Is A2A to be included in the BUS grant spring 2025 ?

[Stinsy]

My personal ultimate bang for buck would be 4kWp on a groundmount and running back onto 2 separate socket circuits and each on a 2kW hoymiles. Southfacing of course and 3 doors down from Nowtys town.

Something like
£640 for 8 of 535W panels
£400 for 2 of 2kW Hoymiles
£150 for cables, mc4's, switches
£300 for groundmount

Thats £1,490 for a working good sized (4,280W) pv system. All diy possible. Damn, I want to build that. It's a no brainer.

35p/Wp relly is a no-brainer!

£1.50 notsomuch...

(You do need MCS for the 15p export and saving sessions though...)

[Moxi]

The reality is that even if everyone lived in an identical house their individuality will create a diverse range of consumption and ways to meet that consumption so we shouldn’t be surprised that Ken favours solar as the system he’s developed is aligned to his needs, similarly Stinsy has an excellent set up that fits nicely with his family needs, he has identified several additional changes to benefit him further, JB Mart, me and everyone else are no different, we all have mutually inclusive elements and we all have mutually exclusive elements. Makes for a great discussion but in terms of renewables one solution doesn’t fit all.

It’s great though because when we discuss all these things it allows others to pick and choose potential solutions for our own requirements some solutions with be identical some will be adapted, that’s the power of this forum and long may it continue.

As to the discussion I find myself in a strange position of needing to decide my optimum solution to DHW BUT while I ponder that further I am going to take advantage of cheap panel prices and get some more panels in the garden and along a fence line now that my duct under the road allows me to run cables.

I can do this because I finally overcame my aversion to smart meters and now have access to vanilla so my winter months have just had their cost slashed giving me spare cash to buy cheap panels result! More power in shoulder month less payments to the “man” more renewable investment in DHW in summer excess power to car and or hot water ? That looks like my present road map anyhow although there’s still a fork in the road where a split A2A system lays in ambush

All that said I will say thanks to one and all for all the ideas and knowledge

Moxi

[Mart]

I think that solar/batteries/ToU is a "magic trifecta" that all work together elegantly...

Hope this doesn't seem pedantic, as I totally agree, but I think BEV's are a big plus to the group too, as they can make* TOU cheap rate viable, opening the door to battery charging in low PV generation periods. Not saying everyone has to get a BEV, just that each addition PV, batts, cheap rate, BEV's and HP's, all get better and easier, as we get more. A perfect example of the whole being greater than the sum of the parts.

*As I got to that point I realised I may have misunderstood, as TOU is not exactly the same as cheap rate. But what the hell, I'll throw the comment in anyways.

Sure. I have 2x EVs (a BEV and a PHEV). Certainly to get the Cephalopod's cheap rate you need to at least pretend to have an EV. And to get their very cheapest cheap rate with the possibility to "game" additional slots you need either a listed EV or a listed charging point.

Yep, forgot that, but what I meant was that switching to a cheap rate tariff may not be viable. For me it wasn't, despite PV, as we simply couldn't shift enough demand to night rate. But a BEV consumes huge amount of leccy, and can easily be charged on cheap rate, thus opening up cheap rate. The same applies to batts, as they allow for time shifting.

So each additional product, makes the benefits of the whole even greater. Quite a bit of expense for now, but over time, it'll become more normal to have PV, BEV etc etc, and batts are getting cheaper, fast.

[Mart]

Hey Moxi, you'd never be able to tell, but I quite like a good waffle and ponder too.

[Moxi]

Hey Mart,

That is a surprise given your concise replies in the forum.



We had a very cold night last night and the resistive heating was on through the vanilla slot to offset some gas use which it did nicely. How does people with A2A systems fair in the sub zero days - I appreciate the CoP will drop but typically by how much ? I noted the dew point was minus 1 last night for us so this morning the cars where free of ice - I presume that would mean less defrost cylces for a hp and therefore improve the operation?

Moxi

[Mart]

Hey Mart,

That is a surprise given your concise replies in the forum.



We had a very cold night last night and the resistive heating was on through the vanilla slot to offset some gas use which it did nicely. How does people with A2A systems fair in the sub zero days - I appreciate the CoP will drop but typically by how much ? I noted the dew point was minus 1 last night for us so this morning the cars where free of ice - I presume that would mean less defrost cylces for a hp and therefore improve the operation?

Moxi

Funny you should mention that, as I've been pondering the same. In our case, we had our first 'failure' on Saturday, and had to buy day rate leccy from late evening. Poor weather, no real gen, and the washing was on. Same again Monday, but no washing, and batts exhausted an hour short of cheap rate. Yesterday was freezing, but the sunshine generation, meant we had 53% in the batts when cheap rate charging kicked in. Overall, looking very good.

So house temps OK, just hitting the edge cases. Not sure how unusual this weather is. The news keeps reporting the cold spell, but I was expecting temps like this (in Cardiff) for a few weeks, spread through the winter period, especially Jan/Feb. Is this unusual, or perhaps I was working to the more extremes as being average.

[Stinsy]

Hey Mart,

That is a surprise given your concise replies in the forum.



We had a very cold night last night and the resistive heating was on through the vanilla slot to offset some gas use which it did nicely. How does people with A2A systems fair in the sub zero days - I appreciate the CoP will drop but typically by how much ? I noted the dew point was minus 1 last night for us so this morning the cars where free of ice - I presume that would mean less defrost cylces for a hp and therefore improve the operation?

Moxi

Funny you should mention that, as I've been pondering the same. In our case, we had our first 'failure' on Saturday, and had to buy day rate leccy from late evening. Poor weather, no real gen, and the washing was on. Same again Monday, but no washing, and batts exhausted an hour short of cheap rate. Yesterday was freezing, but the sunshine generation, meant we had 53% in the batts when cheap rate charging kicked in. Overall, looking very good.

So house temps OK, just hitting the edge cases. Not sure how unusual this weather is. The news keeps reporting the cold spell, but I was expecting temps like this (in Cardiff) for a few weeks, spread through the winter period, especially Jan/Feb. Is this unusual, or perhaps I was working to the more extremes as being average.

Could you not have plugged the car in when your batts were expended to get additional cheapslots?

[Mart]

Hey Mart,

That is a surprise given your concise replies in the forum.



We had a very cold night last night and the resistive heating was on through the vanilla slot to offset some gas use which it did nicely. How does people with A2A systems fair in the sub zero days - I appreciate the CoP will drop but typically by how much ? I noted the dew point was minus 1 last night for us so this morning the cars where free of ice - I presume that would mean less defrost cylces for a hp and therefore improve the operation?

Moxi

Funny you should mention that, as I've been pondering the same. In our case, we had our first 'failure' on Saturday, and had to buy day rate leccy from late evening. Poor weather, no real gen, and the washing was on. Same again Monday, but no washing, and batts exhausted an hour short of cheap rate. Yesterday was freezing, but the sunshine generation, meant we had 53% in the batts when cheap rate charging kicked in. Overall, looking very good.

So house temps OK, just hitting the edge cases. Not sure how unusual this weather is. The news keeps reporting the cold spell, but I was expecting temps like this (in Cardiff) for a few weeks, spread through the winter period, especially Jan/Feb. Is this unusual, or perhaps I was working to the more extremes as being average.

Could you not have plugged the car in when your batts were expended to get additional cheapslots?

Awwwwww for F's sake! Forgot about that completely.

Right, need to charge the Tesla from the granny cable tonight, so Octopus learns, and that should/might give us some late evening cheap slots next time. Or perhaps use the main charger but turn the Amps down, hopefully Octopus will adapt to that too.

[Moxi]

Another great example of the forum at work, fingers crossed it works for you Mart and many thanks to Stinsy for pointing out a potential solution. Also I assume trying to get a cheap slot close to a saver event would assist Mart with his baseline ? I might be wrong and that could be for export so maybe ignore it as I am new to all that stuff anyway.

Moxi

[Mart]

Another great example of the forum at work, fingers crossed it works for you Mart and many thanks to Stinsy for pointing out a potential solution. Also I assume trying to get a cheap slot close to a saver event would assist Mart with his baseline ? I might be wrong and that could be for export so maybe ignore it as I am new to all that stuff anyway.

Moxi

In my case, on Octopus Intelligent Go, it gives you a cheap rate slot of 11.30pm to 5.30am. But if you plug your BEV in to charge, it may decide to charge it outside of that window, if leccy is cheap. So perhaps 9pm to 11pm, then 3am to 6am (if it can control the BEV or charger). You still get the cheap rate period, but you also get the cheap rate tariff anytime the car is charging on their schedule - so in the example above 9pm to 11pm, and 5.30am to 6am.

But if your car charges slowly, too slowly, then it learns, and can often give you longer periods, such as 9pm through to 8am (as an example) next time. As it learns.

Bit sneaky, but seems to work well. Of course it may be different now that demand is so high, as I assume they want to supply that leccy when its cheaper and greener.