Going Green

[BroadAmbition]

 

Right that's us.

I have just about got our humble hovel as green as I can.  We have a full (Back) roof of solar panels that I bought and had installed about seven years ago now.  They have been a great success at reducing our electric bills, we had to change the way we consumed electric.  Since then all the power hungry appliances only get used during daylight hours.  Then I progressively changed the whole house over to LED lighting, even the garage and outside lighting.  There are still three fluorescent lights up in the loft annoying the life out of me.  I have two replacement LED strip lights ready to swop over, snag is I can't as MrsG's late Mums house stuff is in the way and it will stay that way till her Brother gets his backside over from Germany so they can sort it all out, under the present Covid restrictions that's unlikely in the near foreseeable.  However we don't go up the loft that much

The feed tariff we enjoyed over the past six years has easily covered the cost of installation of the system, so much so that it is now paying for our electric and gas consumption combined. Bargain.

However the system could be more efficient with storage batteries. At present when the roof is generating and we have minimal consumption the excess electric is fed back into the national grid.  January this year the inverter went t1ts up, a straight replacement was £700 - ouch,  but a hybrid version capable of charging batteries was £1'500 - Bigger ouch

We got covid lockdown out of t road, started earning again between us and the hybrid inverter was duly ordered and installed. All this did was successfully recommence generating saving us using electric from t grid and turning the digital meter for the feed in tariff once more

More saving up and a pair of Lithium storage batteries last week were installed at last.  This means that any spare generating capacity - as in right at this moment - instead of going back into the grid is going into our storage batteries.  Then during poor light and / or night time the batteries supply the house instead of the national grid 

We are now in a situation whereby March / April right through to September / October we should not encounter any electric bill whatsoever - Eureka moment.  (I can't do owt about the standing charge infuriatingly) the rest of the year the electric usage will be minimal, again the feed in tariff will easily take care of that along with gas consumption.

I have been told to monitor the system via an APP which I will try to install on my phone this weekend.  If the two storage batteries are getting fully charged with plenty of daytime sunshine available on any given day then I need to install a third storage battery.  The idea being the more is stored the better chance of making it thorough the night or low light levels with taking owt out of t national grid

The next issue I want to address in the future is that I personally think that what with all the nationwide expansion of house building, electric cars and the like plus no new power stations coming on line anytime soon that it won't bee too long before the system can't supply demand and we will be back to power cuts

Well I potentially have an answer for this, a small whisper quiet diesel generator say 4kva via a change over switch by our incoming electric supply (Don't want to go back charging the grid) then with that and our roof / batteries, we will be immune form power cuts.  Cost of red diesel for the generator? - Currently hereabouts 50p per Ltr

Griff

[MauriceMynah]

I was lead to believe that generators had to use diesel where full duty had been paid. I'd check up on that if I were you.

 

[ChrisB]

I think you can use red for backup generators.

[BroadAmbition]

That is what I thought. I do have a portable 2kva petrol generator For site work. It hardly gets used  it must be 10 years old now and hasn’t done more than about 100 odd hours 

Griff

[BroadAmbition]

Yep, just been online and had a search around - It is indeed legal for back up generators to use red diesel - Happy days

Griff