Our first year with solar and battery
On the 7th December 2022 we had our solar and battery system installed. It has now been a year and this is my review.
The MCS performance chart provided by our supplier said that we would produce 3513.38 kWh from solar, in fact we produced 4441.7 kWh. That is a big difference.
The battery used 2200.5 kWh, in the summer months that came from solar, during the winter overnight charging using Octopus Agile.
We have saved £1592.41 when comparing the amount of solar generated to the standard unit cost and adding on the export. I did make a mistake with our export tariff. I thought we would be better on the Agile Export tariff, but it turns out I should have been on the fixed 15p export tariff. I changed that in September, but too later for any decent export. Saying that we still exported 1192.2 kWH and made £107.27.
The battery started to fully charge from solar without overnight charging from the grid around early April. The west/north panels are very poor after the clocks change in October and start to generate some decent amounts once the clocks change in March.
We had a 3rd battery added in September, an extra 3.2 kWh. We now have 9.6 kWh. This will make this summer interesting. It will take longer for the battery to fully charge from solar. I am considering still charging overnight, but only if the Octopus Agile slot is below a certain price, or I could charge the battery to a certain SOC level. I will look at this nearer the time and see what is best. The Gary Does Solar YouTube channel has a good video on this scenerio. Now we have the extra battery I hope to do some force discharging to make some extra money by discharging when the battery is still charged in the summer evenings.
Looking back I don’t think I would be bought the Solar iBoost and I think I will turn it off this summer. It would be better to let the excess electricity export to the grid.
All in all our summer electricity bill was just the standing charge. If I had been on the correct export tariff I think we would have made more money.
If you are reading this you will have seen how I use Home Assistant with my system to try and make it more efficient. If you are reading this and not a geek don’t let that put you off getting a solar and battery system. It will work perfectly well out of the box.
