There’s probably a country song about driving a mini in Houston somewhere out there.
The metal on the panels is so thick, they can’t shape it. Hence the boxy shape. On the plus side, it’s bullet proof…
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And shark proof to 3 feet of water
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Bizarrely it’s probably now a better investment to get a battery before getting solar.
Just scunge from the free power and deploy from the battery.
Once V2L is easy, then your car will be the mobile battery to power your house. Top it up at work etc. power the house when you get home.
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I agree. Though I think you have to have some solar to get the rebate on the battery. I think you can get away with putting a tiny solar panel on.
I put a 9.25 kW solar PV array on the roof when we moved into our current house. That took around 4.5 years to pay for itself.
I just overspent on 48 kW of battery and upped the solar array to 15 kW total. I say overspent, because the SigEnergy is a bit more expensive than a couple other brands. I like some of the extra features, and the actual capacity is greater than the available capacity, so that you get more cycles out of it.
In any case, even getting a better quality unit, by time shifting free solar plus super cheap overnight power, it would pay itself off in about 4 years. If I’d bought the cheapest option, I could have pushed it closer to 2 year payoff.
Because I’ve also added an EV, I’d pay off the full battery, extra solar, and full purchase price of the EV in under 5 years. That makes it a significantly better return than investing the same money for an average return.
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This is bonkers
Obviously not everyone can afford this outlay, and renters are likely unable to go with this either.
but…this is where buying an ICE and doing nothing with your electricity set up just doesn’t make sense. The numbers speak for themselves pretty quickly.
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I got 42kw under my 6kw solar . I knee my sisktvwas under but wanted the bugger battery on the better rebate and just got that with a few days to spare . my little 6kw does very well but was always under so I was going to get more .
then I just tried a new plan with ovo for 4 hours free . game changer for now . day one got the 100 % easy with an hour to spare . day 2 almost got to 100 before the fere time .
this will defiantly remove the need to get extra solar for now . and if I had a extended range ev hybrid I reckon I could charge to at pretty easy too during the free time and still heat my water and charge the battery on a suny day . my bill will be 50 a month or there abouts but I’m pretty ok with that. the 5 grand I need to spend on extra solar would go a long way at 50 bucks a months.
I mean 50 bucks to run my house and 1 car car would be pretty decent
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You could probably go ‘off grid’ and be in a metro area, if you had an energy efficient house.
If the free power in the middle of the day works for you with OVO, then take a look at GloBird Zero Hero plan. It would take you 2 days to change over.
With GloBird, you can feed 3-4 kW of power into the grid between 6pm and 9pm, and effectively reduce the $1.41 daily connection fee to zero, so it would be free every month. And in Summer, you can feed a little more into the grid between 6pm and 9pm, and end up making around $30 per month.
OVO EV plan only works better for me because I have a high usage with EV charging and pool heating, and 6 people in the household, who are, between them, up most hours of the day, so my usage is very high.
that is my next move. I want to see how this goes first ..I just want a few months on this into summer . normally run ac most nights in summer so I want to make sure there is ample before I start selling it back . should be a good idea but not too fussed with 50 a month to be honest
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plus I reckon I’ll be charging a hybrid off this free power too by the end of the year so I want to see if that’s manageable
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I think glo bird was capping free at 8kw per hour which might end up breaking me a bit
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They used to be uncapped for 3 hours. Last I saw, they put a hard limit of 50kW total over the 3 hour period, which makes no difference if you’re on single phase, because the maximum you can use in 3 hours is 45kW, but stops people with 3 phase potentially using up to 3 x 45kW during the free 3 hour period.
yeah my inverter will do a max of 10 kw . before it’s full or getting near full it will.do a hard 10kw from the grid plus my solar to my house . then when it hits about 90*% it’s 10kw including the solar input. pretty smart actually.
so far my 42kw battery is topped back up to.100 in around an hour . I lose about 30 between usable sunlight and next grid charge so it’s a bit too easy now ill wait till summer till I decide what I do next
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Interesting. What brand?
The maximum I can import from the grid is 15kW. My SigEnergy gateway, when I’m importing power, first supplies power to whatever load is being drawn by the house, then whatever remains, up to 10kW goes through the 10kW inverter to the battery, plus whatever solar I have at the time, which goes straight from DC PV panels to the DC batteries, bypassing the inverter. I don’t know what its limit is yet, but if I have 8-9kW from the PV panels, I’ll get 18-19kW running into the battery, if the house is using less than 5kW.
I believe the SigEnergy 10kW inverter will feed up to double its capacity (20kW) from PV panels straight to the battery. Most brand inverters allow up to 130-150% inverter size in PV panels, but SigEnergy allows up to 200%
SigEnergy makes a 12kW inverter for single phase power, which I asked about with my installer, but apparently my energy supplier only allows up to 10kW inverter capacity per phase, of which, half is allowed to be fed to the grid, maximum.
I’d find the 12kW a whole lot more effective when I’m charging the car with the 7kW AC charger, as I only have 3kW capacity left for load before drawing from the grid. If I’d put the 22kW DC charger in, then I’d bypass the inverter for charging. But the inverter sits on top of the battery stack, and 6 is the maximum ‘things’ you can stack, so either 5 x 8kW (40kW) and a 22kW DC charger, or 6 x 8kW (48kW) battery and 7kW AC charger.
Once we get Vehicle to Storage and Vehicle to Load approval locally, and I have an appropriate EV with the same ability, then I’d happily reduce the battery capacity and add the 22kW DC charger, as I’d be also adding the EV capacity to the battery stack.
my installer said my 10 kw can double as well. what I see is when it’s force charging I see 10.9 kw from. the grid as charging and when the sun is pumping I see the solar at the icon for the panel and that usually matches say my hot water at the time , as my home is showing 4 or 5 kw when I know the hot water is drawing .
but later in the day, and I think it’s when my battery hits about 90 % I see the force charge and the solar are within the 10.
I hope that makes sense
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Looking for advice
Mrs hogalf is looking at electric cars for work purposes .
We have test driven the BYD Atto 3 .
Any other options around that size price range .
Thanking you in advance
have a look at upcoming xpeng lo3 . definalty on the money and loaded with tech. I’m waiting for this one . later this year . there is a lot of buzz around this
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If it was me personally, I’d be waiting to test drive the new BYD Atto 3 that is coming out in the next couple of months.
It is switching from FWD to RWD which will make the car much more fun to drive.
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It still seems to be a bit light on for range. Better than the current one though.