Solar for Beginners [ask your questions here]

I've our Huawei inverter outside (different brand than yours). If it's IP66 (I think that's the standard) it's outdoor rated. Ours has no covering to protect it, it's just bolted to the wall. Backs onto the fuseboard so easy install. Doesn't look very pretty but it's beside a car charger, so that's not pretty either. I put it higher up so less risk of damage.

Only other place we could put it was a small unventilated attic that gets like an oven in summer. But loads of people have them in attics. Some here with them in hot attics have fans set to come on to cool them when attic temp / inverter temp gets too high.

One issue with that is the EV charger is wired from the meter so I guess that would show any EV power as an export if I took the CT from the consumer unit.

Hopefully not a stupid question...

Is it possible or silly to install a battery without panels to charge at night time rate and discharge during the day? Obviously the intention would be to add panels at a later date.

It's possible and it's not silly. And most certainly not a stupid question. That's exactly what a Tesla Powerwall system does. It is independent of having a PV system or not.

If it is a financially wise decision depends very much on how much you are paying for the system, the difference between day and night rate, how much electricity you use, etc.

At this very moment (only 30 minutes from night rate), my house is still fully running (including heating) on my battery which is fully powered from night rate and from solar PV.

Thanks i thought I was a bit mad thinking about it.

We are currently saving for solar pv and not sure if we should go for a small system with what we have now and add to it later or keep saving for a bigger system or do something like a battery now and panels later.

Does a battery still make sense with the FIT in place? I have a 58kwh battery sitting in my driveway which is perfectly capable of providing my daytime power if I could utilise it! It seems mad to fork out an extra 3 grand for another battery!

Can anyone help, I'm looking for an electrician to help with a diy pv install. Also an NC 6 form. North Kildare area. Thanks for the help

No not really. Particularly not if you get an installer to do it for you and they use pre made battery packs. There's still some merit in it, if you make your own battery and install it yourself if you have high day use and are on a day/night meter, with possibly no smart meter for years

And yes, V2H / V2G is the holy grail. Charge the car at night cheaply and cleanly from mostly wind and during the day from sun and then provide power to your house when electricity is dirty and expensive. Even sell it back to the grid. Unfortunately affordable solutions are still years away and most EVs can not do bi-directional charging. That said, I implemented a rudimentary V2H system myself this week, where I plug in the high voltage battery from my EV conversion into my solar PV inverter, which then thinks there is electricity coming in from solar, so it immediately starts powering my house 😁

That's very interesting! I've been thinking of getting a V2L cable for my Ioniq5 and wiring it to a "generator" switch. It can supply 3.2kw and my average day rate use is less than a kw! The cooker is probably the only thing that would cause it to exceed 3.2kw but even if it does it should trip! The big drawback is I lose power during the switchover so all the clocks have to be reset! Still very handy for, say, power cuts if we start getting them. But it'd be great if there was some way for it to act as a PV array with no switchover and the grid handling any surges in excess of the V2L limit.

Sorry redmagic, quoted the wrong post!

I don't know much about yours but I'd suggest do what's needed now and not worry about the future. You can probably get wireless to substitute for a cat cable if it was needed.

Sorry I must have misunderstood a previous post where in order to monitor what was being used or uploaded to the grid it was necessary to have a connection back to the meter box, initially I thought that could be done at the consumer unit. I’m hoping to connect my battery and solar into the utility room consumer unit and then in a year or so set up the ev charger off the garage which has a second consumer unit running the heat pump. My concern was based on a few posts yesterday that the system wouldn’t know what was going where once the ev charged was connected.

@Jonathan - "It also has the benefit of not being able to empty my house battery into the EV"

How is that a benefit? Sometimes it's a benefit to be able to charge the car from the battery. Particularly on a good sunny day, when I know the car is going to move in a while and I can charge it at full 7.4kW whack for a few hours, half from the sun and half from battery, as I know the battery will be full again before evening