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Solar and Battery Storage are they viable ?

Does what it says on the tin
JohnB
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Re: Solar and Battery Storage are they viable ?

#490345

Postby JohnB » March 30th, 2022, 3:01 pm

The problem with investing now in a system to last 20+ years is you don't know what electricity prices will be peak and off-peak in future. If there is grid-scale energy storage the difference could almost vanish, if not prices could get very low on a windy day. You can be sure that the cost of solar systems will gradually fall as panels get cheaper, though labour, scaffolding will always be a large proportion. But I bet battery storage systems will get a lot cheaper, but it will still be better getting an electric car that can power your house as a by-product.

I think solar is mature enough to buy, batteries are not

Itsallaguess
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Re: Solar and Battery Storage are they viable ?

#490358

Postby Itsallaguess » March 30th, 2022, 3:39 pm

scotview wrote:
How do you get several quotes on a reply post, I've even seen quotes from different folkies on a reply post.


There's a couple of videos I've created to help with posting quotes on the following thread, which might be worth a look for you -

Videos to help with quoting other posters correctly -

https://www.lemonfool.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=22151

The videos are easier to follow in full-screen mode..

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

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Re: Solar and Battery Storage are they viable ?

#490400

Postby Ma1co1m » March 30th, 2022, 5:28 pm

funduffer, I'm confused by your numbers.

If you reckon to generate 3700 units and export 2/3 of them that's 2442 units paid at 4p each. Which I make to be about £100 per year so in 8 years you will be nowhere near your outlay. Am I missing something ?

ma1co1m

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Re: Solar and Battery Storage are they viable ?

#490402

Postby Ma1co1m » March 30th, 2022, 5:44 pm

D'oh! Your calculation will include saving with the third of your generaton that you're using yourself for free.

Ignore me. Not thinking straight.. :o :(

ma1co1m

88V8
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Re: Solar and Battery Storage are they viable ?

#490432

Postby 88V8 » March 30th, 2022, 8:14 pm

scrumpyjack wrote:
88V8 wrote:
scotview wrote:We are looking at installing solar and/or battery storage. I have tried to assess real payback.

If one is looking at payback periods with a cold financial eye, one must deduct the income that one could have earned by investing the capital elsewhere.
I would say at the moment, 5% would be a yardstick.

I would love to know where I can get 5% pa risk free, RPI indexed for 25 years! Marcus pay 0.7% gross, taxable, not indexed in any way.

Various IT's have a 5% yield.
And some Fixed Interest.

Inflation protected, RPI-linked, if you find that, let us know :)

But in terms of payback one must reckon off the achievable investment income, otherwise one is just kidding oneself.
It is said one must never fall in love with a share... or a solar panel.

V8

scrumpyjack
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Re: Solar and Battery Storage are they viable ?

#490436

Postby scrumpyjack » March 30th, 2022, 8:25 pm

My solar panel FIT is index linked to RPI for 25 years from the start in 2011 :D
Sadly that deal was pulled some years ago.

Hallucigenia
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Re: Solar and Battery Storage are they viable ?

#490439

Postby Hallucigenia » March 30th, 2022, 8:35 pm

JohnB wrote:But I bet battery storage systems will get a lot cheaper, but it will still be better getting an electric car that can power your house as a by-product.


Arguably batteries are now as cheap as they'll be for the next 5-10 years, given the huge demand for batteries and a lithium supply that will struggle to keep up - you do realise that the price of lithium carbonate has gone up over 8-fold in the last 15 months?

Will battery technology improve? Yes - but that doesn't mean batteries "will get a lot cheaper".

And in the specific case of someone in NE Scotland where there will be 10's of GW's of wind coming onshore in the near future, making a bet on variability is probably no bad thing.

scotview
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Re: Solar and Battery Storage are they viable ?

#490441

Postby scotview » March 30th, 2022, 8:57 pm

Hallucigenia wrote:
And in the specific case of someone in NE Scotland where there will be 10's of GW's of wind coming onshore in the near future, making a bet on variability is probably no bad thing.


Yip, that seems to be a one way bet.

An even better outcome would be for VW to configure our ID3 to capture 4 hours of night storage at a charge rate of 7kW to the car's 48 kWh battery. Then allow us to shove back nearly 30 kWh to the house the next day, or, in the event of a power cut keep our gas central heating going for 3 or 4 weeks, now thats what I'm talkin' about.

scotview
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Re: Solar and Battery Storage are they viable ?

#490452

Postby scotview » March 30th, 2022, 9:44 pm

Just a wee note to thank everyone for providing such interesting feedback. Food for thought on my part and just shows how valuable a resource TLF is.

Again, many thanks. Any additional comments or observations would be very welcome.

tsr2
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Re: Solar and Battery Storage are they viable ?

#492464

Postby tsr2 » April 7th, 2022, 12:25 pm

An alternative is to buy a share in a wind farm via Ripple Energy. I think it's generally cheaper than solar panels. You have to transfer your electricity supply to a partner company. There is only 1 partner company at the moment, but there should be 4 by the time the latest wind farm comes on line. For anyone who may move in the short or medium term it has the advantage that you can take the benefit with you.
You have to buy in when the shares are on offer. The current offer, for a wind farm scheduled to start operation in November, IIRC, closes in early May.

csearle
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Re: Solar and Battery Storage are they viable ?

#492815

Postby csearle » April 8th, 2022, 3:25 pm

I too would vote for wind and batteries (assuming your situation rather I realise).

https://www.checkatrade.com/blog/cost-g ... bine-cost/

Chris

Hallucigenia
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Re: Solar and Battery Storage are they viable ?

#502773

Postby Hallucigenia » May 25th, 2022, 3:42 pm

Hallucigenia wrote:
scotview wrote:Poor generation December through February here in NE Scotland when needed most.


there's a good argument that these days it's a lot more efficient to buy in "professional" offshore wind than messing about with a domestic setup.

scotview wrote:Off-peak tariffs in NE Scotland might even fall drastically in the future.


Quite - some kind of localised pricing feels like it's inevitable, although when it happens is another matter. Hopefully we'll get some clarity in the new energy security strategy which was due out this week but apparently has been held up by Carrie the PM wanting to make promises that Sunak doesn't want to pay for. And as and when it happens then that should kibosh the economics up your way of generating electricity yourself.


And sure enough "locational" pricing has now broken cover, see eg
https://es.catapult.org.uk/news/locatio ... save-30bn/
https://www.nationalgrideso.com/news/ne ... affordable
One model is zonal pricing, where it's done by 7 regions of which "the Highlands" would be one, another option is a more granular "nodal" approach where eg Speyside, Deeside, the Great Glen and up around Lairg would all have separate pricing.
Image

Bminusrob
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Re: Solar and Battery Storage are they viable ?

#503055

Postby Bminusrob » May 26th, 2022, 7:35 pm

As a slightly off-topic idea, I have been told about these devices:

https://lavo.com.au/lavo-hydrogen-battery/

It is an Australian company, which makes the device which stores solar generated power as hydrogen, then converts back from hydrogen to electricity when power is needed and the sun isn't shining. It will store up to 40kW, so quite a bit more than battery solutions.

I wonder if this may become a source of hydrogen for things like hydrogen powered cars.

I am told they have a full order book for the next 18 months.

Hallucigenia
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Re: Solar and Battery Storage are they viable ?

#503092

Postby Hallucigenia » May 26th, 2022, 11:59 pm

Bminusrob wrote:
It is an Australian company, which makes the device which stores solar generated power as hydrogen, then converts back from hydrogen to electricity when power is needed and the sun isn't shining. It will store up to 40kW, so quite a bit more than battery solutions.

I wonder if this may become a source of hydrogen for things like hydrogen powered cars.


It stores about as much as three Tesla Powerwalls (big lithium batteries) - but costs as much as three Tesla Powerwalls too. They're pushing the idea that it lasts longer than batteries - I guess we'll have to see, and also we don't know how technology will improve in coming decades.

The real problem with anything that uses hydrogen is the lack of efficiency compared to batteries - you lose about half of what you put in. Now that may not be such a problem if you're in a sunny country as solar panels are relatively cheap, but it becomes more of an issue if your input energy comes from another source. That applies to the Lavo system and to hydrogen cars - which is why hydrogen cars are not going to become a mainstream thing. They'll have niches, but the 90% efficiency of battery cars will always beat the 50% efficiency of hydrogen cars, aside from the fact you don't need to buy a £20k Lavo unit to charge a battery car.

We'll see. There will be uses for a Lavo but I doubt they will be mainstream in the UK - if you're looking into the future you also have to compare what's happening with batteries, for instance the proponents of iron-air batteries are claiming they will cost 10% of the cost of lithium batteries (that's for the battery bit, obviously the gubbins needed to turn a bare battery into a retail unit will cost about the same in each case)

jaizan
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Re: Solar and Battery Storage are they viable ?

#503644

Postby jaizan » May 29th, 2022, 5:55 pm

I briefly looked into the Tesla Powerwall a couple of years ago.

The battery was guaranteed for a certain minimum energy storage. If it lasted only to the end of that guarantee period and I somehow managed to charge it with totally free electric and used it to power my house, I would not get payback. So paying for the electric, it would be even worse.

The battery had to last far longer than the guarantee period to be financially viable. I suppose I ought to revisit this at current electricity prices.

Now, if I install solar, apparently I can sell electricity back to the grid at 4p/kWh. Which is painful when I pay about 32p per kWh. There is only so much of my electricity use that can be moved to when the sun shines. Hence a battery is needed to make solar viable, but the batteries themselves didn't look viable. So I muddle on without either.

Mike4
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Re: Solar and Battery Storage are they viable ?

#503680

Postby Mike4 » May 29th, 2022, 9:53 pm

jaizan wrote:
The battery had to last far longer than the guarantee period to be financially viable. I suppose I ought to revisit this at current electricity prices..


It probably would. LiFePO4 cells seem to be good for many thousands of cycles provided they are not overcharged, which the software should prevent.

You are unlikely to cycle yours more than 365 times a year.....

MrFoolish
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Re: Solar and Battery Storage are they viable ?

#504097

Postby MrFoolish » May 31st, 2022, 10:00 pm

Aren't solar cells getting cheaper and more efficient as the technology advances? If so, maybe it's best not to jump in right now. I don't know how you'd judge it though.

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Re: Solar and Battery Storage are they viable ?

#504130

Postby Wuffle » June 1st, 2022, 6:19 am

The subject of statistical reliability doesn't just cover wind and sunshine.
Electric cars are soon to be crashed with relentlessly increasing regularity, so providing a source of domestic cells for time shifting electricity usage.
Steptoe and son will be on the case double quick as the opportunity to resell questionable catalytic converters goes off a cliff at a similarly accelerative rate.

W.

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Re: Solar and Battery Storage are they viable ?

#504870

Postby funduffer » June 4th, 2022, 3:15 pm

jaizan wrote:I briefly looked into the Tesla Powerwall a couple of years ago.

The battery was guaranteed for a certain minimum energy storage. If it lasted only to the end of that guarantee period and I somehow managed to charge it with totally free electric and used it to power my house, I would not get payback. So paying for the electric, it would be even worse.

The battery had to last far longer than the guarantee period to be financially viable. I suppose I ought to revisit this at current electricity prices.

Now, if I install solar, apparently I can sell electricity back to the grid at 4p/kWh. Which is painful when I pay about 32p per kWh. There is only so much of my electricity use that can be moved to when the sun shines. Hence a battery is needed to make solar viable, but the batteries themselves didn't look viable. So I muddle on without either.

The answer is to get a mobile battery, i.e.an EV, not a static battery.

I have solar panels and an EV: 13 panels (4.225kWp) cost £4k and generate approx 3600 kWh per year. The EV is a 64kW Kia e-Niro and cost roughly £33k (new). If I used all my solar energy for charging the EV, that would be roughly 14k miles per year - far more than I actually drive in a year.

I have an EV electricity tariff which allows you to charge the EV battery for roughly the same price per unit at night as you receive exporting solar power. Currently I get 5.5p per unit from Scottish Power for exported solar, and pay 5p per unit for overnight electricity from Octopus. (NB prices are changing rapidly at the moment! However, I do think generally that the solar export price you receive will stay roughly comparable to overnight electricity tariff prices)

This all means you can use the national grid as a storage device for your solar power, provided you are prepared to use that power at night to charge your car. You are then effectively using your solar solar power for mobility rather than running household appliances or heating. Exporting solar power is then not a concern as you can use it at anytime for driving.

Of course there is the capital cost of solar panels, and even more expensive....the cost of the EV.

It works for me though.

I am waiting for the day when I can also use the EV battery to power the house during the day, then a house static battery would be of virtually no value at all!.


FD

jaizan
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Re: Solar and Battery Storage are they viable ?

#504967

Postby jaizan » June 5th, 2022, 11:13 am

funduffer wrote:The answer is to get a mobile battery, i.e.an EV, not a static battery.

I have solar panels and an EV: 13 panels (4.225kWp) cost £4k and generate approx 3600 kWh per year. The EV is a 64kW Kia e-Niro and cost roughly £33k (new). If I used all my solar energy for charging the EV, that would be roughly 14k miles per year - far more than I actually drive in a year.


That wouldn't work for me. I typically do under 4000 miles per year and in that 4000 miles, there are some long trips which may be beyond the range of some EVs.

My annual spend on fuel is about £550 (adjusted to today's fuel price)
DIY servicing, tyres plus MOT just over £300
Depreciation about £250 per year (this is the benefit of running a carefully selected 15 year old car, purchased when 10 years old)

So we're talking £1100 per year, plus tax & insurance.

If I spent £33k on a new electric car and we apply a traditional depreciation rate, it might lose 50% of it's value in 3 years, so £5500 per year.
Now I understand that might be a rather pessimistic depreciation rate, when second hand car values are holding up rather well at the moment.
However, whatever we choose, it will be far in excess of my costs.

Meanwhile, the £33k can be parked in some stock, where the dividend more than covers my £1100 per year.

So the solar panels and EV would be a lifestyle choice & certainly not a money saver.


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