenance. They were huge vampires as was a Yamaha soundbar which I'd left on for about 8 years... Got it down to a low of around 135W background load and that spikes pretty regular. Beats the 600 to 800W back in the day.

I've created a floor plan in Visio mainly for the layer functionality for the extension (new shower room/loo and office layout with lots more open space for the orangery/extension, if it ever gets built, this should allow me to do the electrical sockets for each room and subsequent attached devices. This should give me a good grounding to go forth and unplug!!.

Funny thing about sound systems, I once bought an Audi that had a dodgy BOSE amp, that went mental about 1-2 hours after the car had been turned off, drawing 2amps continuously until I restarted or didnt as the case was sometimes. Took Audi ages to sort that out, I remember checking the car logs when I got it back and they had some engineer coming back into the garage to check it out around 11:30 at night.. or, the bugger was joyriding my pride and joy ....never did find out ^^

[Tay]

What's more think beyond your roof, maybe lower level (easier cleaning potential) shaded gazebo / car port that provides extra power & helps balance out annual consumption maybe?

Have you read up much on permitted & sailing close to the wind regs development? ..any antagonistic whistle blower potential, what factors at play?

The main roof ( I think) can handle maybe 8 3?? W panels. Pylon is giving me mixed results so I probably need to get the rear facing (West) roof checked out, then. my 1st floor flat roof, neither protrude in front my my left neighbours conservatory or my right neighbours, so there would be little for anybody to see being the back of the house. I get on well with the left guy, and he has just had a system put in so the scaffolding is still up, I have broached the idea of the flat roof and panels with no problems, it helps that they cant see it, I'm taking that as a green light!.

The right side is rented and we get along with them too, but they wont be able to see it.

For info this is the last shot I took with my drone during a big pruning session last Nov. you can see the roof profile and the flat roof and the shadows cast from my southern (right in the photo) neighbour during Nov.

Shorter term view: Get some roof and flat roof panels and a semi final system until funds permit the extension.
Much longer term view: demolish the conservatory and small room to left, and redevelop the office (under the flat roof) and potentially utilise a pitched roof covering the new extension push 60-70% on to the semi circular patio, giving my MUCH more space for west facing panels on a pitched roof thus avoiding some of the pitfalls of flat roofs.

For context Starting at top its East,South, West, then North to the left.

[Mr Gus]

Congrats you win our f****d up roof award.

[Tay]

Congrats you win our f****d up roof award.

Well, in all fairness I did say it