Solar at my workplace

[dan_b]

Scaffolding has gone up
Panels start going on tomorrow!

[dan_b]

Panels going on

[dan_b]

And we're generating! Not bad for a murky day in early January.
The big import demand overnight is an EV being charged up, but we're up and away.




Next step is to sign up to the new Octopus tariff for businesses with solarPV called "Panel Power" as they'll pay 15p/kWh for any export generation. Just got to get the MCS certificate and we'll be on that. I can well imagine we'll export once we get into March.

[Mr Gus]

So are the electrons going to charge the building & a lower than commercial cost for fleet? ..what's the estimated production / excess?

Any reduced cost (ie non commercial charger priced employees bev juice) ?

What tipped the balance at work to get it done exactly?

Pleased its up dan, makes that london living footprint a bit smaller I expect.

[dan_b]

The electrons will hopefully go a good way to covering the site's general day to day electricity usage, and during the good sunny mid-day periods should also handle a few hours of EV charging without any import too. I'm absolutely sure there will be export, particularly at the weekends, and in the longer sunny days too for sure.

What we don't know yet is how much power our film studio pulls with all the lighting on - but we'll find out soon enough as the SolarEdge real time monitoring is very good!

Two things that swung it (well 3).

1. change in business rates rules that now exempts SolarPV from business rates valuation increase
2. the temporary "superdeduction tax rule" incentive that was launched as a way to stimulate capital investment by businesses after COVID
3. the massive increase in the price of electricity (our business tariff is currently 72p/kWh).

In combination, that all meant that, along with having some actual cash in the business we could put the money on the roof, the "payback period" will be approx 2 years. And as a company where we have several clients in the Clean Tech sector, we want to show we're walking the walk as well as talking the talk. So hence also having EV chargers on site, 2x EVs in the business (soon to be 3) etc.

[nowty]

If you do have a reasonable amount of export and your business tariff is 72p/kWh, even with an export tariff of 15p/kWh surely batteries will be the next logical step.

[Stinsy]

If you do have a reasonable amount of export and your business tariff is 72p/kWh, even with an export tariff of 15p/kWh surely batteries will be the next logical step.

+1

[Mr Gus]

Dan, 2 years anticipated payback!? ... "BOOM" ... that is mind blowing stuff, a kit & kaboodle write up whilst fresh in your mind would doubtless help those who read this thread down the road.. as 2 years is piffling.

So a battery system would really hammer that down by the sounds of things.

[dan_b]

The battery question was looked at by me for sure - - and then the question was always "how big a battery is big enough" - I found it much harder to come up with a financial case for one at least with my man maths. Also, getting a hybrid inverter in the timescale for the install was impossible, so that was also a big consideration.

I suppose with the EVs in the company you could argue those are the batteries - we'll just have to make sure we're doing most of the charging during good generation daytimes and not overnight. Perhaps in the meantime if we keep good enough logs of actual generation, usage and export then we can make an informed decision about adding an AC-coupled battery later?

If you do have a reasonable amount of export and your business tariff is 72p/kWh, even with an export tariff of 15p/kWh surely batteries will be the next logical step.

[dan_b]

We ended up with a SolarEdge system as there is a shading concern with the leftmost set of panels due to the shape of the building.

We have 30 x REC TP4 370W panels giving a theoretical 11.1 kWp
With a 10kW SolarEdge 3 phase inverter doing the clever stuff