Home Battery without Solar

[Tay]

Victron (I think thats what you are talking about) is a premium brand, if you can afford it you won't be disappointed.

I know the brand is good which is whats annoying me that I cant find the info I saw, the downside of adopting the attitude of a sponge for info and then not recalling where you saw it

It was nothing bad as I mentioned, but maybe something along the lines of being less flexible that other Victrons in that space, or something of that ilk.

As you say, its hard to go wrong with the kit, but dont want to spent £10k and find I could have done something slightly different.

[nowty]

Nowty, how costly and feasible would it be, in principle, if you'd installed circa 100kWh of home battery and gone all electric, instead of having storage heaters and hot water storage? Would there be a simplicity advantage?

In the new age of decent paid export and using batteries to run A2A HPs to heat, possibly but you get to the point of everything maxed out on a single phase system. I have charging power of 9kW in a 6 hr cheap slot so no point me having a battery stack any larger.

With a 3 phase system, a 3 x 33kWh battery system is perfectly feasible.

Costs, Pylontech batteries - getting on for £30k, DIY large Chinese LFP cells about half that.

[Stinsy]

...how costly and feasible would it be, in principle, if you'd installed circa 100kWh of home battery and gone all electric, instead of having storage heaters and hot water storage? Would there be a simplicity advantage?

Very feasible!

However you don't need a 100kWh battery but you do need a heat pump.

According to Ofgem a typical house in the UK uses 2700kWh of electricity and 11500kWh of gas per year.

Now usage isn't spread evenly over the year, you will use more electricity and almost all of your gas in winter. A gas boiler is also c. 75% efficient (at best).

So on to the maths: For a typical winter day I'm going to assume you use 60kWh of gas and 10kWh of electricity per day. The gas produces 45kWh of heat at 75% efficiency which would require 15kWh of electricity with a CoP of 3. So your total electricity consumption would be 25kWh per day.

How big a battery you need depends how much of your usage you can shift into the cheap period (washing machine/dishwasher etc) but a 20kWh battery should be plenty.

You can implement the HP however you like. A2A (air to air) is simplest and 2x "2.5kW" units are probably the right size because they can run for a few hours a day in the shoulder months, can easily run at 50% capacity (a typical A2A is happy running down to 25% of it's nameplate capacity) when operating at their design power and can run ad 2x the design power to heat a cold house or in very cold conditions also 2x heat sources will make for a more-even heat spread across your house. Alternatively you can plumb a 5kW (air-to-water) ASHP into radiators. but that solution is usually only implemented in situations where a wet system already exists and it sounds like it doesn't in your case but it could possibly be a better choice if your house has a complex layout with lots of small rooms. .

[sharpener]

Victron (I think thats what you are talking about) is a premium brand, if you can afford it you won't be disappointed.

I know the brand is good which is whats annoying me that I cant find the info I saw, the downside of adopting the attitude of a sponge for info and then not recalling where you saw it

It was nothing bad as I mentioned, but maybe something along the lines of being less flexible that other Victrons in that space, or something of that ilk.

As you say, its hard to go wrong with the kit, but dont want to spent £10k and find I could have done something slightly different.

I keep looking at the Victron battery solution on Bimble Inverter+Battery and my fingers are getting twitchy for that price, but nobody seems interested in talking about installing it down this way. I'm tempted just to buy the damn thing and see what I can install myself then find a sparky for the last few bits off checkatrade.

I'll have a chat with Bimble again and see if they can recommend a local installer/electrician for that bundle, gives me the option to expand with Solar later plus add additonal storage which would give me 90-100% off grid during the day and top up with my current ToU tariff.

Adding Solar at some point would give me even more independence.

Go for it. DIY is not at all difficult and there is lots of help available here and on the Victron discussion forum. If you can give more of a clue as to what you think you remember seeing it might jog my memory too. Whereabouts is this region with no installers?

[Joeboy]

As an aside I'm becoming more militantly eco the more it becomes clear that we've screwed the world for my kids, their kids, and everybody else's kids because we like long hot showers!

Really, showers did for the planet?

Show figures? Interested though.

[Tay]

Victron (I think thats what you are talking about) is a premium brand, if you can afford it you won't be disappointed.

I know the brand is good which is whats annoying me that I cant find the info I saw, the downside of adopting the attitude of a sponge for info and then not recalling where you saw it

It was nothing bad as I mentioned, but maybe something along the lines of being less flexible that other Victrons in that space, or something of that ilk.

Go for it. DIY is not at all difficult and there is lots of help available here and on the Victron discussion forum. If you can give more of a clue as to what you think you remember seeing it might jog my memory too. Whereabouts is this region with no installers?

All I can remember is that somebody was saying from a cost/feature point of view that some other kit in the Victron range might be better suited to what the Easysolar was offering. Annoyingly it could also have been the previous model, I just remember the EasySolar bit.

I'll keep surfing. wife is away for the weekend, I can surf to my hearts content and if my bad back is up to it, maybe get the new panels up too ^^

[sharpener]

All I can remember is that somebody was saying from a cost/feature point of view that some other kit in the Victron range might be better suited to what the Easysolar was offering. Annoyingly it could also have been the previous model, I just remember the EasySolar bit.

I keep looking at the Victron battery solution on Bimble Inverter+Battery and my fingers are getting twitchy for that price, but nobody seems interested in talking about installing it down this way.

Unless I missed it you haven't said where "down this way" is.

AFAIR the EasySolar II range is just the MultiPlus II with the MPPT charge controller in the same box, technically almost identical.VFM depends on whether you can use the full 250V/100A rating of the packaged MPPT, which will take 12 x 400W panels, if not then separates could work out cheaper.

These people offer similar packages and I have found their prices and service very good.

[Tay]

All I can remember is that somebody was saying from a cost/feature point of view that some other kit in the Victron range might be better suited to what the Easysolar was offering. Annoyingly it could also have been the previous model, I just remember the EasySolar bit.

I keep looking at the Victron battery solution on Bimble Inverter+Battery and my fingers are getting twitchy for that price, but nobody seems interested in talking about installing it down this way.

Unless I missed it you haven't said where "down this way" is.

AFAIR the EasySolar II range is just the MultiPlus II with the MPPT charge controller in the same box, technically almost identical.VFM depends on whether you can use the full 250V/100A rating of the packaged MPPT, which will take 12 x 400W panels, if not then separates could work out cheaper.

These people offer similar packages and I have found their prices and service very good.

Has been mentioned elsewhere but I'm in Worthing, West Sussex.

I see so many vans with PV stuff on them, so many ad's, yet tried the top ten hits with Bing/Google, and also some local folks that were highly rated ^^, only 2 have replied, neither have followed up.

Tried a recommended one today, lets see how that pans out.

I'll have a looksee at that site, tks

[Ken]

You need to find the elecrician that is contract working for the PV firms not the PV Cos themselves. I found mine by asking where some PV was being fitted.

I think you are over egging this and i think you should take on board what Stinsy says above.

You do relise that a HP will only be consuming 1kw or less for most of the time?

[Ken]

I like reading these threads as you see how other people are approaching these issues. However i am amazed at how much money people will throw at a problem to save little. In this whole thread there is not one mention of insulation which for many is the most cost effective eg old leaky houses.

Some of the simple things seem to be completely lost on some people like turning down the indoor temp. Some of these people could save a 1/3rd of the household bills by taking quite simple measures and 50% if they invested a LITTLE money wisely.

Some have clearly not heard of "diminishing returns " and clearly willing to spend to achieve 100% of something when that does not make economic sense when compared to the alternatives. eg to create a heating system which can cater for just 10days of "beast from the east" or creating a battery system to get off the grid.

Some of what i read on here could be acieved by simple life changes eg by better control of heater times and only heating HW when the CH is on if on gas.

PS best not talk about people driving jacked up tanks which cost more than a few £ of leccy.