I have upgradeitis. If something newer and shinier comes out, my stupid monkey-brain compels me to buy it. Seven years ago, we installed a solar battery. It was part of an experimental project which looked at creating a community power-grid, so it came at a subsidised price. As I explained to BBC Click, the 2kWh capacity was reasonable - but I expected the future would bring higher capacity,…
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After 3 full years of having solar panels on our London roof, they've generated 11,950kWh of electricity. Nice! Here's how those three years look, according to our smart meter. kWh Solar Generation 11,950 Solar Export 7,346 Grid Import 7,521 Quick maths! The difference between the generation and the export is our solar consumption: 4,604kWh over 3 years. So we…
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Electricity demand varies throughout the day. When demand is higher, electricity prices go up. Most UK consumers are insulated from this variability - we pay a fixed price per kWh no matter what the actual wholesale cost. But it doesn't need to be this way. Exposing users to the immense variability in pricing is probably too dangerous - as seen in Texas recently. Imagine if your electricity…
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Last week, I attended BrumPropHack - a hackathon in Birmingham which looked at problems with retrofitting homes to make them more energy efficient. There were some great talks about the scale of the problem - both in terms of the number of properties which need improving and the cost of retrofitting. A bunch of teams showed off some impressive demos which aimed to tackle the issues. My demo was …
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This is going to be a very unemotional, numbers-based blog post. I've rounded the figures to make it more readable. And I've put some pictures in to make it slightly more interesting. We have 5kWp of solar panels on our roof. The panels generate about 4,200kWh per year. Mostly in summer, but a decent amount in winter. Over a year, we export about 2,800kWh. That is what we sell back to…
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I spoke, briefly, to BBC journalist Tom Singleton about our solar panels and how they're coping in the heat. The good news is that solar panels work when it is sunny (duh!) - but the bad news is that electronics are generally less efficient when it is hot. Here are a few examples. July 16th was a few days before the heatwave: .social-embed{all:unset;display:block;}.social-embed *…
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I fucking loved my first visit to #EMFcamp. After two years of lockdown, I was over-excited at the chance to be with all my friends in a field this year. I was over-excited about doing a talk about my beloved solar panels. I was over-excited about sleeping in a goddamned camper-van! I was even - sadly - excited at seeing my name broadcast on TELETEXT! Photograph © Skylar MacDonald 2022. All …
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We've had solar panels on the roof of our London home for exactly two years. They've just tipped over the 8,000kWh mark. The first question people tend to ask is "how much do they cost?" And the answer is… "It depends." The costs we paid two years ago aren't going to be particularly relevant to you. We have a 3 storey house, so paid a bit more for scaffolding. Our electrics were in a decent s…
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I blog about my solar panels - probably a bit too much! Recently, a reader asked me if I'd heard of Rowan Energy's solar payback scheme - so I took a look into it. Here's how it works: Rowan installer a "miner" next to your solar inverter (the big box that turns DC from solar panels into AC for home use). The "miner" monitors how much electricity you produce and reports it back via your home…
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We've had our solar panels for exactly a year. Our roof has an East/West aspect - and we have 2.5kW of panels on each side. Here's a typical graph showing how each side performs during the day. Edent's Solar Panels@Edent_Solar AutomatedEast facing solar panels 🆚 West facing solar panels. London, UK. pic.x.com/JBcd5KPGyJ❤️ 1💬 0🔁 021:30 - Tue 09 March 2021 What I find interesting is that the side…
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Our domestic solar panels have generated more electricity in a year than we have consumed. We installed 5kW of solar panels on our roof in 2020. Half are East-facing, half West-facing. Over a full year, they've generated 4,165kWh. By comparison, the average UK household uses about 3,800kWh of electricity per year. But working out exactly how much we've used is slightly trickier. We have a…
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A few years ago, I took part in a local trial to install a solar battery in our home. The battery was excellent - and made a reasonable difference for our energy use. Sadly, last year, it died. It was prototype hardware, and these things happen. Moixa offered to replace it with an updated model - which was generous of them. While we were waiting for the new model to come in to stock, we moved…
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