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How green am I?

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How green am I?

Postby sunnybob » 12 Jun 2022, 07:52

Big day yesterday, after almost4 months of waiting (6 weeks of that being officialdom) our solar power panels went live at 4pm. :eusa-clap: :eusa-clap:

'er indoors has an app on her phone that she can see voltages produced at any time from anywhere (I dont "do" apps and suchlike :eusa-naughty: :eusa-whistle: )
At sunup this morning we had a whole 67 cents in credit :lol: but within an hour it was producing 1.3 Kw.

Cant wait till sundown to see how much a day is worth 8-) 8-) 8-)
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Re: How green am I?

Postby Mike G » 12 Jun 2022, 08:28

You're not very green yet, but in 2 to 4 years time your panels will move into energy surplus. In other words, depending on their siting, it will take 2 to 4 years for them to have produced as much energy as went into their manufacture.

This is a vast improvement from the situation 15 years ago, where some poorly sited panels never produced in their lifetime enough power to pay back that used in their manufacture.

Here's my source:

https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/content/dam/ise/de/documents/publications/studies/Photovoltaics-Report.pdf
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Re: How green am I?

Postby Andyp » 12 Jun 2022, 08:52

Greener than me Bob,
We have a very suitable south facing roof and despite the latitude would provide some energy. I still baulk at the outlay versus returns which is a selfish way to look at it when the future of our planet is at stake.
I also have a big enough garden for ground source but again expense and upheaval puts me off especially as this is unlikely to be our longterm future residence.

Most of our lecky here comes from nuclear, carbon neutral wood stove provides majority of heat, and gas bottle (in the garage below :shock: ) for hob cooking.

We could and should do better.
I do not think therefore I do not am.

cheers
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Re: How green am I?

Postby sunnybob » 12 Jun 2022, 11:54

Mike, we are reckoning on regaining our outlay in 3 to 4 years. I think 3 is more likely with increasing prices. No idea about the green-ness of the panel :eusa-whistle: s. Cyprus officially has 340 days of sunshine per year, and my panels are on a due south facing sloped roof pergola. The panels are in the sun morning tillnight for at least 300 days a year. We've been watching the app on and off all morning, its peaking at 3.4 kwhr And the app even tells us how much CO2 offset its making. Right now at 1.30 pm we've saved 3.64 euro so far, and produced 10.68 total energy, and 7.5 CO2 avoided.
A neighbour down the road has the same system and says they are 140 euro in credit this year so far.

Andy, I have looked at alternative energy since the mid 70's, oil drum windmills, small propellors, ground source pumps etc etc, and none of them have ever shown to be worthwhile for me. When we moved here I looked again, but the return on investment was 10 years plus using a national company. But the price hikes now are a game changer. Get quotes now, and if you can manage it, do it. As soon as its on your house, the house value raises, so even if you move within a couple years, you can easily add the outlay to your house price.
This guy has now had to stop taking new customers for 3 months because he just cant get the supply chain any quicker. Since we signed up in feb, he has taken on 42 new customers, and bear in mind he's a one man band.
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Re: How green am I?

Postby Woodster » 12 Jun 2022, 12:43

Collecting solar energy should be a no brainier in countries that get a lot of sunshine. The problem for many though is the upfront cost. Given recent energy price increases though this is starting to become less of an issue, especially as interest on savings is often so poor. The other annoying thing about solar energy is that energy suppliers can charge you £X per unit for electricity but only pay a small fraction of this when it’s going the other way. It’s a shame storage batteries are so pricey. Adding a BEV into the mix now starts to make more sense as well. Interesting times ahead.
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Re: How green am I?

Postby sunnybob » 12 Jun 2022, 16:24

I'm not at all au fait with the details of UK systems, but I dont have any batteries.
Panels to inverter to consumer unit, flow both ways meter, and I'm your uncle :eusa-dance: :eusa-dance:
Bizarrely, its been a cloudy afternoon. Even cyprus knows when theres a public holiday!!
But I'm still around 7 euros ahead of the game after 24 hours, despite dishwasher, electric oven, domestic water pump, lights etc etc. If that keeps up for the year, I'm a very happy person. 8-) 8-)
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Re: How green am I?

Postby Rezi » 12 Jun 2022, 17:15

In my last house (I've recently moved) we installed solar panels. The salesperson wouldn't give us any clues about how many panels would be enough to provide 100% of our yearly electricity needs so we maxed out the south facing roof space with 38 panels. I also had the app and after a couple of years I worked out that we were overproducing by about a third and on a really bright day it generated 70kWh.
My new house will also get solar panels (only 20 this time as technology has improved and there's no feed in tarriff here to make it worth while) and my quote for that went up by over a grand last week!
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Re: How green am I?

Postby sunnybob » 12 Jun 2022, 17:28

The guy here impressed me with his "crossed T's and dotted I's" approach.
He wanted a full years electric bills before he would even quote us.
We have 12 x 370watt panels, which according to him is the maximum needed for single phase. He says we should be slightly better off at the end of the year, which means basically free electric. At every stage he has been in front of the local inspectors, even telling them what they could and could not argue over.
He had everything installed and ready to go 5 weeks ago, only waiting on the final sign off.
The 2 local electrical company inspectors turned up with 20 pages each of forms to fill in, arguing over almost everything, despite him being fully licensed by them, and him having so many satisfied customers he doesnt even need to advertise.
He had 6 inspections yesterday, we were the fifth, he said they had been a pain at everyone of them. Wonder why they dont want an englishman to succeed?
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Re: How green am I?

Postby Lurker » 12 Jun 2022, 18:22

Same the world over where officialdom is concerned.
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Re: How green am I?

Postby sunnybob » 14 Jun 2022, 11:55

Had a slightly annoying lesson today that I am not as self sufficient as I had hoped.

The mains electric was cut on a planned maintenance 6 hour break. I had thought I could still run fridges and stuff on my panels.
How wrong am I? :eusa-doh:
Apparently there is something called anti - islanding, which stops my system feeding back into the mains and not electrocuting the workers from the other direction.
Understandable, but I would have thought the all singing all dancing inverter I had would be able to sense the difference and cut the mains out of the system for the duration.

Apparently it doesnt know the words to that particular song. :eusa-violin:
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Re: How green am I?

Postby spb » 14 Jun 2022, 12:35

sunnybob wrote:Apparently there is something called anti - islanding, which stops my system feeding back into the mains and not electrocuting the workers from the other direction.
Understandable, but I would have thought the all singing all dancing inverter I had would be able to sense the difference and cut the mains out of the system for the duration.

Not electrocuting the workers is one part of it, but another important part is making sure your inverter can't get out of phase with the grid. If it kept running while the grid power was away, there's no way to be certain it isn't drifting slightly off the mains frequency, which would mean when the grid power comes back it wouldn't be synchronised properly. Connecting two AC supplies that are out of phase with each other is a Bad Idea - rather like connecting two batteries with reversed polarity instead of properly in parallel.

If you want a system that can be truly independent of the grid for a time, you need to have both your solar panels and the grid power feeding into a battery pack, and your entire house running from a single inverter powered by that battery - essentially a massive UPS system. That way your house is decoupled completely from the grid's frequency and phase by the DC battery system in between, and you can keep running with no grid reference. It's vastly more expensive than a grid-coupled system, though, for fairly obvious reasons, which is why pretty much nobody does it.
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Re: How green am I?

Postby sunnybob » 14 Jun 2022, 15:00

I've been updated by the installer.
It is the battery pack that makes the difference, but as that pack is several thousand euros to buy, and has a fairly limited life span, and even under the best conditions wont run more than a few low power electrical items in the event of a cut..... I'm good, thanks. 8-) :lol:
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Re: How green am I?

Postby Lurker » 14 Jun 2022, 15:36

It’s not as though you might freeze to death in the winter is it.
Unlike us poor bu££€rs :D
Hot here today Bob, must be 25 degrees!
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Re: How green am I?

Postby sunnybob » 14 Jun 2022, 19:58

I have noticed that UK temps are definitely rising over the last dozen years.
We are now at mid 30's C each day, with the nights cooling to high 20s's.
Roll on summer 8-) 8-) :lol:
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Re: How green am I?

Postby Lurker » 14 Jun 2022, 20:11

Do you have a thingy on your roof that warms /heats your hot water tank?
In the 1980s I helped my BiL put diy one on his roof in Spain, it was just a bank of old house radiators that he painted black. It worked very well. Last time we visited was around 2010 and he had replaced it with a commercial system.
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Re: How green am I?

Postby sunnybob » 15 Jun 2022, 03:52

Yes, solar water heat is standard here. I've just had to have the system renewed because after 14 years the old heat exchange panels had rotted away and the hot water tank had sprung a leak. The water here is all pumped out of the bedrock so its very high in dissolved salts and it eats everything :eusa-doh: :eusa-doh:
There is an immersion heater in the tank for winter use, but I get free hot water from april to october :eusa-dance: :eusa-dance:
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Re: How green am I?

Postby MattS » 15 Jun 2022, 08:31

Have no idea if this would work for you, but we are about to have solar panels installed and we have opted for a controller which will divert spare electricity into the immersion heater. We have this for summer as projections mean we could often fill battery and with feed in tariffs being so bad hope this will give us hot water for little cost on the hottest days. Imagine our summer is like your winter :lol:
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Re: How green am I?

Postby sunnybob » 15 Jun 2022, 11:22

This is more electronics than I can deal with :lol:
My understanding (dont shoot the messenger if this is completely wrong :eusa-naughty: ) is that all of our home grown electric goes into the main through a dual flow meter, and we get credit for that. Then when we use electric, we pay as normal.
If at the end of the year we have put in more than we have taken out, they will pay us for that excess (at below retail price of course). Going on other peoples bills that have had this work, our bi monthly
electric bill should drop from 200 euro to 20 euro. If I didnt have so many power machines in my workshop :eusa-whistle: , we could actually achieve zero electric costs annually.

The water heating is really not a big thing for us, I have the immersion on a timer and even in the coldest winter month (january) its only on for an hour in the early evening to top up what the sun produces. I switch that timer off for at least 8 months of the year.

The easiest way to explain Cyprus climate is to compare it to England, but take out english dec and jan, and insert 2 extra months of summer between june and july.
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