Agri Vehicles Insurance from Greenlands

Author Topic: Solar PV Production  (Read 103852 times)

regen

  • Joined Jan 2013
Re: Solar PV Production
« Reply #60 on: December 22, 2013, 07:23:34 am »
Hi Stereo,

I think that cost wise the immersun (or similar device) will be cheaper even if you already have a spare coil in the thermal store but it will not supply quite as many kwh. A unit costs around £300 and can be fitted by a competent electrician in about an hour provided wiring is straightforward between immersion heater and coonsumerunit and immersun can be placed fairly close to invertor/consumer unit and mains infeed cable.

Each to his own but I find it only takes a couple of minutes to lite the woodburner and a 12 kg charge of wood guarantees a 300 liter tank of water at 65 degrees which will last a couple of days even if the sun does not shine.

The power from the immersun is completely free as it only harvests that which would go to the grid and you are paid the 50% (about 2p per unit) under the deemed rule regardless.

Regen

Stereo

  • Joined Aug 2012
Re: Solar PV Production
« Reply #61 on: December 23, 2013, 04:58:33 pm »
Yeah, we usually run half a pallet through the Esse every other day in the summer unless we are having a lot of showers / baths. I'll light it up early when the kids are having baths. I keep wondering if the tank we have is not big enough. It's a Gledhill Torrent Solar, I think 200 litres or so. I can get it really hot with wood but by the time 2 of the boys have had a bath, the gas boiler is kicking in. The house is a detached barn conversion, 3 beds, 2 receptions. I'm thinking it's not really big enough for the job?

Wendelspanswick

  • Joined Nov 2013
Re: Solar PV Production
« Reply #62 on: December 23, 2013, 10:30:15 pm »
Yeah, we usually run half a pallet through the Esse every other day in the summer unless we are having a lot of showers / baths. I'll light it up early when the kids are having baths. I keep wondering if the tank we have is not big enough. It's a Gledhill Torrent Solar, I think 200 litres or so. I can get it really hot with wood but by the time 2 of the boys have had a bath, the gas boiler is kicking in. The house is a detached barn conversion, 3 beds, 2 receptions. I'm thinking it's not really big enough for the job?

You could fit a small de-stratification pump to the tank, it mixes the water in the tank so that the whole volume is hot, not just the top layer.
A suitable pump is about £20, chuck in a £5 thermostat, a one way valve and a bit of pipe work and you will have a whole tank of hot water.

regen

  • Joined Jan 2013
Re: Solar PV Production
« Reply #63 on: December 24, 2013, 08:45:31 am »
"You could fit a small de-stratification pump to the tank, it mixes the water in the tank so that the whole volume is hot, not just the top layer.
A suitable pump is about £20, chuck in a £5 thermostat, a one way valve and a bit of pipe work and you will have a whole tank of hot water"

If there are 4 people in the house and the tank is indeed only 200litres then it is probably on the small side.

On our Gledhill there are 2 immersion heaters and I have connected the PV into the bottom port which ensures that the whole tank is heated. If it is a single port and is situated half way up the tank then a mixer pump would help to maximise PV hot water.

If using the wbs to heat the water then I expect it will heat the tank from the bottom up so a pump would not help.  However the main problem with the thermal store (and the magnitude increases as the tank size reduces) is that hot water is produced by pumping cold water into a large coil inside the store which will take the heat out of the store fairly evenly but once the store gets down to about 35 degrees the water produced is not hot enough.  Note the thermal store works in the opposite way to a conventional HW cylinder.

As its a Gledhill torrent Solar I expect the transfer coil for thermal solar is near the bottom of the tank and once utilized will always heat the tank from the bottom.

It is possible that the store stat is set too high thus allowing the gas to start up too soon.  Being tight our oil boiler will only come on when the store gets down to 40 degrees and then only if the main controller is switched on.

regen

Regen

Stereo

  • Joined Aug 2012
Re: Solar PV Production
« Reply #64 on: December 24, 2013, 05:37:11 pm »
Thanks for the thoughts. I have an idea that the feed from the esse wood boiler goes in halfway up the tank. Maybe not ideal.  I think our stat is set at about 40 as you don't want cold water coming back into the stove as it will clag it up. How noisy is a stratifying pump? The tank is one of the boys bedrooms in a cupboard.

Wendelspanswick

  • Joined Nov 2013
Re: Solar PV Production
« Reply #65 on: December 25, 2013, 09:43:48 am »
They are smaller and quieter than a central heating pump, I will see if I can find the link.

chrismahon

  • Joined Dec 2011
  • Gascony, France
Re: Solar PV Production
« Reply #66 on: December 26, 2013, 06:15:35 am »
Just an important point to note. Regulations require stored hot water to be maintained above 60 degrees. The reason is to kill Legionella with is present in all water and is not killed by Chlorination. Storing at a lower temperature allows it to multiply. The optimum breeding temperature is body temperature, so around 40 degrees. The highest risk groups are children under 10 and males over 50. So I would urge everyone to ensure their hot water storage systems are compliant with regulations, because Legionella kills a lot of people every year.

Stereo

  • Joined Aug 2012
Re: Solar PV Production
« Reply #67 on: December 30, 2013, 06:09:06 pm »
This is a sealed system though. The hot water is not used other than in the heating. Domestic hot is produced by running mains cold through a heat exchanger inside the tank so it would be insulated from any chance of contamination. It works differently to a standard hot water tank.

Big Light

  • Joined Aug 2011
    • Facebook
Re: Solar PV Production
« Reply #68 on: January 01, 2014, 09:09:36 pm »
44 for December
The only glowing orb was the moon !

cloddopper

  • Joined Jun 2013
  • South Wales .Carmarthenshire. SA18
Re: Solar PV Production
« Reply #69 on: January 02, 2014, 12:11:01 am »
Thanks Big Orb..


 We'll' soon be joining you .

We've got( 31 DEC )  the no planning requirement letter from the county planners .. We need a zero return so to speak so that we can keep it with the house deeds /details incase it is needed in many years time when the house gets sold and the new prospective owners ask for written confirmation that planning was/ was  not needed .  As we've been caught out on that angle previously for a no planning requirement for a disabled persons accessible heated conservatory.
It held up the sale of the bungalow for five weeks whilst the local planners replied to my letters . 

 All we need now is for the BCO to show his face when they return to work next Monday so we can have written confirmation that he has assessed the bungalow as not needing any work to have the array installed and hopefully we will be in business very soon after that.
Strong belief , triggers the mind to find the way ... Dyslexia just makes it that bit more amusing & interesting

Big Light

  • Joined Aug 2011
    • Facebook
Re: Solar PV Production
« Reply #70 on: January 02, 2014, 08:57:09 am »
Good luck with that, installations really quick once you get a date, that said the first couple of months of the year you won't get much return but hopefully you will have it in before the spring summer months to get max return

cloddopper

  • Joined Jun 2013
  • South Wales .Carmarthenshire. SA18
Re: Solar PV Production
« Reply #71 on: January 05, 2014, 08:43:25 pm »
Has anyone got any generation figures for this " Balmy weather period  " ??
Strong belief , triggers the mind to find the way ... Dyslexia just makes it that bit more amusing & interesting

Factotum

  • Joined Jun 2012
Re: Solar PV Production
« Reply #72 on: January 08, 2014, 04:52:45 pm »
We came on line in December (11th) - and generated 37.03 KWh to the end of the month.

So far in Jan we've made 19.498 KWh - (yesterday was very good at 5.48.)

We're in Moray (North East Scotland), about 230m up, roof faces S-SW, have a 4KWp installation, with SolarEdge inverter and Immersun - so that all the excess energy is going into our hot water...

Sue


cloddopper

  • Joined Jun 2013
  • South Wales .Carmarthenshire. SA18
Re: Solar PV Production
« Reply #73 on: January 11, 2014, 01:25:49 am »
Well we've got the letters saying no permission needed to install from the county planners and also had the building control officer come and have a look  granting us the go ahead which we received yesterday morning ( All FOC )
Thus armed we went to AMGEN renewables , signed the contract& paid a deposit  to initiate things further .

A guy is coming early next week ( unrelated the installation company ...by law ) to carry out the thermal efficiency survey ( bit of a waste of time and money ) . The building must be class D or better at A B or C thermal efficiency .

I reckon we will be C or B for that's what I designed the bungalow total refurbishnemt to be .

We have 10 inches of 3 yr old roof void insulation , full cavity wall insulation , 90% of the double glazing  has been renewed in the last five years with the argon filled reflective self cleaning glass and a correctly vented capped  off chimney etc. etc.
 We have a class AA boiler, fridge freezer ,dryer , cold fill washer and dish washer and all our lights are now low voltage incandescent or LED.

At the  Amgen office i asked how much would we expect to generate in the current days  weather which was dull dark rains wept all day from day light and pitch dark by 16.15 .

Peter the owner did a brill bit of selling , he brought up his own homes second by second generating figures .. Yesterday he'd generated five KwHr up to 16. 20 hrs.

 One thing he did talk to us about after I asked a few penetrating questions is that he has several  generating sites on property he has either sold , on his own home or on friend homes.. they get the free power , he gets the feeding tariffs for the next 20 or so years . He still owns the PV set up .


He's tied it up legally as a legal thing to be able to do  and it's all fully insured  .
So If you move from one property with PV panels to another that has or does not have PV , with a bit of sensible self selling you should be able to still benefit from the original properties installation rather than giving it away & the feed in tariff  income in the property sale price.
« Last Edit: October 01, 2014, 09:56:44 pm by cloddopper »
Strong belief , triggers the mind to find the way ... Dyslexia just makes it that bit more amusing & interesting

regen

  • Joined Jan 2013
Re: Solar PV Production
« Reply #74 on: January 13, 2014, 07:32:40 am »
Hi Clodhopper,


"At the  Amgen office i asked how much would we expect to generate in the current days  weather which was dull dark rains wept all day from day light and pitch dark by 16.15 .

Peter the owner did a brill bit of selling , he brought up his own homes second by second generating figures .. Yesterday he'd generated five KwHr up to 16. 20 hrs."

On a dull day in January in Carms a 4kw system will generate about 1kwh maybe 2 but certainly not 5kwh

My figures for 2014 3.92kw system in full "sunlight" ie no shading. starting with 01/01/14 - 0,4,2,1,1,0,1,1,4,1,9,1

 total 25kwh

Regen

 

Forum sponsors

FibreHut Energy Helpline Thomson & Morgan Time for Paws Scottish Smallholder & Grower Festival Ark Farm Livestock Movement Service

© The Accidental Smallholder Ltd 2003-2024. All rights reserved.

Design by Furness Internet

Site developed by Champion IS