I'm probably not the first to do this - but it was a fun way to learn just how tricky it is to control a cheap quadcopter even in mild weather. This video has no sound. Your browser doesn't support HTML5 video tag. Good enough quality to make sure the panels aren't covered in bird-mess, leaves, or anything else which might block their efficiency. Thanks to Jack Franklin for the drone. …
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Always a delight to be interviewed by the BBC again. This time, talking about our Solar Batteries. You can listen again on the BBC iPlayer. The solar stuff starts at 14m 30s, with my interview at 17 minutes. You can also hear my electric car being charged :-) Terence Eden is on Mastodon@edentBeing interviewed by a nice man from the BBC about @Edent_Solar, @OxfordSolarLive and @edent_car!Thanks @JonDgls! pic.x.com/uvPiXQRM2r❤️ 4💬 0🔁 018:08 - Tue 18 October 2016 🔊 Solar Power, Free-range E…
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Even in the depths of British winter my solar panels'll still happily convert what little sunlight we get into delicious, free-range, organic electrons. Nice! Most of our domestic energy use is in the evening. So, when I'm out at work I can schedule the tumble dryer, robot vacuum cleaner, and WiFi rice-cooker to consume energy when the sun is shining. The rest is sold back into the grid for my neighbours to use. Wouldn't it be great to capture that energy and use it to power my lights and…
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(To the tune of the popular Mary Poppins song.) How much does it really cost to drive an electric car? Well, I've had my BMW i3 for a few months, so I thought I'd crunch the numbers. As part of the UK Government's OLEV scheme, there's a subsidy for installing car charging points at home. One of the conditions of the subsidy is that a smart meter is installed which reports back details about the energy used to charge the car (aside: wonder if that's available as Open Data?). This means I…
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Regular readers will know that I have solar panels and an electric car. Is there any way to hook the panels up so they directly charge the car? Can I set my electrical system up to divert surplus electricity into the car when my house isn't using it. This is what I do with my hot water iBoost - when household energy usage is low, it automatically switches on my immersion heater. Can I rig up something similar for my car? I've been thinking about this - and I'm not quite sure that it's worth …
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The headlines were clear - Upcoming solar eclipse to wreak havoc on Germany's solar power output screamed the headlines. Although the reality was slightly more prosaic. Although it's only one data point, I'd like to show you what happened to our solar panels during the eclipse. The full day graph shows a clear dip during the eclipse. As the eclipse drew closer, my minute by minute tracker showed a noticeable drop in production. Although, due to the cloud cover, it wasn't as large as it…
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It's been a full year since we had solar panels installed on our semi-detached house in Oxford, UK. By coincidence, the panels were switched on during the Winter Solstice - the shortest day of the year. So, how have they performed? Tracking Solar Performance - The Easy Way The solar panels have a generation meter. It tracks every kWh the panels produce. As of today, it stands at 4,061kWh. To put that into perspective, the average electricity usage per household in 2013 was 4,192 kWh -…
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I've been playing around with PVoutput.org - it's a community site which lets you quickly and easily publish live details of your solar panels. I couldn't see a pre-built library for my model of Solar Power Inverter - the Fronius - so I thought I'd build one. Important: the PVoutput API doesn't run over HTTPS. All of your communications with it are in the clear. While there's a limit to the amount of damage a malicious party could do, be aware that your API key isn't secure. The API is…
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As regular readers know, we've installed solar panels on our house in Oxford. The panels were originally installed on 17th December 2013 - that's pretty close to the winter solstice, where the UK experiences the lowest hours of sunlight. Today is the summer solstice. Time for Druids to dance around Stonehenge as we celebrate the longest day of the year. And time for me to celebrate half a year of graphing my Solar Panels. So, what are the results? This year we've generated a whopping…
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I looked at my Solar Generation meter and winked. My new Google Glass snapped this picture 116 days ago, on the darkest day of the year, we had our solar panels installed. They have just ticked over the 1MWh mark. The average British house uses about 10kWh a day. By our estimates, our house uses 8.5kWh - thanks to LED lighting, a new TV, and efficient computers. Basically, at this point in the year we're already generating more energy than we use and have, on average, completely offset…
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Currently, I have four ways to monitor the total power generated by my solar panels. Check the meter. This is the most accurate way - but it is located inside a cupboard. Read the total from the Fronius API. Unfortunately, this rounds off to the nearest kWh, so isn't brilliantly accurate. Use the Fronius API to check the power being generated every minute, then convert to kWh. That seems accurate, but show discrepancies when compared with... Solar.web takes a reading every…
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I've only had my solar panels for a few weeks, but I'm already trying to hook them up to the Internet of Things. I'm using the Fronius DataManager card. The API is fairly well documented - but you should be aware that it offers no authentication! The API is Read-Only - but I would still recommend against opening up your firewall to allow unfettered access. Aim I want to draw a (static) graph of my day's energy generation - suitable for sharing on social media. I've released the PHP code…
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