PV Feed In Tariff

And yet you still get moaned at by the usual on Facebook when you say that smart meters are to be avoided.

Really good discussion here about tariffs/payback/battery vs no battery.

i have 5kw array with no battery , but i do have an EV which i can dump excess power into on sunny days.

One thing is very clear to me , i need to put in more panels :)

we will all see a bit of pain in energy prices this winter and probably into winter 23 with the way we buy gas on the markets.

if Russia even hints at playing silly buggers with gas this winter , expect a rough winter or two.

got an email from esb .

looks like there not paying from feb..

mine went in in May , so for now , will have to wait until i get the smart meter installed .

Did you send in the NC6 form? In fairness, everyone I know that did (myself included), did get an email from their utility provider confirming they got the info from the ESB that we are micro generators

Yeah, Energia haven't anything my way either

I’ve been reading and trying to get my head around the different opinions here. I’m in the following situation and would welcome peoples opinion. We have a Pv system on the way deposit paid. 7.4kwp, which I may boost to 8. 6kv hybrid inverter and 9.6kw dyness battery. Day night meter and no sign of a smart meter. We are currently using on average 18kw per day. I’ve measured it the last 2 weeks but home all the time currently but this will change when the kids go back to school and we go to work. I’m guessing the battery is costing me approx 4k with 500 extra for the hybrid investor.

if I charge and discharge the battery daily that’s 3,300 units. Say I charge at night at 0.15 and discharge at 0.30 that gives me a saving of €490 per year. So pay back within 10 years and not accounting for any gain from the panels and fit.

it seems very likely that rates will increase with a greater disparity between day and night and the heavily flagged potential of a peak time rate increase also coming in does the battery not still make sense or should I be contacting the installer and renegotiating. We used 13500kw last year but this will be less this year just for context. Electricity is the only energy utility and we don’t have an ev an unlikely to afford one about 5 years unless the current car dies beforehand. We run a heat pump hence the consumption level but no space heating required until about October.

id be delighted to get the various opinions as I’m melted trying to workout what to do even if I can get out of the battery should I?

Also can anyone tell me if when we get a smart meter we can be forced off day and night tariffs to smart tariffs? Which seem to be a complete rip off.

I feel your dilemma.

Because it's the future and people don't know what will happen with rates etc, I don't think there's a right answer there that someone can definitively tell you the absolutely best course of action. That said, I think a good way in looking at it is.....no matter what you pick, you'll be saving some money and it will pay for itself in as you say 10 years. One path might not save as much as the other path, but in either scenario you'll come out ahead of someone who doesn't install solar - and that's the way I'd look at it.

Personally, I'd go for the battery. It gives you options that you don't have. Not 100% sure that I'd go for a 10kwhr one, but to be fair, the larger batteries are typically cheaper, and if you can cycle it.....you can pay it back quicker.

The thing that still attracts me to the battery path is that those "peak tariffs" look pretty nasty. Having even a small battery to ride through those 2 hrs or so of peak time is a good thing. Sure, the FIT of €0.14 helps offset it, but if the peak tariff is €0.45 or something, that's going to sting. I also like the battery purely for bill management. We didn't mention this before, but it's in winter that we have these mental bills. Unfortunately solar is pants then, so a battery which you can charge offpeak and use during the day helps reduce the bills. Yes, the "FIT money" is great and all in June/July/etc, but that money is long spent by the middle of Jan - LOL!

As @bullit_dodger says "The thing that still attracts me to the battery path is that those "peak tariffs" look pretty nasty."

If going with a hybrid/battery system, just be sure you know what output it can feed in and that anything over that will still come from the gird in winter (solar may provide extra in summer).

I discovered that miy hybrid/battery will only feed in 2.4kW, so running kettles, ovens etc still draw anything over that from the grid.

Bingo - the discharge rate for the battery is often overlooked! My final two options were similar on price but the one that won out had a 5kW discharge and the other was 2.5kW - both were 5kWh~ batteries. I went with the one that had a 5kW discharge. The 2.5kW one wouldn't even cover the power draw of a kettle!

I think you are being over optimistic and simplistic with the 3300 units.

Unless you are going to implement some automation with weather forecasting and be constantly messing with settings you wont hit those figures.

Some examples off the top of my head (but not exhaustive)...

Charging at night in the winter is fine, you know Solar is going to be low so charge away but what about the summer and shoulder months where the Solar is alot more intermittent/unpredicatable. You might decide that tomorrow is sunny so you dont charge the battery overnight but then its not as sunny as you thought and you dont get the full charge/discharge to occur.

There are losses with charging and discharging the battery which will be 10-20% depending on your system. Not insignificant when you work it out (see my worked example a few page back)

There will be days in the summer where you have 10kWh in the battery at 8pm.... you wont burn all that off by 8am the following morning.

You probably take a few weeks holidays or weekends away etc during the year.... no cycle those days either.

You've used 30c/15c as your figures.... there is better in the market than that. I gave a worked example a few pages back. Yes, prices are going up and we cant guess the future but you can get better. There is even a fixed rate you can signup to to guarantee your rate for the next 12 months by which time the current volatility might have subsided.

My advice, if your head is still melted from it, is to leave the battery out and put some of that money into more panels. You can always put a battery in later and it doesn't involve any scaffolding or going up in the roof. Just leave room around the inverter to mount the batteries.

If you sink the money into it now its sunk money as its harder to rip it out and deal with selling it than put one in later.... particularly since there is no grant involved for it anymore and FiT will be paying for your excess.

No .... actually a Solax X1 5kW Hybrid and 5.8kWh Solax battery. The battery voltage is 120V and the inverter will pass 20A, hence the 2.4kW. Not sure if adding a second battery would increase the voltage or just the kWh in my case.

Only learnt after the purchase, so hoping others dont ignore this as part of their decision making process.

Huh! 🤣

I think I deciphered it!