Solar Panels

I understand that they weren't fluoros, I just mentioned them to show that if the right light is used, LED reliability can be fantastic.
Disappointing to hear about your bad experience though.

 

Has anyone gone off grid with solar panels and batteries? Anyone wanting to share their experience?

 

Since installing solar panels to date we have probably wiped off in average close to 40% off how electricity bill

 

Infinite Energy are a good supplier in Perth!

 

I have solar and battery, I am not "off grid" as we often don't generate enough solar to get us through the night if we have the aircons on all night and the oven running and dishwasher and stuff.

We just got a quarterly bill and we really smashed the power this qtr, I mean aircon none stop, pool pump 6 hours a day, dishwasher, oven, big power consumption, I don't think we could use more power if we tried.

Our bill was $177.

 

For our February bill, we were paid $340.45 .

 

Aren't you running batteries too?

 

Yep and we have two solar arrays.

One array is connected to our batteries but not connected to the grid. That means the batteries continue to charge when the grid is down. That is when one really needs the charging to occur.

The other panel is connected to the grid and is the system that generates the dollars for us. This array will shut down when the grid goes down..

We did NOT buy our setup for financial reasons. We did it for power reliability reasons.

Our house always has power whenever the grid goes down. So most of our electrical equipment still runs when this happens, including our security system and cameras, our fileserver, our effluent plant, our electric front gate, our electric garage doors, ...

 

So the first array, when the battery is full, what happens to any extra power?

If batteries were cheaper I would consider a second array and battery as we would rarely pull from the grid then but all things considered it's not financially viable at these prices, it would cost more than it would save me .

I have considered a second array but still only the one battery, I would need to upgrade to 3 phase power then though as you can only push 5KW per phase back to the grid.

 

Something to consider - If you have an ABN and work from home you can finance Solar assets and claim the gst and interest...

 

Firstly, a bit more information:

• The first array (connected to the batteries) is 9 x 250W solar panels (2¼ kW)
• The other array is 28 x 250W solar panels (7kW)

Most of the house is connected to the batteries which means we basically have a large UPS for those items. Items such as ovens, air-conditioners, fridges aren't (main fridge is).

The system is configured so that whenever the state of charge (SoC) drops below 80%, we buy power from the grid to raise the SoC . Also, on a Sunday night at 8pm, the system buys in grid power and takes the batteries up to 100% SoC. Both of these are aimed at prolonging the life of the batteries.

We have a large house with a lot of electronic gadgetry as well as a pool, effluent plant, etc. Our power consumption is around 30 kWh per day, with 19kWh coming from the grid, 6kWh from the batteries and 5kWh from the second array.

Now to answer your question. Based on the above, hopefully, you can see that it is unlikely that the batteries would be full when the sun is shining (they drop from 100% SoC due to usage overnight) but if this did happen, the power generated by the panels would be wasted.

I have just checked our last power bill from Origin. We buy power in at 21c per kWh (after applying discounts/rebates and incl GST) and sell it for 51c per kWh (until 2028).

I don't understand this business model. Why would any organisation buy a product at 51c and then sell it at 21c?

Even though we didn't buy panels/batteries for financial reasons, I could NOT ignore this discrepancy. The FIT payment is also tax free.

I read our inverters and meters nearly every day we are at home. I have over 2,400 days of readings, that is over 6½ years. We didn't have batteries in the early days but over the last 3 years, according to my calculations, the system has saved us an average of $3,850 per year in power bills (including refunds). About $10 per day.

We already had 3 phase power, mainly due to our ducted air-con units. We have two inverters connected to the second array and we push power generated by this array back into the grid using two of these phases.

 

I just checked my usage, we consume about 30KW per day also.

I only get 16.8c per KWH to the grid as I only started in Dec 2017 and the days of the amazing FIT's are long gone.

We have had the battery for 10 months now and we have used 6,202KWH which would put our average around 20KWH per day average but with it being hot at the moment we are pushed to about 30.

Of the 6,202 we have used, 917 of them have been from the Grid, I have pushed 1,123 to the grid in this time also.

If I had your FIT I would be making money