Solar panels on Listed Buildings?

[Penners]

returned 11% on capital invested. Result

That's certainly an extremely attractive return on investment.

Speaking as one who is well past his earning prime (and a few other primes too), the one thing about this whole idea that worries me is the irreversability of it all. If one is supplementing one's state pension (thank you very much to all of you still paying NI - keep it up!) with income from a meagre pot of capital, it's a bit scary to lock up a major chunk of that capital into some pieces of technology. No matter how attractive the potential income (or saving) from that technology, the fact remains that the capital invested in it is gone forever - completely unreliquidateable (my own word - feel free to use it) in the event that some terrible reversal of fortune were to make it necessary to realise one's assets.

 

[biffvernon]

I guess it depends what the alternative is. Having one's capital in the bank - some bits on a computer system, a promise from the bank backed by the law of the land, but subject to inflation, low interest rates and, Heavens forfend, complete loss when the house of cards that is the global financial system falls over, then hardware on one's roof looks comparatively attractive.

 

[biffvernon]

completely unreliquidateable (my own word - feel free to use it).

I'm inclined to think the second 'e' should be dropped, as in 'datable'.

 

[Penners]

Be fair. My word, my spelling! :wink:

 

[skier-hughes]

We were going to have solar pv installed this year, but with Jo's acident and resulting big blip in income, the idea was put off, in the hope we had the money to do it before the FIT's dropped, but with Biff's results I think I might look at ways of making this work, it certainly sounds a good investment.
I've been well chuffed with the Solar Tubes for hot water.

One question, if there is a power cut, does the circuitry still allow you to use your own power being produced, or does it all turn off. Being so close to an urban conurbation we get regular power cuts when some idiot cuts a cable!

 

[AMc]

One question, if there is a power cut, does the circuitry still allow you to use your own power being produced, or does it all turn off. Being so close to an urban conurbation we get regular power cuts when some idiot cuts a cable!

If the mains goes down your system cuts out too so that the workers aren't risking electric shocks from small generators as they try and fix the problem.

 

[skier-hughes]

Thought I'd read that in the past for me

 

[Flyfisher]

One question, if there is a power cut, does the circuitry still allow you to use your own power being produced, or does it all turn off. Being so close to an urban conurbation we get regular power cuts when some idiot cuts a cable!

If the mains goes down your system cuts out too so that the workers aren't risking electric shocks from small generators as they try and fix the problem.

That may be true for a standard installation but it must be possible to arrange for the house system to be isolated from the grid during a power cut and then run on its own supply. Plenty of farms and small businesses have back-up generators to maintain electrical power during a grid power cut, so I presume the control systems must isolate the premises from the grid.

I've no idea what's involved or the costs but it would be worth asking the installers or a specialist back-up power company if this was a specific requirement.

 

[biffvernon]

I think that the answer to that is that it's not worth it for most domestic situations where lighting the candles for a couple of hours a year is probably good for the soul. It may be a different situation on a farm where the cows don't understand about not being milked and an uninterruptable power supply is worth a lot of investment.

 

[Flyfisher]

That's a fair point, and one I'd agree with for most domestic installations. I only mentioned it for completeness.

 

[AMc]

Not sure you need to light the candles if the sun is shining ?

A system like that would only be useful to cover the circumstance where you lost power at a point when you were generating enough PV electricity to cover your load. So a day time power cut when you're using less than about 3 units per hour otherwise you need a generator backup too. If you were trying to draw more power than you were generating you would cause a voltage drop which most electronics won't like one bit.

We get fairly regular power glitches and the odd cut. I bought some cheap Uninterrupted Power Supplies (UPS) to look after my desktop computer (1 unit), home cinema projector and Personal Video Recorder (1 unit) and at one point my broadband modem and router (since died). All devices which take exception to having the plug pulled unexpectedly. As a side benefit they include Automatic Voltage Regulation which flips to the battery when the supply voltage dips or more recently spikes protecting them to a degree from being zapped by the vagaries of my local power supply. My friendly electrician has seen problems recently with over voltage on rural supplies which is a new and more damaging problem then the under voltage "brown out" we're more used to seeing.

UPS...
http://www.ebuyer.com/search?page=1&sort=relevancy&limit=10&q=ups&filterpricebands=[0+TO+49.99]

 

[skier-hughes]

Biff, do you get a meter to show how much you are generating?
Working from home means we consume a fair bit of daytime electricity, I'm wondering if I could see how much I'm generating and whether I could then was the clothes and dishes during the day with free electricty rather than using the cheap economy 7 during the night.

 

[biffvernon]

Meters galore! There's one on the inverter but that's in the attic so I don't look at that very often. The important one is the generation meter in the meter cupboard. That's the one that the meter-man ran reads so it's the one that counts. We also have the ordinary import meter that toggles between cheap rate and standard as we are on economy 7. Then we have two Owls. They are little meters that sit in an easy to read place where they can be looked at by all and anybody all day. One reads the generation and the other reads the current flowing into or out of the house. This can be a little confusing because it doesn't tell you which way the current is flowing. A little common sense needs to be applied to realise whether you are generating more than you are using or using more than you are generating at any given moment. The Owls work by an inductive sensor on the cable and a radio link. They are not absolutely accurate so can't be used for billing purposes but are good enough for real time viewing of what's going on.

 

[skier-hughes]

Another step closer.
If I'm right the meter that shows how much you generate is next to the meter. I'd be quicker going up into the attic
We can't use Owls as our meter cupboard is 100m away in a small brick cupboard on the farmyard!!
Cheers for that.

 

[MdB]

We can't use Owls as our meter cupboard is 100m away

It doesn't "have" to be in the meter cupboard. It just needs to clip onto the cable which the current is going through. The meter cupboard is the usual place as it is generally the easiest point at which you can clip onto the live conductor but it can be elsewhere.

 

[AMc]

Another step closer.
If I'm right the meter that shows how much you generate is next to the meter. I'd be quicker going up into the attic
We can't use Owls as our meter cupboard is 100m away in a small brick cupboard on the farmyard!!
Cheers for that.

AIUI The normal arrangement is the meter for FIT payments is attached to the inverter that converts DC from the panels into AC for the mains - near the panels themselves. The supplier then assumes half the output is exported and adjusts the FIT payment without measuring how much is actually exported.

It sounds like Bif has a "proper" export meter rather than his supplier "deeming" the export?

I have a Current Cost Envi power monitor which has an optional computer interface for data logging. That is USB over ethernet (god knows why) but that does mean you can connect the sensor wirelessly to the display and the display over a long ethernet cable to a PC elsewhere. I ran this for a while to get an understanding of what my heat pump was up to but having a PC on 24/7 running slightly wobbly software meant I stopped it a while ago.

 

[skier-hughes]

I was told it had to connect to the incoming cable pre meter and then you had a remote wireless device to tell you what was happening, and our distance from the meter would make it impossible to have the wireless connection. Could I clip one to the incoming cable from the meter which comes into the house and up to the board in the house?

 

[AMc]

I was told it had to connect to the incoming cable pre meter and then you had a remote wireless device to tell you what was happening, and our distance from the meter would make it impossible to have the wireless connection. Could I clip one to the incoming cable from the meter which comes into the house and up to the board in the house?

IIRC it should be connected post meter as that's the point at which you're paying. If there are other feeds going elsewhere then obviously you won't get readings for them but one end of that cable will be the same as the other.

My Current Cost is reading a 3 phase power feed - hopefully you can spot the 3 red clamp sensors underneath the main meter feeding the black box which transmits to the display unit



My local library rents out the OWL units - might be worth finding out if you can do the same and have a play without forking out. You can often get them when you switch electricity supplier or discounted from them at any time.

 

[biffvernon]

It sounds like Biff has a "proper" export meter rather than his supplier "deeming" the export?

No. I've just an old-fashioned one and 50%of generation is deemed. The generation meter has to be anywhere between the inverter and the first place the electricity is used. Mine's in the meter cupboard just for convenience.

 

[Flyfisher]

I was told it had to connect to the incoming cable pre meter and then you had a remote wireless device to tell you what was happening, and our distance from the meter would make it impossible to have the wireless connection. Could I clip one to the incoming cable from the meter which comes into the house and up to the board in the house?

I have an Electrisave wireless power monitor and the sensor has to be clipped around just one of the power conductors. The most convenient place to do this is near the meter because the 'tails' (short, thick wires) that connect between the supplier fuses and the meter are all single core cables, so the sensor just clips around one of them.

There's no technical reason to have the sensor close to the meter and it should work perfectly well where the cables enter the house, or anywhere else convenient, but there may be a physical problem if the two conductors are combined into a single cable.