Dear all,
First of all, please let me wish you all a merry Christmas and an excellent festive end-of-year celebration. I would also like to express my sincere thank you to all of you (too many to thank them all) who have been patiently answering my questions for over 18 months.
I came to this website around Summer 2022 because I started to lose faith in the installers I met. I had a clear idea of what I wanted to achieve and many of them tried to convince me it was a bad idea, (see my original diagrams attached). I had done some evaluations of my needs and set clear requirements in terms of storage charge/discharge, wanting to keep my FiT yet use my existing PV array from 2016 to load new batteries along side the new PV.
It has been a long and exhausting journey. I started to contact installers in April 2022 and thought it would be straightforward.
I will not name any companies or people because I understand they have their objectives and interests first and no damage was made apart of wasting my precious time. I do not like their attitude but this could be the topic for another post. This said one company REST were honest upfront and told me that they would not achieve my requirements with the material they sell. I even paid 25% deposit to a company whom I thought understood my requirements but after 6 months of arguments, they ended up saying they could not meet them and gave me my money back (I did have to ring HIES though). At that point, I thought why? why is my project so difficult yet forums like this one helped me to understand it was not my requirements which was the problem but my project was not the typical one either.
Furthermore, as time went, prices dropped and I ended up meeting a company that has been excellent from the beginning til the end and now I have an even better system that I would have had, had that other company convinced me they were right.
So what did I get?
My requirements first:
Because of the 12 months struggle with so called professionals/expert and what I have been learning along the way, I decided to get even more technical and design it myself. I have found good documentation and a breakthrough was to learn about Victron ESS. It has exactly the "box" I wanted. The box, as I called it, was to get the new panels, the DC coupled batteries and an AC input from my existing system. I tried to get Victron and Fogstar batteries.
I contacted 4 installers of Victron brands and despite compromises on the panels (they only offered smaller panels) or the batteries, I never received any quotes from any of them despite promises. This was last August and September. I ended up throwing a bottle at the sea on a social media platform and 3 companies were interested. 1 never heard back, 1 send me a quote that did not fit the bill and trying convenience me SolarEdge was the best ever thing that could exist (yet his design did not meet all my requirements) and a 3rd one who first responded to me. "This looks like a fun project".
That last company spent time to understand my requirements, agreed it made sense, however he was not keen on Victron because he never installed it but suggested a brand I never heard of which provided the same functionality than the Victron. The company took care of the applications and never asked for any money even for the G99 application and only a week before the installation only asked for 500GBP. The rest after commissioning. During that time, I was still looking for my large N-Type panels since I had the space. The company has been very patient because until the last minute, the brand changed (mainly because I could find what I wanted but then there was no availability in the UK.) until I discovered AIKO
PS: Due to the 10 000 limitation I had to split the post into two.
First of all, please let me wish you all a merry Christmas and an excellent festive end-of-year celebration. I would also like to express my sincere thank you to all of you (too many to thank them all) who have been patiently answering my questions for over 18 months.
I came to this website around Summer 2022 because I started to lose faith in the installers I met. I had a clear idea of what I wanted to achieve and many of them tried to convince me it was a bad idea, (see my original diagrams attached). I had done some evaluations of my needs and set clear requirements in terms of storage charge/discharge, wanting to keep my FiT yet use my existing PV array from 2016 to load new batteries along side the new PV.
It has been a long and exhausting journey. I started to contact installers in April 2022 and thought it would be straightforward.
I will not name any companies or people because I understand they have their objectives and interests first and no damage was made apart of wasting my precious time. I do not like their attitude but this could be the topic for another post. This said one company REST were honest upfront and told me that they would not achieve my requirements with the material they sell. I even paid 25% deposit to a company whom I thought understood my requirements but after 6 months of arguments, they ended up saying they could not meet them and gave me my money back (I did have to ring HIES though). At that point, I thought why? why is my project so difficult yet forums like this one helped me to understand it was not my requirements which was the problem but my project was not the typical one either.
Furthermore, as time went, prices dropped and I ended up meeting a company that has been excellent from the beginning til the end and now I have an even better system that I would have had, had that other company convinced me they were right.
So what did I get?
My requirements first:
- Make the best of the 3 surface areas (small roof, wall and flat roof to produce as much electricity as possible.
- Use of batteries (2x 5kWh with a provision to reach between 20 to 40kWh).
- Use both set of panels (existing and new) to charge the batteries. The choice between AC and DC coupled batteries will need to be technically justified.
- Charge and discharge of the batteries minimum 7kW
- Preserve the FiT. ie the generation of the 16 existing panels must continue to receive the full FiT as per the 2016 FiT agreement.
- Continue with the use of the PowerDiverter which heats the water when there is an excess of electricity generated.
- Possibility to charge the batteries from the grid as and when required either manually or following a programmed sequence.
- Priorities management: The system must be flexible and user friendly in order to set the priorities between the batteries charging, the hot water and EV charging in the future.
- Complete monitoring of the system free of charge for the life time of the installation.
- Possibility to sell the excess of electricity (This will depend on the DNO’s requirements and constraints).
- The equipments must have at least 10 years warranties.
- The batteries must be capable of sustaining the house’s electricity needs and this includes the electric underfloor heating.
- <10 years Return On Investment.
Because of the 12 months struggle with so called professionals/expert and what I have been learning along the way, I decided to get even more technical and design it myself. I have found good documentation and a breakthrough was to learn about Victron ESS. It has exactly the "box" I wanted. The box, as I called it, was to get the new panels, the DC coupled batteries and an AC input from my existing system. I tried to get Victron and Fogstar batteries.
I contacted 4 installers of Victron brands and despite compromises on the panels (they only offered smaller panels) or the batteries, I never received any quotes from any of them despite promises. This was last August and September. I ended up throwing a bottle at the sea on a social media platform and 3 companies were interested. 1 never heard back, 1 send me a quote that did not fit the bill and trying convenience me SolarEdge was the best ever thing that could exist (yet his design did not meet all my requirements) and a 3rd one who first responded to me. "This looks like a fun project".
That last company spent time to understand my requirements, agreed it made sense, however he was not keen on Victron because he never installed it but suggested a brand I never heard of which provided the same functionality than the Victron. The company took care of the applications and never asked for any money even for the G99 application and only a week before the installation only asked for 500GBP. The rest after commissioning. During that time, I was still looking for my large N-Type panels since I had the space. The company has been very patient because until the last minute, the brand changed (mainly because I could find what I wanted but then there was no availability in the UK.) until I discovered AIKO
PS: Due to the 10 000 limitation I had to split the post into two.
