Tweet
Hi, I live in the U.K. and I am hoping to set up my first solar power system, I will be buying 40 x 375W Suntech Ultra S solar panels for £118.68 each, to make a 15kW system, including shipping the panels will be around £5,200. I have a large back garden on a slope facing West, but it gets sunlight all day and has no shade on the left hand side, which is where I am going to put the panels. The reason I want so many panels is so that I can get a decent output in the Winter months, because panels are now so incredibly cheap, and I have the space to mount them in my back garden. I live in Bristol, the Bristol Latitude is 51.45, and from a website I found, the optimum Winter angle is latitude x 0.9 plus 29 degrees = 46.305 + 29 = 75 degrees. So I plan to mount the panels at that angle, and presumably in the Summer the output will be quite a bit lower than if the panels were mounted at a lower angle. (This is what I want, maximum possible output in the Winter, and a lower than 15kW output in the Summer, as I can't use that amount of energy, and won't be exporting it to the grid for payment (my electrician has told me that excess energy will automatically go into the grid, but in order to get the necessary certificate to get paid for this, I would have to use a proper solar power company and buy the solar panels, etc. from them as a package, and this would cost me three or more times as much as buying it all myself.)
I have a very competent electrician who will be doing all the electrical work for me, but I am not sure what inverter and what battery to go for. I want to buy one 5kWh battery to begin with, and then add one or two more after I have had the system up and running for a few months, when I know how much storage I might need. I have gone through all the electrical items in the house with my electrician, and we have worked out that the maximum power I could be using at one time is around 8kW. I have an electric shower but I plan to turn that off and use hot water from the hot water tank instead, to have a shower with, as I can dump excess electricity straight into the immersion heater, so the only high load devices I will be using are - 3kW wall fan heaters in two bathrooms - these may be on at the same time if my wife is having a shower at the same time I am, but we can easily stagger our bathroom time and use the same bathroom, thus only havine one 3kW wall fan heater on at any one time. (And saving heat because one of us will be going into a bathroom that has just been warmed up by the previous user.) 3kW oven, 3kW-4kW electric hob, which may be used at the same time. 3kW electric convector heaters, which we may use at a lower power output, such as 1kW or 2kW (they have switches on the side to select the power output). We are both aware of how much power each appliance takes, and we will be grid tied to begin with, so it won't matter if we go over the 10kW, but we want to use as much solar power as we can, so we'll try to avoid this as much as possible.
I have been reading up on solar panel optimisation, by using micro inverters or optimisers, but as these cost around £50 each, and the panels cost only £120 each, I think it would be a waste of money for me to spend any money on them, as the part of the garden I am going to be putting the panels in has no shade at all, and for the cost of two and a half inverters, I could just buy another complete panel.
I am planning on laying the panels down in landscape format, one panel high, in four rows of ten. I will be building a frame from 26.9mm galvanised tube, which is £27 per 6m length. The panels will therefore be no higher than 4 feet off the ground, so they won't be an eyesore to my neighbours. They will be as unintrusive as possible. I have looked at commercially available solar panel mounting systems, and for my purposes they would be incredibly expensive, so I'm going to make my own mounts. As the panels will be so low to the ground, and they are next to a four foot high hedge that runs the length of the left hand side of my garden, there shouldn't be much wind load to worry about either.
So I am just hoping that somebody here can advise me on what inverter and battery to buy. I am considering the possibility of going completely off grid in the future, but as far as I can tell, an inverter is either grid-tied, or off grid, so I guess I will have to upgrade the inverter in the future if I decide to go off grid, and just sell the old inverter? If the electricity from my electricity company were to go off for a few hours, would I not be able to use my solar system with a grid-tied inverter?
Many thanks in advance for any help you can give me.
I have a very competent electrician who will be doing all the electrical work for me, but I am not sure what inverter and what battery to go for. I want to buy one 5kWh battery to begin with, and then add one or two more after I have had the system up and running for a few months, when I know how much storage I might need. I have gone through all the electrical items in the house with my electrician, and we have worked out that the maximum power I could be using at one time is around 8kW. I have an electric shower but I plan to turn that off and use hot water from the hot water tank instead, to have a shower with, as I can dump excess electricity straight into the immersion heater, so the only high load devices I will be using are - 3kW wall fan heaters in two bathrooms - these may be on at the same time if my wife is having a shower at the same time I am, but we can easily stagger our bathroom time and use the same bathroom, thus only havine one 3kW wall fan heater on at any one time. (And saving heat because one of us will be going into a bathroom that has just been warmed up by the previous user.) 3kW oven, 3kW-4kW electric hob, which may be used at the same time. 3kW electric convector heaters, which we may use at a lower power output, such as 1kW or 2kW (they have switches on the side to select the power output). We are both aware of how much power each appliance takes, and we will be grid tied to begin with, so it won't matter if we go over the 10kW, but we want to use as much solar power as we can, so we'll try to avoid this as much as possible.
I have been reading up on solar panel optimisation, by using micro inverters or optimisers, but as these cost around £50 each, and the panels cost only £120 each, I think it would be a waste of money for me to spend any money on them, as the part of the garden I am going to be putting the panels in has no shade at all, and for the cost of two and a half inverters, I could just buy another complete panel.
I am planning on laying the panels down in landscape format, one panel high, in four rows of ten. I will be building a frame from 26.9mm galvanised tube, which is £27 per 6m length. The panels will therefore be no higher than 4 feet off the ground, so they won't be an eyesore to my neighbours. They will be as unintrusive as possible. I have looked at commercially available solar panel mounting systems, and for my purposes they would be incredibly expensive, so I'm going to make my own mounts. As the panels will be so low to the ground, and they are next to a four foot high hedge that runs the length of the left hand side of my garden, there shouldn't be much wind load to worry about either.
So I am just hoping that somebody here can advise me on what inverter and battery to buy. I am considering the possibility of going completely off grid in the future, but as far as I can tell, an inverter is either grid-tied, or off grid, so I guess I will have to upgrade the inverter in the future if I decide to go off grid, and just sell the old inverter? If the electricity from my electricity company were to go off for a few hours, would I not be able to use my solar system with a grid-tied inverter?
Many thanks in advance for any help you can give me.
Comment