Volkswagen ID.3 Forum

When you say "solar timer" do you mean a diverter ?

From what you've written I think you might be a prime use case for an Eddi and a Zappi combination installation, together with Outgoing Octopus as your feed-in tariff (either Agile or Fixed, depending)

The Eddi you just program with a set of rules and it controls the various solar/battery/export rules based on the rules you set. The Zappi integrates with it too such that you can trickle charge the car from solar and raise the kW's up and down automagically based on your rules. Is that the kind of thing you were thinking of, or have I misunderstood ?

MattgID3 wrote: ↑Fri Mar 25, 2022 3:14 pm Im looking at fetting solar panels and planning to get quotes over next week. Batteries are too dear for me as im also planning to get an ev charger and have budget of £6000. I am currently on cheep octopus go until the end of next jan. I have looked at options and am thinking of getting a hot water solar timer as an alternative to a battery to get free hot water and use the cars where possible to also charge.
Am i correct in saying that i can also stay on go and sell vack any excess beyond this for 4 1p per KW?

41p per kW !! I wouldn't have bought batteries is I could have gotten that.. Best you could get recently is around 5p a kWh and I don't see anyone rushing to put that payment up despite the rising charges for it. If you are on Octopus Go they won't pay you for any of the excess. (Or so I was told in an email from them).

https://octopus.energy/outgoing/ actually it appears they are paying 7.5p now but it still stated you can't be on Go at the same time.

That should be 4.1

It was the smart export tarrif which my understanding is that you can have with octopus go?

G43FAN wrote: ↑Fri Mar 25, 2022 3:59 pm If you are on Octopus Go they won't pay you for any of the excess. (Or so I was told in an email from them).

https://octopus.energy/outgoing/ actually it appears they are paying 7.5p now but it still stated you can't be on Go at the same time.

But you can be on Go and their SEG tariff which is where the 4.1p/kWh comes in. The information you were given by Octopus is wrong, I'm afraid. From https://octopus.energy/blog/outgoing/...

Do I need to be on a special tariff for my energy consumption?

No, Outgoing Octopus is independent of your regular consumption tariff.

Currently, you can't be on both Outgoing Octopus AND Octopus Go, our electricity consumption tariff designed for electric vehicle drivers. We've made this decision because both are such incredibly good value tariffs that it would be unsustainable for us as a business – the equivalent of letting people buying goods in a shop using a "3 for 2" offer and then bringing them back for a full price refund! The combination of Outgoing and Agile works really well and offers potential for great savings. You can choose to be on Octopus Go and join our new SEG tariff for Outgoing, offering 4.1p / kWh for your export – just get in touch with our team to take this option.

If your solar/battery setup can handle Agile rates automatically (the Eddi can....) then you can certainly import cheap and sell expensive. Agile Outgoing rates are about 40p/ at peak times, which is quite attractive. But like you said, you can't be on Agile Outgoing and Go simultaneously, and you can see why.

4.1p/kWh though is OK if you've got energy sloshing around and nowhere to put it, hence my suggestion of an Eddi and Zappi setup; get your thermal store to very hot and your EV full before pushing the electrons that would otherwise go to waste into the grid at 4.1p/kWh.

As above, solar panels can impact on house sales/values, when we were thinking about selling our house, we did get a few comments about how they were put off by the panels, but I think it's more down to people being scared of things they don't understand.

We were lucky, in that we got our panels back in 2015, and receive money from the FIT.

It was a no brainer to me, we got a 4kW PV system fitted for £4750, south facing. We have averaged £700 per year income from them, and they will have paid for themselves on the 7th anniversary of their install. There is still another 18 years of fit payments, which on the current average will provide a further income of £12600.

This doesn't include the savings in electricity costs. I've previously worked out that over a normal year (I.e. not working from home) we produce a similar amount of electricity to the electricity we use, so if we time our usage right we don't use a lot.

We didn't sell in the end, and one of the reasons that put me off selling was the PV system, the direct opposite to some of the potential buyers. If we did move, our electricity costs would go up and we would also not be getting the £700 per year income.

On top of that, we wouldn't get the warm gooey feeling inside of thinking we are doing our bit for the environment

Indyfras wrote: ↑Fri Mar 25, 2022 11:09 am Please check what I'm about to say as it may have changed due to the spring statement. Up until the spring statement if you installed both panels and a battery at the same time VAT was 5% on both. However, if like us, if you retro fitted a battery then VAT was 20%.

I'm sure you are right. My installer made sure that the battery was on the same invoice as the panels - they were installed 6 months apart because of delays at Tesla - vat at 5% on both.

Since the demise of the FiT system I can't see any company wanting to finance panels. When it first started the FiT was 24p/KWh, index linked for 25 years.
Good return for a few £k outlay. The punter gets the "free" electricity, the company gets 25 years index linked income.
I believe the problem with properties that have done this is that you lease your roof to the installer for the 25 years. A complication on sale that some buyers would be very wary of.

SteveH wrote: ↑Fri Mar 25, 2022 3:26 pm

Splitty wrote: ↑Fri Mar 25, 2022 6:57 amYes, it’s odd how people rush down the road of payback when that wasn’t one of my primary concerns.

I've been pondering solar for a while, and the primary reason for installing would be environmental. But its a lot of money, so we can't just write it off - we need to be able to recoup much of the investment in the future.

The main thing that's putting me off is that we don't know how long we're going to be in this house - may be 20 years, but also it may be 2-3, and solar panels don't add to the value of your home so we wouldn't be able to recoup the investment if we moved house relatively soon. (TBH, I would've put solar panels on the roof when I moved in in 2008 if I knew then that I'd still be here now)... Also the roof is relatively small, which might make it not worthwhile from a financial point of view.

But the idea that people don't need any payback if they are installing for environmental reasons just isn't sound - most people can't afford to just write off that amount of money, even if their primary reason for doing it isn't as an investment.

I’ve been considering solar but I’m out all day and I’ve got a 3 storey town house with a really small roof when you factor out the space with loft windows. I just don’t think it would work out for me but I’ve not totally given up on the idea.

In the meantime I decided to invest in shares in a wind farm I saw a video of on Full charged on YouTube with a company called Ripple Energy. The farm is a cooperative. I bought enough for 3500 kWh annual generation for just over £2000 and it’s portable so if you move you don’t lose it. I worked out that would cover me for 10000 miles a year plus 20%. Octopus is one of the partner supplier so it seemed ideal. Might be work a look.

Edit: just read further up about the SEG tariff… maybe I could make Solar work.

Looks like I can get 4.46kWp of panels on my roof, and I think I will go for a 7.5kWh battery with it. The battery will need to go in my entrance hall, but maybe I'll see about getting a cupboard built around it in the future to improve the 'look' if it looks funny.

Thanks for all the info!