i appreciate these kind of videos... telling me how much energy a diy solar system does on the best day tells very little. but worst day info is great!
I live on my boat and am mostly solar powered although obviously i can run the engine or a generator if needed. The difference between a clear sunny summer day and the grey days of winter for me is on a spring/summer sunny day my batteries are fully charged by 11ish am but two grey days in a row in winter will have my batteries emptied as the solar can't keep up with demand, a couple of extra panels would probably fix the issue but i don't have the room for any more.
@@popuptoaster a larger battery may also help since it would have more reserve and could store more on the good days of winter for those series of gray days.
@@Omar-kw5ui I think worse, best and average on every month would be useful, especially in countries like the UK where we get unpredictable weather and usually a lot of rain and clouds. Looking at the system she's got, I think a larger battery would come in handy.
This makes one very aware of your usage and when you need to be more careful with it. We have solar in a caravan trailer and find that A) you can get by with surprisingly little electricity. B) even a small amount greatly improves quality of life. Abundance has made us needlessly wasteful. BTW - this is what made TH-cam so great in the beginning - before content became so… you know. Regular people passing on what they have learned. Good job.
Thanks for your comment 😊 Glad you’re enjoying the channel. Completely agree with you on the electricity side of things. For three years we had intermittent power from a generator as we could only afford to run it for a few hours a day. It’s amazing what you can get by with and what you just don’t need 😊
"Abundance has made us needlessly wasteful." - hit the nail on the head there - as a species having 'cheap' sources of fuel dug out of the ground or made in massive power plants means most folk don't care about where it comes from yet moan when prices start going up...
It effects your timing as well, i start and finish work early and in a normal house would often put the washing machine and dishwasher on as i left in the morning, now I rely on the solar on my boat I put them on when I get back from work early afternoon to use the excess power from the solar that would be wasted once the batteries are full.
Thanks for posting this very info-packed, illustrative video. Not too many videos out there that used your intuitive approach of providing a lot of answers and insight, well done!
I am in Australia and also have an Off Grid system with 10kw of panels, 6 Pylontech US3000 and a 8Kw MPP Pip 8048max inverter charger. Have had no issues with my system and has far less hardware compared to your system. Being winter now I only achieved 11kwh yesterday. Today should be a better day as I also want to charge an electric vehicle. Keep up your great work.
Rachael, thanks for this realistic UK view of solar production. This has been the video I've been looking for, a while now. I hope to set up something similar this year! I agree Victron is more expensive, although you get what you pay for. 😊👍
I ran Majority of our house off grid for five years and it worked brilliantly throughout the summer but winter was always gonna have its issues. One of my biggest mistake was to have lead acid batteries,but at the time of the installation it was my only option due to cost. I have now sold all my equipment and gone down the grid tie route which is more beneficial for us. You have an excellent system and l wish you all the best.
you could also have a smaller array to the west and the east so you can grab more solar coming in i did this as a test a few years ago and was surprised at just how much more it did to help another thing i did was try and stay away from ac appliances as much as possible and if they could be run from dc i ran them from dc with buck converters
@@purplemonkeydishwasher5269 yep .. I have a vlog on my channel ! A basic setup , cost me roughly £1000 .. I have 720 watts of solar which is equal to a 25amp charge powering a 24v motor with max load of 1.25kw. On power setting 2 ( 5 power settings in total ) the motor uses 22amps providing a top speed of 1.3mph . ( remains in float all day in the sun ) At setting 3, 28amp , 1.7mph ( uses a min of 3amp dependant on sun ) At the moment I'm only using led acid cranking batteries as this was a trial to see if this setup actually worked... Now that it does I'm currently saving for either semi traction or maybe full traction batteries..
Wow. I am so impressed with your off grid solar set up. Very professional. Far more impressive than my tiny 350w grid tie inverter and 330 single panel. Can't wait to look back at your journey and the kit you used. Well done you guys
Thank you for your comment 🙂 We are so pleased that you have enjoyed seeing our solar set up. We didn't have access to the grid so had to go all in! Hope you enjoy our other videos and if you have any questions just let us know 🙂👍
Matt Kirk - Think of your system like this: It's a "Starter Set" for Solar! It's just enough to learn from, but not too much, to make it difficult to try a Relocate it and Test it, in different Spots, or Orientations, like Adjusting the Angle of Slope, or East-West Angle!
@@robertweekley5926 I wanted to wait until I have enough for 5kw in panels but I might just start buying them a few at a time instead of waiting for the big set up. Moved to Romania in a rural village where we get constant power cuts so solar is a no-brainer.
Good explaination of UK weather with ref to solar. Good to see even with clouds you are still charging. I had always been told "they only charge when its sunny"...you proved that is wrong.
Thanks for the good explanation of what goes on during a (typical) day. Encouraging that solar energy was generated in winter and so for the summer months.
We are really pleased with how things are going so far this winter, and with the days getting longer now we are seeing a big improvement in how we are getting on. Hopefully we are through the worst! 🙂
Rachel. Just found your vid and so pleased. Great vid. I’m researching for our house and it’s actually really difficult to find genuine info like yours. Many don’t give you costs and true production unlike yours. It was fascinating to see your winter clear sky versus cloudy production - dropping to about 400kW I think. Have you considered a small wind turbine to help with production at night? Perhaps you could get a manufacturer to sponsor you so you can show installation, production & usage etc. This is something I’m considering but struggling to find ones for UK. Can’t wait to watch rest of vids 🙂
Thanks for your comment 😊 We are so pleased you found the content of the video helpful. Our next video (out tomorrow) shows a full summary of our winter data, including how much we used the generator for back up 😊 Hopefully that will be of help too 👍 We have looked into wind turbines but they’re a bit beyond our budget at the moment and finding one that is compatible with our Cerbo GX and batteries looks a bit complicated! Lots more research to be done there! 🙈
Thanks Rachael, that was a really interesting video. That is fantastic that you have gone off grid, best wishes to you and your family, oh yeah …and the planet says a big thank you too…😀
I've been off grid for 30 yrs and back then it was tuff. But with today's equipment it is so easy anyone can do it. These new inverters that are all in one is the ticket. I run 10 kw solar pannels and 50 kw in batteries which are two 48 volt forklift batteries. I'm always at 94 to 96% of battery voltage in the morning and never use a generator. I'm at float by 8:00 am. It works.
Thanks for sharing from Wyoming! It’s been hard to find realistic videos on solar in less ideal conditions. Off grid in a desert is not the same as seeing the sun 3 times a year 🤗
Really useful information, thanks. If I were in your place I would trim the tops of the trees behind and to the side of your panels. Depending on configuration, very little shadow on part of a panel can radically reduce output of the whole array.
Completely agree with you on this one and seeing as Fraser is a tree surgeon there really is no excuse! 😂 But we had a baby a few months ago and it’s just one of those jobs we haven’t got round to 😩
Not sure this is about shadow which is really about direct light. But on an overcast day photons come from every angle and there are areas that could be sky, but the panels are seeing blackness where the trees are. Subtle difference (and even more subtle gains!), but it's there to be had.
Don't ignore the possibility of low voltage DC. About 1KWh/day of my background load is from Internet bridge/wifi/fileserver/home automation all of which run on 12V DC. This is about 1/4 of my total electricity usage. I have 12V panels on my shed + 240 AH of batteries. The average load with everything connected is 40-50W which is more than the panels can provide in winter so I have a fake panel which is actually a mains PSU set to a low voltage and current limit. I am still exploring the settings but I want to set this to something that uses solar power in summer but does not allow the batteries to go flat in winter. Still a work in progress but I will let you know how it works out. This system provides power at battery voltage which is 12-15V, I was nervous about feeding this to 12V devices but so far have not had a problem.
I've considered similar, there must be a different scale of cost/ benefit and a tipping point from whether you can viably install a big enough system to avoid standing charges. Most of us will have a lot of long running low power stuff, quite distinct from high power short use stuff like cookers, kettles etc.
Doing something quite similar to yours, here. Not finished yet, either. When it is finished-ish, it's supposed to cut quite a junk from the power bill.
Hi, I just logged into your TH-cam site. I'll watch your site, them ask some questions, I have looked at stand alone power, solar panels as used for running field studies. Weather stations. There's also a vertical wind turbine. Take care
Thanks for the great video! Had solar install myself over past two years. It seems like you must have the panels facing east. I think having them south is best if possible in the future. Noticed with my own solar that they are worse in the winter because of their angle being not steep enough for a lower sun. So if you have too much energy in the summer but not enough in the winter, then having the angle more biased to a winter lower sun angle. I know easier said that done when it's the roof's angle, but if you had space to put some on the floor then an angle change in the winter would help.
Thanks so much for posting your Solar Setup info…fascinating to see the detail from the App thingy…have liked and subscribed and will continue to see how things go with you guys…many thanks for sharing…Brian
Utilizing a 5 KWp system, my daily Yield in January was from 15,8 KWh on the 30th down to a mere 188 Wh on the 2nd. Even extending to 7.1 KWp would not get me through. How low do You go through Winter? I would very much like to see a spreadsheet with Your daily yield. It seems like the shift in lattitude is taking its toll, I live at 57N. All the best to You from Denmark.
Is your array South facing? Quite impressed that you manage to keep your load consistently below 0.2kwh. That seems remarkably low. My tick over is around double that (I keep a large aquarium, so completely self inflicted). I'm in the East Midlands and have an East/West 4.5kwh array. The output in the winter months is truly terrible due to the azimuth angle. However, come end of February, I'm producing enough to cover majority usage and battery charge. The trick seems to be intelligent time usage of major appliances. They are the killers.
Thanks for your comment 😊 Our system is south east facing so not bad but not as south as we would have liked. All our appliances have a very good energy rating as we have bought them with off grid life in mind. We don’t run heating off of the system apart from a small radiator to keep the batteries warm. We have a wood burner and gas boiler 😊
@@The_OffGridFamily I can't grasp why off grid setups are often angled for maximum production for the whole year. My panels are nearly vertical, so as to maximise production during the winter. East west facing. During the summer they are really crap for energy production, but they are really crap for so many hours, my batteries are always fully charged. Why angle the panels to fill the batteries earlier in the morning during the summer? Increasing the energy you don't need in the summer, because you are not selling it to the grid and your batteries are full, at the cost of having even less in the winter is crazy.
Thanks for the video - I'm looking into doing something similar, albeit on a smaller scale (due to the space I have), so in the progress of starting to get my head round it all
Surely it would be possible to combine daylight times & historical weather data to produce a reasonably accurate map of the UK that you use with array size & orientation to predict output? Your video throws up some interesting cost/efficiency questions for the future - Off grid vs on grid, back up generators or using an EV to "buy in" a top up from a public charge point???
Thanks for your interesting video and info. We live in supposedly sunny South Africa and are totally off grid but also on a cloudy day are lucky if we get 10% of the rated power from our solar. I have had Solar for over 20 years now and must admit Victron are expensive but never had issues with mine. What is completely wrong with Solar panel conventional thinking is just using ones latitude angle for the panels. I have found it’s no good anything less than 45deg as in summer you get way more hours sun time than in winter and as you say when your batteries are full you can’t store more. On a slightly different note when I lived in Colchester UK I fitted my own solar water heater 45 years ago, everyone thought I was mad! Trouble was we couldn’t shower as it heated the water too hot 5 months of the year. What do you use for cooking and hot water? Cheers Frans
Great video as expected from your channel. As someone who's just starting that solar/wind journey this does raise the point that in order to run a standard 4/5 bedroom house with an EV charge point and air source heat pump, I'll probably need around 100x 350w panels to get through the winter off grid.
Thanks, really glad you enjoyed the video 😊 Since making this video we have been chatting a lot about where to go next in order to further consolidate our power in winter. We talked about a wind turbine, but there are issues connecting it to our system because of the Cerbo GX. We also talked about creating an array of panels on the ground designed specifically for winter, but when it’s grey it’s grey so that only goes part way to solving the problem. At the moment we are leaning towards another more cost efficient generator. We will always have one as a back up, even if our system can run all winter without it. It only takes something in the solar set up to go wrong and we would be in big trouble! 😊
@@The_OffGridFamily Wind turbines are a good option and can be incorporated into your Victron system very easily. The key is to get a turbine that has a customisable charge regime so that you can match the battery requirements exactly. You then feed the output of the turbine into your battery via a shunt that comes with a BMV700 battery monitor. The BMV reports this charge current to the Cerbo and the Cerbo does its magic!
I am interested in knowing if there are any studies comparing the degree of influence respectively of length of day (i.e. sunrise to sunset), angle of the sun and degree of cloud cover on the amount of PV generation. My observation on our system here in South Yorkshire (14 x 280W panels = 3.92 kW + Solis Inverter + 13.5 kWh Tesla Powerwall battery) is that the length of day is the predominant influence. December to February this year we generated around 300 kWh; June to August 2021 around 900 kWh. Overall: October to April we’ll get 1,000 kWh; between April and Ocotber it’s be 2,500 kWh. Pretty consistently year on year. At this time of year (mid-May), with clear blue skies all day, we can get up to 22kWh; with variable cloud (sunny intervals), that might be reduced to 10 to 17 kWh, whilst on a heavy overcast day we might get down to between 5 and 10 kWh for the day. So cloud cover is not insignificant. From these observations I’d say the order of influence is 1. Length of day 2. Cloud cover 3. Angle of sun. Even when the sun tucks down behind the trees on the West side of our garden, there can by reasonable generation simply from sunlight radiating in a blue sky above.
We are still using the generator, but we do use the tumble dryer pretty regularly and that luxury definitely drains us! In the last 30 days, 17% of our power has come from the generator. Most of that was during those grey December days and over Christmas when we were home more :)
@@The_OffGridFamily 17% is pretty good honestly Most people I know who live off grid full time are running a generator around 8 hours a day in December and January!
@@livingoffgridinscotland We still haven't boxed in the batteries so that radiator is still causing us problems too. (We have turned the temp down on it though as it was getting ridiculous!) We think that would help us reduce it further, but it's just one of those things we are yet to get round to... We are still battling the poly tunnel at the moment 😂
@@The_OffGridFamily we are obviously on forklift batteries which aren’t boxed in or heated, so that’s our biggest problem in winter as they struggle to take charge. Our neighbour has fancy off grid batteries inside his cabin but he still struggles 😂 and runs a generator every day. Hopefully I’ll be much more efficient next year when we go from 4 solar panels up to 36 panels, a wind turbine and a better generator
That sounds like a massive upgrade 🤩 Have you picked your wind turbine yet? This is something we would consider in the future but haven’t even started looking into it yet.
I'm amazed that during the day your house only draws 120w, with my fridge, cctv dvr, router and other usual sundry's I struggle to get my idle consumption under 350w, how do you do it?
One question i have repeatedly asked people I know with installations is what is their total annual percentage yield. For example, if you have a 3kw array that would be 3kwx24x365 = 26,280kw pa (if the sun is always shining 24/7 etc) but what exactly do they see pa. It's a simple question but no one seems to be able to give me a either of these figures, they prefer to hide it behind graphs and feed in tariffs etc. It's a simple equation that would make it really simple to calculate a theoretical pay back duration.
We aren’t massive fans of the graphs either 😂 We have a 7.1kw array so it would be 7.1kwx24x365= 32,196kw pa. However, because we are off grid when our batteries are full our PV production drops to just covering our load so the records don’t show the full potential of what we could generate if we had unlimited storage. We haven’t had the system in place for a year yet so don’t have a full years worth of data to share, but we will bear this in mind when we get to a year in June/July time as we are planning to make a video on it then 😊
Hi Ian, I'll attempt to answer your question. I have had my solar PV system for 10.5 years now. I have a 4.0kwp inverter, but I have additional panels so they 'overdrive' the inverter. The system generates around 5000 kwh pa. Because I installed the system in October 2011, I had a very favourable F.I.T. rate, but my system cost significantly more dosh at the time then the same would cost now. My payback was exactly 5.0 years & my IRR is forecast to be over 21% pa on the initial investment. Normal payback is around 7 - 10 years. If you wish to view the raw data, please feel free to go to the PVOutput.org website & then search for JohnnyK's PV. Hope this helps you a bit. Regards, JohnnyK.
@@The_OffGridFamily Great thanks for the reply, it makes much more sense now. Where we live we get a lot more sun than you but we're restricted to how many pane;s we can install before having to get very expensive planning consent. I wasn't going for batteries as we have AC and need to heat a lot of hot water so we will be able to use what we can produce in the day time easily so to my mind there's little point in storing any excess. Thanks again for the reply.
@@johnkay4701 Thanks for taking the time to reply, much appreciated. We live in SW France wit a lot more sunny days so hopefully we could expect a bit of a higher output. I've been hoping to get between 15-20% of stated output on average over the year (wishing for 25% but that might be stretching it a bit). I'm thinking of being cheeky and seeing if I could install three systems as we have 3 phase electricity ;-)
yes helpful to know worse winter . Wish Help to plan number and size of solar panels of a small scale solar array for max W. BUT still maintaining some winter charge. The whole electrical installation is not of issue. That is dependant primarily on likely available Watts.. Can find no advice. Everyone starts with calc your likely load . That doesnt work for small scale off grid?
I've just found your channel and find it really interesting. I'm grid connected but am looking to install a load of pylo9ntech batteries and Victron controls, so your channel will be invaluable. Installed a new solar inverter in October on my house grid connected solar PV as the old one died. I can now data log my usage here in South Wales just north of Cardiff. 3.0kW of Grid Connected PV with 1.5kW facing due south and 1.5kW facing due West (give or take a few degrees). October 2021 110kWh with a couple of days under 1kWh November 2021 80kWh with around 8 days at 1kWh or less December 2021 25kWh about 3 days over 1kWh - it was a very cloudy December! January 2022 55kWh about 50% of days under 1kWh February 2022 100kWh with 5 days at end of month around 8kWh per day! (the sun finally came back out). I will be looking to install more DC connected PV once I've got my battery system installed later this year. thank you very much for your informative uploads.
Thanks for sharing your stats from the last few months. It’s always really interesting to hear how other people get on, especially over the winter months 👍 Our next video is going to focus on a summary of our winter data if that will be of interest 😊
Ok so I don’t live in the uk but I have trouble using all the power I produce, 6x415w panels 5kva inverter, 5xpylontech us2000c 12kw, how do fully utilise 10kva inverter and 21.3kw battery bank? What do you run all at once to require a 10kva inverter? I only ask to learn what I else I can plug in to prevent my batteries from being fully charged by lunchtime every day! Do you have a couple of Tesla’s hidden away? 😁
How much did it cost to build the site with the solar panels and the land and the amenities this is not the average persons dream it’s a top one percent dream
The land cost around £15K which was bought 17 years ago. The solar power system cost £23K and the barn was built by my husband, costing about £8K. We paid for the latter two with the money we made when we sold our house (bought for £96K renovated and sold for just over £190K). We live in a mobile home that cost £5K and our water filtration system cost no more than £2K. It’s a lot of money, but we haven’t had inheritance or financial help from family (including the house we sold, which we also had no help with). I’m a teacher and Fraser is a tree surgeon. Definitely not top 1% 😊 We are now saving to build a house, which we will build ourselves. This video talks more about how my husband bought the land if that’s of interest 👍 th-cam.com/video/oAZHZls8rlU/w-d-xo.html
We could add more batteries, but we think adding PV and therefore being able to charge what we’ve got will be less expensive, especially if we buy second hand panels 😊👍
In Summer a relatively small array can fully charge a large battery bank quite easily. In Winter it can be a struggle to keep that same battery bank topped up. Rather than adding additional (expensive) batteries I have found it better to have my water heater and/or electric heating come on when my batteries are almost full. Easy to set up with victron kit. I also do my washing and sometimes bulk cooking on sunnier days. Takes a bit of planning/management but better than having a big battery bank that only gets half charged for half of the year.
We do have a generator which we use as back up but we don’t need it for every cloudy day. The PV we get on cloudy days plus what we have in the batteries is sometimes enough to meet our needs. During winter we used the generator for a few hours 2 to 3 times a week, and pretty much every day was cloudy!
Solar array watts / system voltage + 20% safety margin = charge controller size. always get a bigger MPPT charge controller. maybe have a professional at the company look at your solar panel and MPPT set up. your MPPT is 150/35 and you have LG355 panels so the MPPT VOC is 150volts the LG355 is 46.4 volts at 10 amps. so you would only be able to connect 3 LG panels in series to the MPPT. you have 20 panels. if you did 4 in series of the LG355 you should have at least a VOC of 200.
There's something wrong here. You have 20 monocrystalline panels which I guess are 250W per panel, that's 5kW of panels. I have 5 x 375W panels (1.875kW) and I produce similar amounts of power to you. not sure how that's possible. would be interesting to discuss. I am using a 3.6kW hybrid inverter with 10kW of battery storage. my panels face southeast.
Thanks for your comment 😊 Our panels are 355W each and our production varies hugely based on the weather and time of year. Do you produce more than this in January on a grey day? Where are you located? 😊
10 kw of battery storage is not correct/possible ; you mean 10 kwH ? because that is what i have,10 batteries of 1 kwHour each Kw is power,like hp,horsepower KwH is energy, like Joule,BTU,calorie... (i know you knew that,but i see SO MANY mishaps regarding those 2...) and I think it is because their names are similar
@@The_OffGridFamily Hi I am based in Hampshire, I can't give you Jan readings as my system was installed mid Feb. So you have over 7kW of solar panels and 10kWh of storage. I think your system should be producing more even on bad days. Maybe I am missing something here
@@The_OffGridFamily I would be interested in looking at a couple of comparative days readings over the next few months to get a good comparative. For example, your best day in May and your worst day in May.
For people who live in cloudy latitudes would it not be wiser just to stay with the public grid,akin to renting something and avoid the repair hassles? aside from the trendy fashion, is it wise to ignore society, and spend fortunes to try to produce your own? i can't seem to find a proper answer..
We live in a woodland and have no access to the grid so that wasn’t an option for us 😊 It would have cost a lot to get access, and we like the idea of being independent from public utilities. Nothing to do with being trendy 😂
@@The_OffGridFamily That makes sense, glad your motivation is something like that,a true necessity,and that you are able to make it work for you every day; not easy; ((Too bad they can't make solar panels with better than 20 pct efficiency yet; but they might; NREL reports that it has already actually achieved that, experimentally; Irradiance is 1000 W/m2 but we only harness a little over 100,for now; batteries are still expensive too)) Be well.
Great video, thanks for sharing. May I ask you a question? With regards to geoengineering and cloud seeding now affecting our weather, do you agree with what scientists are doing? If they can make it warmer in the winter and stop clouds from forming, which would increase your returns, would you be an advocate of that? If you want more information about it you can find it at Oxford geoengineering programme and by watching what in the world are they spraying
This isn't something that we have researched thoroughly, but our general belief is that forests hold the key to regulating climate and weather and that we need more of them 🌳👍
I appreciate your video. However, it seems to highlight that solar does not enable sufficient and reliable energy to be off grid and carefree. Instead it seems that one will spend a fair bit of time agonising in front of your linked computer on darker cloudy days (of which at least six months for the UK) over whether you have enough energy produced to enable normal living without having to decide, do I sacrifice say a laundry day just so one can cook food; have a light and heating on. But in these times we live in, your solar may we’ll prove the difference (assuming it doesn’t malfunction at the worst time) between survival or not. So while I seem to be slating solar and I am to a degree as they are not the answer to normal abundant living, they are however possibly a good step in the right direction when s**t hits the fan as it will in the near future. Good luck and thanks for the posting.
Thanks for sharing this. What are you using all your electric for? How do you heat your home/how big is it? I want to get off grid but when I do I want to also make use of a ground source heat pump so scaling my system to allow for the energy required.
lucky you, where I live there are two installers for solar - neither of them even do quotes anymore, they are booked over 1 year in advance - all this sustainable green BS, you cant get it fitted so whats the point.
Sorry to hear you think that. Perhaps if you see a few more of our videos we might change your mind. Maybe this one... ☺️ th-cam.com/video/oAZHZls8rlU/w-d-xo.html
Just watched your winter solar charging video, and note your comment that mid-day is the best time of day for your panels, but unfortunately it was cloudy. When I got my panels in 2011, I was quite pleased that my house faces south east. One major characteristic of sunny days in the UK is that they usually result in thermal clouds (cumulus) building up from about mid-morning. My high power window (above 2 kW) in summer is from 8:30 to 14:30 (BST), peaking between 11:00 and 12:30 (the sun going higher compensates for no longer facing the sun). The best thing is that cumulus doesn't usually affect the yield much until after 11:00 am, so on typical sunny days I get more yield than I would facing south..
nice video and very informative. makes me wonder if combining some wind power into your system will make the winter easier and some additional alternative storage to take advantage of the summer abundance
20 panels at midday giving 400W. This is about the same ppm^2 as I get on my east/west facing panels in UK winter and I always thought that cloudy days would be the same in every direction but it is good to see that you see the same.
Battery trickle - that confused me as well. I tried switching between east and west panels and it always took 10W (trickle load on my tiny system). It turned out that the morning charge filled the battery and after that I was just seeing the load so all panels looked the same - they could all do 10W.
We find the trickle charge issue means we aren’t quite sure exactly what our system is capable of. If we had unlimited storage it would be great to see what it can produce in summer. Not such an issue in winter for us of course ☁️👍
For reference we use about 25 kWh/day average in the DFW Tx area. We have 16 400W panels and no battery. We pay about 40% more to buy kWh than to sell them to the grid so we are learning to move consumption to the daytime to minimize our bill. We have two electric cars so that is one load we can move easily. During the summer we'll probably use more than we produce during the day due to A/C running. We'll see.
@ James May I ask why you do not have battery storage? Surely it would be better to store what you generate for personal use instead of feeding the grid?
@@monk3yboy69 We do not have battery storage because 1)Batteries are really expensive. 2)We do get paid for putting kWh back on the grid. 3)I have two EVs with a total of 150 kWh battery capacity and I figure that sooner or later I will be able to use them. Meanwhile I try to manage the EV charging so we minimize the kWh back to the grid.
There is a new wave of solar panels coming out in around 2years, more cheaper and wafer thin and takes up more energy from the sun around 40% more, but thank you for your videos on here, it’s been very interesting, it’s just a learning curve 👍🏻
Glad you found the videos interesting ☺️ Solar technology seems to be moving very quickly and there is always the fear that your system will become outdated 😩
No but we did depend on our generator some of the time. About 17% of our power over winter came from our generator. The rest of the time we run fully on solar ☺️
I would really like to see your stats for December if possible because that was a really terrible month for sun. Would be good to know how much you had to depend on a generator.
We’ve done a video on our winter stats if that helps? 😊 th-cam.com/video/YOFhn7BJhTw/w-d-xo.html It looks at our PV, our consumption and how much we used the generator 👍
Thanks for your comment 😊 Not cheeky at all! It was approx £23K. We’ve done a video with the full breakdown if that helps 👍 th-cam.com/video/m-oOjbzm_KM/w-d-xo.html
@@The_OffGridFamily In the current UK climate (both weather and energy), I don't think you can have too much PV. Granted it can be in significant surplus on sunny summer days but having plenty of PV capacity does help extend the season. I started with 11.75kw PV, 48kwh lead acid (24kwh usable) and a Victron Quattro 10kw. This is Off-grid on an airfield 1 mile from home. I use it to keep two EVs off-grid for 8 months/year. I have also made up two small lithium trailers (30kwh each) to bring the energy home to feed the excess to a pair of grid-tie inverters (total o/p 3kw). During the summer this will keep us off-grid for 95% of our home and transport needs. I have very limited opportunity for PV at home (at present 1.5kw). To try to extend the season I am increasing this to 3.3kw and adding a further 9kw at the airfield. PV costs are better than 50p/W at the moment and with self installation it is a good investment. My LFP cells cost about £100/kwh. As well as transporting energy these help to smooth out the variability of the UK sunshine.
@@The_OffGridFamily We have had a Kia Soul EV since July 2020 and a Tesla Model 3 LR since June 2021. We have no regrets. Both have good range (about 280 miles and 330 miles respectively) and good efficiency (4-5miles/kwh). The Tesla is the better car for a long trip with good navigation integrated with the supercharger network. The Kia is better for carrying bulky loads and significantly cheaper to buy. We specified a towbar for the Tesla (not retrofittable) to enable the use of a trailer. EVs might be significantly more expensive but you can save £1000- £1500/yr on fuel versus electricity and servicing. These savings are even bigger if you can allocate extra solar to transportation. When to jump into the EV market is generally driven by minimising the depreciation loss on the previous car but this was accelerated for us as we could use off-grid PV to provide free 'fuel'. Eventually there will come a point where the secondhand fossil car market will collapse. This will probably happen when the lease market moves totally over to EVs. In the meantime as waiting time increases on new cars some secondhand Teslas are fetching more than new prices.
No we don't have them at a steep angle, but if it is grey (which it definitely was this winter just gone!) we have read that a flatter angle is actually more optimal ☺️
It’s somethings we’ve considered but at the moment we think an extra winter array will do the trick 😊 plus it seems difficult to get a turbine that’s compatible with our Victron Cerbo GX 😩
Yes without a shadow of a doubt ☺️ We have heard some interesting stories about installers in the UK and, after having been victim to 'professionals' with other projects (such as our borehole disaster!), we feel very strongly about doing things ourselves. However, we would insist that the batteries were checked and that firmware was updated before they sent them out as this has been an area of difficulty for us!
Can you touch on how big the array is in kw and also battery capacity? You mention the inverters and arrangement a lot but not the basics of capacity so it’s sometimes difficult to contextualise the generation
I was thinking of piping my water into a rooftop tank that I can paint with the darkest black available on the market. So I get hot water with no heating costs? I'm not sure how I can plum that in alongside my normal setup though?
Are your batteries lithium? I have seen that they are not the best thing for just solar, as solar is just a weak power source they weaken the batteries , with victory measuring the voltage , I have found getting them up to 100% and then you can still carry on charging for hours on trickle , so they are not 100% Lithium are suited for mega recharge quick charging , 2 loads of washing and you'd be out of power , you have a life of power watching now ,
We have 25.2kwh (23.6 usable) storage in our batteries. We run a fridge, 2x chest freezers, washing machine and tumble dryer without much thought about it all months apart from Dec-Feb. In winter we check our power before we use the washing machine and tumble dryer but most of the time we are ok. We have recently started using a bread maker and our electric kettle and the system has coped fine. We bought an air con unit this week so are trying that out at the moment. Our next video is actually on this and we will be looking at what appliances we can use at the same time. Should be out Sunday 5pm 😊
@@The_OffGridFamily what about cooking , ? All electric ? . But you cannot use all the high power units in winter , its about right I feel for the UK, and you cannot run the heating ? So its not a green system as everything is either dug from the ground , got loads of chemicals. And so on. Its a different way of living .
Yes we agree. When it comes to electricity we are off grid for two main reasons: We live a long way from the grid and thus paying to join didn’t make sense financially, and we like not being beholden to the tarifs. Parts of our lifestyle are environmentally friendly, such as the trees we have planted, but not necessarily the solar. We have a wood burner for fuel and cook using gas bottles. The boiler is gas also 😊
i appreciate these kind of videos... telling me how much energy a diy solar system does on the best day tells very little. but worst day info is great!
Glad you found it useful 😊👍
I live on my boat and am mostly solar powered although obviously i can run the engine or a generator if needed. The difference between a clear sunny summer day and the grey days of winter for me is on a spring/summer sunny day my batteries are fully charged by 11ish am but two grey days in a row in winter will have my batteries emptied as the solar can't keep up with demand, a couple of extra panels would probably fix the issue but i don't have the room for any more.
Why worst day? Surely you want an average over the whole year? unless you plan to unplug completely from the grid.
@@popuptoaster a larger battery may also help since it would have more reserve and could store more on the good days of winter for those series of gray days.
@@Omar-kw5ui I think worse, best and average on every month would be useful, especially in countries like the UK where we get unpredictable weather and usually a lot of rain and clouds.
Looking at the system she's got, I think a larger battery would come in handy.
This makes one very aware of your usage and when you need to be more careful with it. We have solar in a caravan trailer and find that A) you can get by with surprisingly little electricity. B) even a small amount greatly improves quality of life.
Abundance has made us needlessly wasteful.
BTW - this is what made TH-cam so great in the beginning - before content became so… you know. Regular people passing on what they have learned. Good job.
Thanks for your comment 😊 Glad you’re enjoying the channel.
Completely agree with you on the electricity side of things. For three years we had intermittent power from a generator as we could only afford to run it for a few hours a day. It’s amazing what you can get by with and what you just don’t need 😊
"Abundance has made us needlessly wasteful." - hit the nail on the head there - as a species having 'cheap' sources of fuel dug out of the ground or made in massive power plants means most folk don't care about where it comes from yet moan when prices start going up...
It effects your timing as well, i start and finish work early and in a normal house would often put the washing machine and dishwasher on as i left in the morning, now I rely on the solar on my boat I put them on when I get back from work early afternoon to use the excess power from the solar that would be wasted once the batteries are full.
We have had our solar for eighteen years and it has not let us down. We have 24 volt system, 24 batteries
That’s good to hear 😊 hope ours lasts as long! 👍
was it worth, moneywise, all things considered ? thanks
Thanks for posting this very info-packed, illustrative video. Not too many videos out there that used your intuitive approach of providing a lot of answers and insight, well done!
Glad you found it useful 😊👍
I am in Australia and also have an Off Grid system with 10kw of panels, 6 Pylontech US3000 and a 8Kw MPP Pip 8048max inverter charger. Have had no issues with my system and has far less hardware compared to your system. Being winter now I only achieved 11kwh yesterday. Today should be a better day as I also want to charge an electric vehicle.
Keep up your great work.
Thanks for your comment 😊 Glad to hear you’re getting on well with your batteries. 👍
Rachael, thanks for this realistic UK view of solar production. This has been the video I've been looking for, a while now. I hope to set up something similar this year! I agree Victron is more expensive, although you get what you pay for. 😊👍
Thanks for your comment 😊 In a few weeks we will be sharing an overview of our winter data if that’s of any help 👍😊
I ran Majority of our house off grid for five years and it worked brilliantly throughout the summer but winter was always gonna have its issues. One of my biggest mistake was to have lead acid batteries,but at the time of the installation it was my only option due to cost. I have now sold all my equipment and gone down the grid tie route which is more beneficial for us. You have an excellent system and l wish you all the best.
you could also have a smaller array to the west and the east so you can grab more solar coming in i did this as a test a few years ago and was surprised at just how much more it did to help another thing i did was try and stay away from ac appliances as much as possible and if they could be run from dc i ran them from dc with buck converters
I use victron, solar panels too !
I have 1200 watts of panels ... loads of power all year round living on my narrowboat . Propulsion also electric.
We are big fans of Victron 😊 We’ve got on well with all our Victron components so far 👍
Just checking. Your boat propulsion is poweref by your solar panels?
Would love tonsee that video, setup and an idea of costs.
@@purplemonkeydishwasher5269 yep .. I have a vlog on my channel !
A basic setup , cost me roughly £1000 ..
I have 720 watts of solar which is equal to a 25amp charge powering a 24v motor with max load of 1.25kw.
On power setting 2 ( 5 power settings in total ) the motor uses 22amps providing a top speed of 1.3mph . ( remains in float all day in the sun )
At setting 3, 28amp , 1.7mph ( uses a min of 3amp dependant on sun )
At the moment I'm only using led acid cranking batteries as this was a trial to see if this setup actually worked...
Now that it does I'm currently saving for either semi traction or maybe full traction batteries..
Wow. I am so impressed with your off grid solar set up. Very professional. Far more impressive than my tiny 350w grid tie inverter and 330 single panel. Can't wait to look back at your journey and the kit you used. Well done you guys
Thank you for your comment 🙂 We are so pleased that you have enjoyed seeing our solar set up. We didn't have access to the grid so had to go all in! Hope you enjoy our other videos and if you have any questions just let us know 🙂👍
Matt Kirk - Think of your system like this: It's a "Starter Set" for Solar! It's just enough to learn from, but not too much, to make it difficult to try a Relocate it and Test it, in different Spots, or Orientations, like Adjusting the Angle of Slope, or East-West Angle!
@@robertweekley5926 Wise words
@@robertweekley5926 I wanted to wait until I have enough for 5kw in panels but I might just start buying them a few at a time instead of waiting for the big set up.
Moved to Romania in a rural village where we get constant power cuts so solar is a no-brainer.
Good explaination of UK weather with ref to solar. Good to see even with clouds you are still charging. I had always been told "they only charge when its sunny"...you proved that is wrong.
Thanks for the good explanation of what goes on during a (typical) day. Encouraging that solar energy was generated in winter and so for the summer months.
We are really pleased with how things are going so far this winter, and with the days getting longer now we are seeing a big improvement in how we are getting on. Hopefully we are through the worst! 🙂
Rachel. Just found your vid and so pleased. Great vid. I’m researching for our house and it’s actually really difficult to find genuine info like yours. Many don’t give you costs and true production unlike yours. It was fascinating to see your winter clear sky versus cloudy production - dropping to about 400kW I think.
Have you considered a small wind turbine to help with production at night? Perhaps you could get a manufacturer to sponsor you so you can show installation, production & usage etc. This is something I’m considering but struggling to find ones for UK. Can’t wait to watch rest of vids 🙂
Thanks for your comment 😊 We are so pleased you found the content of the video helpful. Our next video (out tomorrow) shows a full summary of our winter data, including how much we used the generator for back up 😊 Hopefully that will be of help too 👍
We have looked into wind turbines but they’re a bit beyond our budget at the moment and finding one that is compatible with our Cerbo GX and batteries looks a bit complicated! Lots more research to be done there! 🙈
Thanks Rachael, that was a really interesting video. That is fantastic that you have gone off grid, best wishes to you and your family, oh yeah …and the planet says a big thank you too…😀
Glad you found the video interesting 😊 Thanks for your kind comments 🙂
I've been off grid for 30 yrs and back then it was tuff. But with today's equipment it is so easy anyone can do it. These new inverters that are all in one is the ticket. I run 10 kw solar pannels and 50 kw in batteries which are two 48 volt forklift batteries. I'm always at 94 to 96% of battery voltage in the morning and never use a generator. I'm at float by 8:00 am. It works.
Thanks for your comment ☺️ Glad your system is working so well 👍
Thanks for sharing from Wyoming! It’s been hard to find realistic videos on solar in less ideal conditions. Off grid in a desert is not the same as seeing the sun 3 times a year 🤗
Really useful information, thanks. If I were in your place I would trim the tops of the trees behind and to the side of your panels. Depending on configuration, very little shadow on part of a panel can radically reduce output of the whole array.
Completely agree with you on this one and seeing as Fraser is a tree surgeon there really is no excuse! 😂 But we had a baby a few months ago and it’s just one of those jobs we haven’t got round to 😩
Not sure this is about shadow which is really about direct light. But on an overcast day photons come from every angle and there are areas that could be sky, but the panels are seeing blackness where the trees are. Subtle difference (and even more subtle gains!), but it's there to be had.
Good stuff Rachel details matter 👍🏴
Don't ignore the possibility of low voltage DC. About 1KWh/day of my background load is from Internet bridge/wifi/fileserver/home automation all of which run on 12V DC. This is about 1/4 of my total electricity usage. I have 12V panels on my shed + 240 AH of batteries. The average load with everything connected is 40-50W which is more than the panels can provide in winter so I have a fake panel which is actually a mains PSU set to a low voltage and current limit. I am still exploring the settings but I want to set this to something that uses solar power in summer but does not allow the batteries to go flat in winter. Still a work in progress but I will let you know how it works out. This system provides power at battery voltage which is 12-15V, I was nervous about feeding this to 12V devices but so far have not had a problem.
I've considered similar, there must be a different scale of cost/ benefit and a tipping point from whether you can viably install a big enough system to avoid standing charges. Most of us will have a lot of long running low power stuff, quite distinct from high power short use stuff like cookers, kettles etc.
Doing something quite similar to yours, here. Not finished yet, either. When it is finished-ish, it's supposed to cut quite a junk from the power bill.
You should install a small wind turbine to see you through the winter.
Very informative - looking forward to seeing updates and life around your off-grid setup and life! Peace
Thank you 😊 This week we are going to be doing a full overview of how we got on this winter ❄️👍
Hi, I just logged into your TH-cam site. I'll watch your site, them ask some questions, I have looked at stand alone power, solar panels as used for running field studies. Weather stations. There's also a vertical wind turbine. Take care
Hi. Thanks for watching and we hope you enjoy our videos 😊 we’re happy to answer any questions 👍
Thanks for the great video! Had solar install myself over past two years. It seems like you must have the panels facing east. I think having them south is best if possible in the future. Noticed with my own solar that they are worse in the winter because of their angle being not steep enough for a lower sun. So if you have too much energy in the summer but not enough in the winter, then having the angle more biased to a winter lower sun angle. I know easier said that done when it's the roof's angle, but if you had space to put some on the floor then an angle change in the winter would help.
Thanks so much for posting your Solar Setup info…fascinating to see the detail from the App thingy…have liked and subscribed and will continue to see how things go with you guys…many thanks for sharing…Brian
Hi Brian. We are so pleased you found it interesting. Thanks for subscribing 😊👍
Utilizing a 5 KWp system, my daily Yield in January was from 15,8 KWh on the 30th down to a mere 188 Wh on the 2nd. Even extending to 7.1 KWp would not get me through. How low do You go through Winter? I would very much like to see a spreadsheet with Your daily yield. It seems like the shift in lattitude is taking its toll, I live at 57N. All the best to You from Denmark.
i find the true test of solar is on the very worst of days when as much power as possible is needed i am also in the uk lancashire to be exact
This is true. A cloudy day in December would be very different! 👍
Is your array South facing? Quite impressed that you manage to keep your load consistently below 0.2kwh. That seems remarkably low. My tick over is around double that (I keep a large aquarium, so completely self inflicted).
I'm in the East Midlands and have an East/West 4.5kwh array. The output in the winter months is truly terrible due to the azimuth angle. However, come end of February, I'm producing enough to cover majority usage and battery charge.
The trick seems to be intelligent time usage of major appliances. They are the killers.
Thanks for your comment 😊 Our system is south east facing so not bad but not as south as we would have liked. All our appliances have a very good energy rating as we have bought them with off grid life in mind. We don’t run heating off of the system apart from a small radiator to keep the batteries warm. We have a wood burner and gas boiler 😊
@@The_OffGridFamily I can't grasp why off grid setups are often angled for maximum production for the whole year.
My panels are nearly vertical, so as to maximise production during the winter. East west facing.
During the summer they are really crap for energy production, but they are really crap for so many hours, my batteries are always fully charged.
Why angle the panels to fill the batteries earlier in the morning during the summer?
Increasing the energy you don't need in the summer, because you are not selling it to the grid and your batteries are full, at the cost of having even less in the winter is crazy.
Thanks for making this video, it was really interesting.
We're pleased you found it interesting ☺️ Thanks for your comment 👍
You could also rig up an exercise bike to generate some energy to top up the batteries? Just a thought
Thanks for the video - I'm looking into doing something similar, albeit on a smaller scale (due to the space I have), so in the progress of starting to get my head round it all
Glad you found the video useful ☺️ We found explorist.life very useful (they have a TH-cam channel too). All the best with your solar project 👍
Surely it would be possible to combine daylight times & historical weather data to produce a reasonably accurate map of the UK that you use with array size & orientation to predict output?
Your video throws up some interesting cost/efficiency questions for the future - Off grid vs on grid, back up generators or using an EV to "buy in" a top up from a public charge point???
Thanks for your interesting video and info.
We live in supposedly sunny South Africa and are totally off grid but also on a cloudy day are lucky if we get 10% of the rated power from our solar. I have had Solar for over 20 years now and must admit Victron are expensive but never had issues with mine. What is completely wrong with Solar panel conventional thinking is just using ones latitude angle for the panels. I have found it’s no good anything less than 45deg as in summer you get way more hours sun time than in winter and as you say when your batteries are full you can’t store more.
On a slightly different note when I lived in Colchester UK I fitted my own solar water heater 45 years ago, everyone thought I was mad! Trouble was we couldn’t shower as it heated the water too hot 5 months of the year.
What do you use for cooking and hot water?
Cheers Frans
Glad you’ve got on well with your a Victron stuff 👍 We might look add a water heater at some point 😊
Should have circulated the too hot water through the heat exchanger in an indirect cylinder.
And a mixer tap on the shower.
Very interesting video, thank-you. Seriously considering going solar and I think a day like this in January would see us producing what we consume.
Glad you found the video interesting. All the best with your solar project ☺️👍
Great to find a channel more relevant to UK, great gen...subbed!
Glad you’re enjoying the channel 😊 Thanks for subscribing! 👍
Great video, thanks!
Glad you enjoyed it 😊👍
Great video, subscribed :)
Thank you 😊 Glad you enjoyed it 👍
Useful video - thanks. Real world is 1000 times better than "Salesman Speak".
Do you have the top and bottom rows of those panels on separate strings? Might give you a bit more at the beginning and end of the day, if not.
Great video as expected from your channel.
As someone who's just starting that solar/wind journey this does raise the point that in order to run a standard 4/5 bedroom house with an EV charge point and air source heat pump, I'll probably need around 100x 350w panels to get through the winter off grid.
it all depends on your location, where solar panels will be facing.
Thanks, really glad you enjoyed the video 😊 Since making this video we have been chatting a lot about where to go next in order to further consolidate our power in winter. We talked about a wind turbine, but there are issues connecting it to our system because of the Cerbo GX. We also talked about creating an array of panels on the ground designed specifically for winter, but when it’s grey it’s grey so that only goes part way to solving the problem. At the moment we are leaning towards another more cost efficient generator. We will always have one as a back up, even if our system can run all winter without it. It only takes something in the solar set up to go wrong and we would be in big trouble! 😊
@@The_OffGridFamily check propane generators. I personally would add more bataries.
@@The_OffGridFamily Wind turbines are a good option and can be incorporated into your Victron system very easily. The key is to get a turbine that has a customisable charge regime so that you can match the battery requirements exactly. You then feed the output of the turbine into your battery via a shunt that comes with a BMV700 battery monitor. The BMV reports this charge current to the Cerbo and the Cerbo does its magic!
@@Qosmio1955 do you have a link to one that would be suitable?
I am interested in knowing if there are any studies comparing the degree of influence respectively of length of day (i.e. sunrise to sunset), angle of the sun and degree of cloud cover on the amount of PV generation. My observation on our system here in South Yorkshire (14 x 280W panels = 3.92 kW + Solis Inverter + 13.5 kWh Tesla Powerwall battery) is that the length of day is the predominant influence. December to February this year we generated around 300 kWh; June to August 2021 around 900 kWh. Overall: October to April we’ll get 1,000 kWh; between April and Ocotber it’s be 2,500 kWh. Pretty consistently year on year. At this time of year (mid-May), with clear blue skies all day, we can get up to 22kWh; with variable cloud (sunny intervals), that might be reduced to 10 to 17 kWh, whilst on a heavy overcast day we might get down to between 5 and 10 kWh for the day. So cloud cover is not insignificant. From these observations I’d say the order of influence is 1. Length of day 2. Cloud cover 3. Angle of sun. Even when the sun tucks down behind the trees on the West side of our garden, there can by reasonable generation simply from sunlight radiating in a blue sky above.
So are you managing totally off solar? Or how much are you relying on your generator?
We are still using the generator, but we do use the tumble dryer pretty regularly and that luxury definitely drains us! In the last 30 days, 17% of our power has come from the generator. Most of that was during those grey December days and over Christmas when we were home more :)
@@The_OffGridFamily 17% is pretty good honestly
Most people I know who live off grid full time are running a generator around 8 hours a day in December and January!
@@livingoffgridinscotland We still haven't boxed in the batteries so that radiator is still causing us problems too. (We have turned the temp down on it though as it was getting ridiculous!) We think that would help us reduce it further, but it's just one of those things we are yet to get round to... We are still battling the poly tunnel at the moment 😂
@@The_OffGridFamily we are obviously on forklift batteries which aren’t boxed in or heated, so that’s our biggest problem in winter as they struggle to take charge.
Our neighbour has fancy off grid batteries inside his cabin but he still struggles 😂 and runs a generator every day.
Hopefully I’ll be much more efficient next year when we go from 4 solar panels up to 36 panels, a wind turbine and a better generator
That sounds like a massive upgrade 🤩 Have you picked your wind turbine yet? This is something we would consider in the future but haven’t even started looking into it yet.
I'm amazed that during the day your house only draws 120w, with my fridge, cctv dvr, router and other usual sundry's I struggle to get my idle consumption under 350w, how do you do it?
Brilliant information.
So glad you found it useful 😊
Are you in the south of the UK or North? I'm in East Anglia. Just wondered about the difference this would make, if any.
We are near the south border of Lincolnshire so shouldn’t make much difference 😊
One question i have repeatedly asked people I know with installations is what is their total annual percentage yield. For example, if you have a 3kw array that would be 3kwx24x365 = 26,280kw pa (if the sun is always shining 24/7 etc) but what exactly do they see pa. It's a simple question but no one seems to be able to give me a either of these figures, they prefer to hide it behind graphs and feed in tariffs etc.
It's a simple equation that would make it really simple to calculate a theoretical pay back duration.
We aren’t massive fans of the graphs either 😂 We have a 7.1kw array so it would be 7.1kwx24x365= 32,196kw pa. However, because we are off grid when our batteries are full our PV production drops to just covering our load so the records don’t show the full potential of what we could generate if we had unlimited storage. We haven’t had the system in place for a year yet so don’t have a full years worth of data to share, but we will bear this in mind when we get to a year in June/July time as we are planning to make a video on it then 😊
Hi Ian, I'll attempt to answer your question. I have had my solar PV system for 10.5 years now. I have a 4.0kwp inverter, but I have additional panels so they 'overdrive' the inverter. The system generates around 5000 kwh pa. Because I installed the system in October 2011, I had a very favourable F.I.T. rate, but my system cost significantly more dosh at the time then the same would cost now. My payback was exactly 5.0 years & my IRR is forecast to be over 21% pa on the initial investment. Normal payback is around 7 - 10 years. If you wish to view the raw data, please feel free to go to the PVOutput.org website & then search for JohnnyK's PV. Hope this helps you a bit. Regards, JohnnyK.
@@The_OffGridFamily Great thanks for the reply, it makes much more sense now. Where we live we get a lot more sun than you but we're restricted to how many pane;s we can install before having to get very expensive planning consent.
I wasn't going for batteries as we have AC and need to heat a lot of hot water so we will be able to use what we can produce in the day time easily so to my mind there's little point in storing any excess.
Thanks again for the reply.
@@johnkay4701 Thanks for taking the time to reply, much appreciated. We live in SW France wit a lot more sunny days so hopefully we could expect a bit of a higher output. I've been hoping to get between 15-20% of stated output on average over the year (wishing for 25% but that might be stretching it a bit). I'm thinking of being cheeky and seeing if I could install three systems as we have 3 phase electricity ;-)
yes helpful to know worse winter . Wish Help to plan number and size of solar panels of a small scale solar array for max W. BUT still maintaining some winter charge. The whole electrical installation is not of issue. That is dependant primarily on likely available Watts.. Can find no advice. Everyone starts with calc your likely load . That doesnt work for small scale off grid?
I've just found your channel and find it really interesting. I'm grid connected but am looking to install a load of pylo9ntech batteries and Victron controls, so your channel will be invaluable.
Installed a new solar inverter in October on my house grid connected solar PV as the old one died. I can now data log my usage here in South Wales just north of Cardiff.
3.0kW of Grid Connected PV with 1.5kW facing due south and 1.5kW facing due West (give or take a few degrees).
October 2021 110kWh with a couple of days under 1kWh
November 2021 80kWh with around 8 days at 1kWh or less
December 2021 25kWh about 3 days over 1kWh - it was a very cloudy December!
January 2022 55kWh about 50% of days under 1kWh
February 2022 100kWh with 5 days at end of month around 8kWh per day! (the sun finally came back out).
I will be looking to install more DC connected PV once I've got my battery system installed later this year.
thank you very much for your informative uploads.
Thanks for sharing your stats from the last few months. It’s always really interesting to hear how other people get on, especially over the winter months 👍 Our next video is going to focus on a summary of our winter data if that will be of interest 😊
Hi just seen your post on fb off grid !
Hi 😊 Thanks for coming across from FB. Hope you find the video helpful 👍
@@The_OffGridFamily hopefully one day , just an off grid dreamer here , who enjoys seeing how off grid folk live 😊
@@AJ-iq5pf That’s where we all start out 😊 Hopefully our videos will help tip you into taking the plunge!
Ok so I don’t live in the uk but I have trouble using all the power I produce, 6x415w panels 5kva inverter, 5xpylontech us2000c 12kw, how do fully utilise 10kva inverter and 21.3kw battery bank? What do you run all at once to require a 10kva inverter? I only ask to learn what I else I can plug in to prevent my batteries from being fully charged by lunchtime every day! Do you have a couple of Tesla’s hidden away? 😁
How much did it cost to build the site with the solar panels and the land and the amenities this is not the average persons dream it’s a top one percent dream
The land cost around £15K which was bought 17 years ago. The solar power system cost £23K and the barn was built by my husband, costing about £8K. We paid for the latter two with the money we made when we sold our house (bought for £96K renovated and sold for just over £190K). We live in a mobile home that cost £5K and our water filtration system cost no more than £2K. It’s a lot of money, but we haven’t had inheritance or financial help from family (including the house we sold, which we also had no help with). I’m a teacher and Fraser is a tree surgeon. Definitely not top 1% 😊 We are now saving to build a house, which we will build ourselves. This video talks more about how my husband bought the land if that’s of interest 👍 th-cam.com/video/oAZHZls8rlU/w-d-xo.html
To reduce trickle charge, why not more capacity in battery storage ?
We could add more batteries, but we think adding PV and therefore being able to charge what we’ve got will be less expensive, especially if we buy second hand panels 😊👍
In Summer a relatively small array can fully charge a large battery bank quite easily. In Winter it can be a struggle to keep that same battery bank topped up. Rather than adding additional (expensive) batteries I have found it better to have my water heater and/or electric heating come on when my batteries are almost full. Easy to set up with victron kit. I also do my washing and sometimes bulk cooking on sunnier days. Takes a bit of planning/management but better than having a big battery bank that only gets half charged for half of the year.
Just wondering if those trees are creating a shadow on some of those panels - possibly affecting the PV output?
Definitely, yes. We’ve since cut them back and it has made a big difference. 😊
Has anyone reviewed the bedini motor /battery charger?
A 48 watt/amp? How many batteries in the system?
We have 7 Pylontech US3000C batteries ☺️
Hello 🙂 do you use a generator for the grey days?
Thanks
We do have a generator which we use as back up but we don’t need it for every cloudy day. The PV we get on cloudy days plus what we have in the batteries is sometimes enough to meet our needs. During winter we used the generator for a few hours 2 to 3 times a week, and pretty much every day was cloudy!
Solar array watts / system voltage + 20% safety margin = charge controller size.
always get a bigger MPPT charge controller.
maybe have a professional at the company look at your solar panel and MPPT set up.
your MPPT is 150/35 and you have LG355 panels so the MPPT VOC is 150volts the LG355 is 46.4 volts at 10 amps. so you would only be able to connect 3 LG panels in series to the MPPT. you have 20 panels.
if you did 4 in series of the LG355 you should have at least a VOC of 200.
There's something wrong here. You have 20 monocrystalline panels which I guess are 250W per panel, that's 5kW of panels. I have 5 x 375W panels (1.875kW) and I produce similar amounts of power to you. not sure how that's possible. would be interesting to discuss. I am using a 3.6kW hybrid inverter with 10kW of battery storage. my panels face southeast.
Thanks for your comment 😊 Our panels are 355W each and our production varies hugely based on the weather and time of year. Do you produce more than this in January on a grey day? Where are you located? 😊
10 kw of battery storage is not correct/possible ; you mean 10 kwH ? because that is what i have,10 batteries of 1 kwHour each
Kw is power,like hp,horsepower
KwH is energy, like Joule,BTU,calorie...
(i know you knew that,but i see SO MANY mishaps regarding those 2...)
and I think it is because their names are similar
@@The_OffGridFamily
Hi I am based in Hampshire, I can't give you Jan readings as my system was installed mid Feb. So you have over 7kW of solar panels and 10kWh of storage. I think your system should be producing more even on bad days. Maybe I am missing something here
@@josepeixoto3384 Thanks for the correction, sorry for the Typo.
@@The_OffGridFamily
I would be interested in looking at a couple of comparative days readings over the next few months to get a good comparative. For example, your best day in May and your worst day in May.
For people who live in cloudy latitudes would it not be wiser just to stay with the public grid,akin to renting something and avoid the repair hassles? aside from the trendy fashion, is it wise to ignore society, and spend fortunes to try to produce your own? i can't seem to find a proper answer..
We live in a woodland and have no access to the grid so that wasn’t an option for us 😊 It would have cost a lot to get access, and we like the idea of being independent from public utilities. Nothing to do with being trendy 😂
@@The_OffGridFamily
That makes sense, glad your motivation is something like that,a true necessity,and that you are able to make it work for you every day; not easy;
((Too bad they can't make solar panels with better than 20 pct efficiency yet; but they might; NREL reports that it has already actually achieved that, experimentally; Irradiance is 1000 W/m2 but we only harness a little over 100,for now; batteries are still expensive too))
Be well.
Great video, thanks for sharing. May I ask you a question?
With regards to geoengineering and cloud seeding now affecting our weather, do you agree with what scientists are doing?
If they can make it warmer in the winter and stop clouds from forming, which would increase your returns, would you be an advocate of that? If you want more information about it you can find it at Oxford geoengineering programme and by watching what in the world are they spraying
This isn't something that we have researched thoroughly, but our general belief is that forests hold the key to regulating climate and weather and that we need more of them 🌳👍
I appreciate your video. However, it seems to highlight that solar does not enable sufficient and reliable energy to be off grid and carefree. Instead it seems that one will spend a fair bit of time agonising in front of your linked computer on darker cloudy days (of which at least six months for the UK) over whether you have enough energy produced to enable normal living without having to decide, do I sacrifice say a laundry day just so one can cook food; have a light and heating on. But in these times we live in, your solar may we’ll prove the difference (assuming it doesn’t malfunction at the worst time) between survival or not. So while I seem to be slating solar and I am to a degree as they are not the answer to normal abundant living, they are however possibly a good step in the right direction when s**t hits the fan as it will in the near future. Good luck and thanks for the posting.
Thanks for sharing this. What are you using all your electric for? How do you heat your home/how big is it?
I want to get off grid but when I do I want to also make use of a ground source heat pump so scaling my system to allow for the energy required.
What is wintah? Dont you mean winter?
Subtitles are available if you don’t (with an apostrophe 😉) understand the accent 👍😁 Hope you enjoyed the video 😊
Yagis suck. Get a parabolic if you need better signal than it offers.
Ok ,how long to offset panels production, transportation, installation. Human cost on African nations mining materials for ' green' energies
6 degrees centigrade, and “today is cold”… 😂
Welcome to the arctic north in the Nordic countries……… 😎
Haha, it's all relative ☺️
lucky you, where I live there are two installers for solar - neither of them even do quotes anymore, they are booked over 1 year in advance - all this sustainable green BS, you cant get it fitted so whats the point.
We fitted ours ourselves with no previous experience ☺️ Maybe a DIY project?
@@The_OffGridFamily it may need to be, DIY is the key to surviving the tradie shortage and the financial pressures on all of us. Thanks
It’s definitely doable and there’s lots of support forums and TH-cam channels to help 😊 All the best 👍
LOL, rich people things for rich people.
Rich people larping
Sorry to hear you think that.
Perhaps if you see a few more of our videos we might change your mind. Maybe this one... ☺️
th-cam.com/video/oAZHZls8rlU/w-d-xo.html
Uk is not best cuntry for solar but it's stil better than not having them if you can afford as you know after Ukraine war price increase
Just watched your winter solar charging video, and note your comment that mid-day is the best time of day for your panels, but unfortunately it was cloudy. When I got my panels in 2011, I was quite pleased that my house faces south east. One major characteristic of sunny days in the UK is that they usually result in thermal clouds (cumulus) building up from about mid-morning. My high power window (above 2 kW) in summer is from 8:30 to 14:30 (BST), peaking between 11:00 and 12:30 (the sun going higher compensates for no longer facing the sun). The best thing is that cumulus doesn't usually affect the yield much until after 11:00 am, so on typical sunny days I get more yield than I would facing south..
nice video and very informative. makes me wonder if combining some wind power into your system will make the winter easier and some additional alternative storage to take advantage of the summer abundance
That’s what I’m thinking of doing, in Shetland the winds are very high.
20 panels at midday giving 400W. This is about the same ppm^2 as I get on my east/west facing panels in UK winter and I always thought that cloudy days would be the same in every direction but it is good to see that you see the same.
Never though about that before, but yes, heavy cloud cover acts as a diffuser for the sunlight, so the directionality of sunlight is reduced.
Battery trickle - that confused me as well. I tried switching between east and west panels and it always took 10W (trickle load on my tiny system). It turned out that the morning charge filled the battery and after that I was just seeing the load so all panels looked the same - they could all do 10W.
We find the trickle charge issue means we aren’t quite sure exactly what our system is capable of. If we had unlimited storage it would be great to see what it can produce in summer. Not such an issue in winter for us of course ☁️👍
For reference we use about 25 kWh/day average in the DFW Tx area. We have 16 400W panels and no battery. We pay about 40% more to buy kWh than to sell them to the grid so we are learning to move consumption to the daytime to minimize our bill. We have two electric cars so that is one load we can move easily. During the summer we'll probably use more than we produce during the day due to A/C running. We'll see.
Thanks for your comment 😊 Hope you manage to cut your bill down 🤞
@ James May I ask why you do not have battery storage?
Surely it would be better to store what you generate for personal use instead of feeding the grid?
@@monk3yboy69 We do not have battery storage because 1)Batteries are really expensive. 2)We do get paid for putting kWh back on the grid. 3)I have two EVs with a total of 150 kWh battery capacity and I figure that sooner or later I will be able to use them.
Meanwhile I try to manage the EV charging so we minimize the kWh back to the grid.
There is a new wave of solar panels coming out in around 2years, more cheaper and wafer thin and takes up more energy from the sun around 40% more, but thank you for your videos on here, it’s been very interesting, it’s just a learning curve 👍🏻
Well they said perovskite panels will be here by end of 2020, then 2021, now 2022, so I would not be to optimistic about next 2 years .:)
Glad you found the videos interesting ☺️ Solar technology seems to be moving very quickly and there is always the fear that your system will become outdated 😩
Solar power will never be enough and neither will wind power .
We know quite a few people who just use solar power and it is enough. We hope to be one of them once we have our additional array ☺️
Thanks so much for this video. Really good to see how other DIY systems are performing.
We’re really glad you enjoyed the video and found it useful 😊
Hi Rachel, did you ever run out over winter
No but we did depend on our generator some of the time. About 17% of our power over winter came from our generator. The rest of the time we run fully on solar ☺️
If you kept you off grid system in the green house and solar pannels in there to would they make more power by keeping everything warm.
The batteries might, although the dampness would be a problem. The panels actual work best when it’s sunny but cold 😊
Thank you for sharing your experience and clear articulation.
Thank you ☺️ We're glad you found it interesting
Interesting and informative. May one ask what is your latitude, makes a big difference....
Are you north or south uk. Considering moving to Scotland off grid but not sure how viable that would be with shorter northern winter days
If it is minus 1 degrees where is her breath? Did this even happen...ad for something or other 👉🚮👈
Great video! Very informative
Thank you 😊 Glad you found it informative 👍
I would really like to see your stats for December if possible because that was a really terrible month for sun.
Would be good to know how much you had to depend on a generator.
We’ve done a video on our winter stats if that helps? 😊 th-cam.com/video/YOFhn7BJhTw/w-d-xo.html
It looks at our PV, our consumption and how much we used the generator 👍
@@The_OffGridFamily I usually do a full sweep of videos before asking something like that! Silly me. Thanks.
@@marc3793 Not silly at all! Just thought that would be the easiest way of getting the info to you 😊
your panel ink does not bring you to solar panels its some ad site
Make hay while the sun shines. IE get more batteries.
Great video will be checking out the rest
Thank you 😊 hope you enjoy the others too 👍
Victron is totally over priced.
Great information thanks. Can I be cheeky and ask the approximate cost of your system as I'm considering a similar set up?
Thanks for your comment 😊 Not cheeky at all! It was approx £23K. We’ve done a video with the full breakdown if that helps 👍 th-cam.com/video/m-oOjbzm_KM/w-d-xo.html
Not having seen your previous videos can you just confirm your total PV wattage and battery kwh.
We have 7.1kwh of PV, and 25.2kwh batteries (23.6kwh usable) 😊
@@The_OffGridFamily In the current UK climate (both weather and energy), I don't think you can have too much PV. Granted it can be in significant surplus on sunny summer days but having plenty of PV capacity does help extend the season. I started with 11.75kw PV, 48kwh lead acid (24kwh usable) and a Victron Quattro 10kw. This is Off-grid on an airfield 1 mile from home. I use it to keep two EVs off-grid for 8 months/year. I have also made up two small lithium trailers (30kwh each) to bring the energy home to feed the excess to a pair of grid-tie inverters (total o/p 3kw). During the summer this will keep us off-grid for 95% of our home and transport needs. I have very limited opportunity for PV at home (at present 1.5kw). To try to extend the season I am increasing this to 3.3kw and adding a further 9kw at the airfield. PV costs are better than 50p/W at the moment and with self installation it is a good investment. My LFP cells cost about £100/kwh. As well as transporting energy these help to smooth out the variability of the UK sunshine.
Thanks for sharing the info on your set up. Sounds good! How do you get on with your EVs? It’s something we’ve talked about… 😊👍
@@The_OffGridFamily We have had a Kia Soul EV since July 2020 and a Tesla Model 3 LR since June 2021. We have no regrets. Both have good range (about 280 miles and 330 miles respectively) and good efficiency (4-5miles/kwh). The Tesla is the better car for a long trip with good navigation integrated with the supercharger network. The Kia is better for carrying bulky loads and significantly cheaper to buy. We specified a towbar for the Tesla (not retrofittable) to enable the use of a trailer. EVs might be significantly more expensive but you can save £1000- £1500/yr on fuel versus electricity and servicing. These savings are even bigger if you can allocate extra solar to transportation. When to jump into the EV market is generally driven by minimising the depreciation loss on the previous car but this was accelerated for us as we could use off-grid PV to provide free 'fuel'. Eventually there will come a point where the secondhand fossil car market will collapse. This will probably happen when the lease market moves totally over to EVs. In the meantime as waiting time increases on new cars some secondhand Teslas are fetching more than new prices.
We get basically zero from November into February. Do you have the panels pitched at a steep angle to accommodate the sun lower to the horizon?
No we don't have them at a steep angle, but if it is grey (which it definitely was this winter just gone!) we have read that a flatter angle is actually more optimal ☺️
Great info ! Bless you all 💜
Thank you 😊 Glad you found the video helpful 👍
Hi try a wind generator cud help
It’s somethings we’ve considered but at the moment we think an extra winter array will do the trick 😊 plus it seems difficult to get a turbine that’s compatible with our Victron Cerbo GX 😩
Of you could go back in time would you still set it all up yourself?
Yes without a shadow of a doubt ☺️ We have heard some interesting stories about installers in the UK and, after having been victim to 'professionals' with other projects (such as our borehole disaster!), we feel very strongly about doing things ourselves. However, we would insist that the batteries were checked and that firmware was updated before they sent them out as this has been an area of difficulty for us!
@@The_OffGridFamily Thanks for the reply!
Can you touch on how big the array is in kw and also battery capacity? You mention the inverters and arrangement a lot but not the basics of capacity so it’s sometimes difficult to contextualise the generation
Wow your lips looked blue, it must have been cold
You must think about increasing your panels and replacing the batteries with 100AH or 200AH batteries
I was thinking of piping my water into a rooftop tank that I can paint with the darkest black available on the market. So I get hot water with no heating costs? I'm not sure how I can plum that in alongside my normal setup though?
Are your batteries lithium? I have seen that they are not the best thing for just solar, as solar is just a weak power source they weaken the batteries , with victory measuring the voltage , I have found getting them up to 100% and then you can still carry on charging for hours on trickle , so they are not 100%
Lithium are suited for mega recharge quick charging ,
2 loads of washing and you'd be out of power , you have a life of power watching now ,
Yes our batteries are lithium. Under normal use and without any PV we can probably run for about 3 days from fully charged 😊
@@The_OffGridFamily how big is your bank, ? What do you run, do you have to plan to use items ,
We have 25.2kwh (23.6 usable) storage in our batteries. We run a fridge, 2x chest freezers, washing machine and tumble dryer without much thought about it all months apart from Dec-Feb. In winter we check our power before we use the washing machine and tumble dryer but most of the time we are ok. We have recently started using a bread maker and our electric kettle and the system has coped fine. We bought an air con unit this week so are trying that out at the moment. Our next video is actually on this and we will be looking at what appliances we can use at the same time. Should be out Sunday 5pm 😊
@@The_OffGridFamily what about cooking , ? All electric ? . But you cannot use all the high power units in winter , its about right I feel for the UK, and you cannot run the heating ?
So its not a green system as everything is either dug from the ground , got loads of chemicals. And so on.
Its a different way of living .
Yes we agree. When it comes to electricity we are off grid for two main reasons: We live a long way from the grid and thus paying to join didn’t make sense financially, and we like not being beholden to the tarifs. Parts of our lifestyle are environmentally friendly, such as the trees we have planted, but not necessarily the solar. We have a wood burner for fuel and cook using gas bottles. The boiler is gas also 😊