Great October!

[NikoV6]

394.4Kwh so far here! And they say it only rains in Wales!

Everything full, battery, car, washing machine and tumble dryer on, still exporting 3.6Kw

Our DIY install! Picture taken early morning, shading by house chimney!

Looks a great innovative use of space.

I dare not show the pictures of me and the 5' 1 1/2' other half manhandling those roof panels (4.8M long) into place, nor the bolting the panels into position! The H&S Police would have a field day!

[Joeboy]

An astonishing 82% in the stack at 16.00hrs I swear these are the best days, when nothing is a given and then a result presents itself.

Can't do a comparison to Oct 21 as too much has changed since then. Its certainly the best Oct I've ever had for PV!

[spread-tee]

Our solar thermal has been going great guns this October too, much less gas than normal to top up the DHW, and no need for any heating yet. I have noticed how clear the sky has been on sunny days over the last few weeks, there seems to be less of that high icy milkyness that can cover large areas for a long time. Today for instance the sky was a deep clear blue right down to the horizon from early morning until about 3pm which is fairly rare normally around here at least.

Desp

[Adokforme]

Really pleased that October has been such a success pv wise. Now our inverter has been replaced we shall be joining you once more. Because we've not been generating anything this last six weeks our batteries have been set to 95% overnight charge from the grid and they've seen us through nicely. However, I've now reset the batts, 24 kWh's, from 95 to 40% SOC overnight.
I'd be interested to learn what others have theirs set too, as ours have only been installed since late Feb so no experience of autumnal like weather for settings? As a guide weather wise, then apart from Friday, the week ahead here looks quite rosy.

[Oldgreybeard]

Really pleased that October has been such a success pv wise. Now our inverter has been replaced we shall be joining you once more. Because we've not been generating anything this last six weeks our batteries have been set to 95% overnight charge from the grid and they've seen us through nicely. However, I've now reset the batts, 24 kWh's, from 95 to 40% SOC overnight.
I'd be interested to learn what others have theirs set too, as ours have only been installed since late Feb so no experience of autumnal like weather for settings? As a guide weather wise, then apart from Friday, the week ahead here looks quite rosy.

We have 21kWh of batteries, charge is set to 55% max through the summer (with a few days when we just turn time-of-use mode off). In winter we step this up gradually to around 65% or maybe 70% if the weather's really dire. During the summer the battery never charges over night at the 55% setting, it's just a backstop in case we get a very dull day. We're still set at 55% at the moment and my best guess is that we may start seeing the batteries charge a bit overnight in the next week or two.

Last winter I think we mostly made it through with the overnight charge set to 65%, and that seemed to give us enough to not get down to the 15% cut-off the following day. I think the latest Sofar software might allow us to go down to the 5% battery limit, but I'm not sure we really need that, unless there's a long power cut.

[Adokforme]

Thanks OGB that's most helpful. I've set mine to 55% for the time being and will see how it goes. I can see from the graph today that batts entered the Go period at 52% but with immersion kicking in for an hour at 4 o'clock they went down to 38%. On waking today the IHD showed that we'd drawn 54p worth, whereas it's been anything between £2 and £6 for the last six weeks(EV charging etc). Prior to that it started the day around 26p, 25p of which was the sdc!
Anyway the sun keeps appearing through the high clouds and batts are now showing 44% SOC so hoping to reach a good figure by end of day. Thanks again.

[Stinsy]

I set mine to charge to 50% in summer and 100% in winter.

In summer they’re usually over 50% when the cheap rate starts so no charging is required unless it has been a particularly dull day with higher than normal energy consumption. In winter the batteries get cycled completely every day and I’m using peak electric from early evening.

The tricky part is these shoulder months. If I start a sunny day with full batteries I’m spilling electric to the grid by mid-morning. If I don’t charge to 100% before a dull day and my batteries are empty before dinner is cooked.

[nowty]

Nowty Towers Grid Battery charging settings are,

May to Aug 0%,
Nov to Feb 100 %
Mar, Apr, Sep, Oct - Variable depending on conditions, quite often 0% still, but do use some OffPeak directly on EV charging and hot water.

[Adokforme]

Thanks Guys, further food for thought there and I suspect settings for each system require tweaking to suit their own circumstances. Didn't intend the immersion to charge form batts during off peak it just happened. Unsure of how to stop that occurring, similar with the EV too I guess!

[Oldgreybeard]

Best way to guess the settings to use is to note how much electricity you use during the peak rate period and then try to make sure there is at least that much available after an overnight charge. Ignore the PV generation in winter to start with, as there will be days when there is very little of that.

As an example, we use around 8kWh to 10kWh on a typical day, from the start of the peak period (06:30 in winter) to the end of it (23:30 in winter). If I charge the battery to 65% in winter, then that gives 50% of usable capacity from the battery pack (about 10.5kWh). On a non-PV day this is enough to cover us through the day.

It also allows some spare battery capacity for the odd day when there might be some PV generation, typically there's around 8kWh or 9kWh of spare battery capacity by the time the PV system starts to generate in winter, and that's about the most we could expect to get from our PV system on a bright winter day.

In winter we shift the time we tend to use the washing machine and dishwasher so they come on over-night, at the cheap rate, rather than going on when the sun is shining. Same goes for charging the car and the hot water, they both get done overnight in winter a fair bit of the time.