As we approached the ultimate levels of our construct within the spring of 2020, we needed to reduce our Photo voltaic PV plans to remain inside price range. Roll on 3 years and we now have panels on the roof and a battery within the storage.
We thought-about one other south going through floor mount system, like we had at our earlier home, however in the long run settled for a system on our roof. The Solarwatt glass/glass panels are on the east and west going through roof on the rear of the home, above the storage.
The myenergi libbi Battery
The ultimate piece of the jigsaw for our all-electric home was a home battery. Photo voltaic is nice, but when you find yourself exporting many of the power your system produces then it is going to be much less helpful. The libbi battery gives someplace to retailer it till you might be prepared to make use of it.
The myenergi libbi is a photo voltaic inverter and battery storage system multi function. Its largest benefit is integrating every part within the myenergi ecosystem (Zappi and Eddi) all beneath the management of a single app.
Battery modules are available in 5 kWh packs (4.6 kWh usable) and you may set up 1,2,3 or 4 packs for five to twenty kWh relying in your wants and price range. Costs begin round £5,500 for the inverter, controller and a 5 kWh battery.
On the brightest days in June, the system was in a position to energy the home in idle mode, while on the identical time filling our 10 kWh battery by round 2:30pm. The remainder of the day’s spare era can be utilized with the good myenergi Zappi to cost the automotive.
In the dead of night months the battery can be utilized to maneuver a few of our power buying to the cheaper night time fee (at present 15p / kWh for us) as a substitute of in the course of the day (at present 35p / kWh). You may setup your tariff particulars within the app to permit the system to cost from the grid on the least expensive instances.
First Month Comparability
Within the first full month the system was working (June 2023) it generated 604.5 kWh. We had a self consumption fee of 86%, exporting 83 kWh. Listed here are the figures for comparability to final 12 months;
June 2022
Day Price – 655 kWh (63.7%)
Night time Price – 373 kWh (36.3%)
Whole – 1,028 kWh (100%)
June 2023
Day Price – 94 kWh (26.1%)
Night time Price – 266 kWh (73.9%)
Whole – 360 kWh (100%)
Our whole month-to-month power use has fallen just a little (14% from final June). This June was a very sunny month and the Photo voltaic system helped us scale back the power we pulled from the grid by 65% total. The day / night time ratio was reversed too, seeing practically three quarters of that import on the less expensive night time fee.
COSTS – By way of cash, 2022 (utilizing todays costs) would see a invoice of £285.98. June 2023 truly has a web price to us £61.32 (together with the earnings from our export). That’s a saving of round £225 in month one, though this may even most likely be the perfect month of the 12 months when it comes to photo voltaic era.
The Future
A giant improve I’d wish to see can be some type of automation so the system would resolve how a lot, if any, power is required to be bought by the battery in a single day, by predicting the photo voltaic radiation for the approaching day.
By way of power, Final 12 months we used 15MWh which is a median of 41 kWh per day and we intention to cut back that this 12 months with the photo voltaic era, though it was put in in late Could so we missed out on the spring sunshine this 12 months.
The battery will proceed to permit us to maneuver extra of our utilization onto the night time tariff, time shifting some extra of the warmth pump use. Whereas 10 kWh isn’t lots in the case of house heating in winter, and there are a lot bigger photo voltaic and storage methods round, we’re more than happy with the myenergi libbi and we nonetheless have the choice so as to add one other 10 kWh to this method sooner or later.
Because of the workforce from Photo voltaic Energy NI who put in your entire myenergi libbi system