North Facing Solar Panels in the UK - a Waste of Money? April 2024 stats and review.
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- čas přidán 28. 07. 2024
- Big thanks to Dorset Solar Solutions Ltd for an excellent installation. Definitely give them a call if you're in the Hampshire/Dorset area, let them know that you've seen my videos!
www.dorsetsolarsolutions.co.uk/
g.co/kgs/RJPVJw1
Here are the numbers for you to chew over!
You're welcome to make up your own mind and let me know in the comments!
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My Setup
Sunsynk 8.8kW Inverter
Longi HiMo 6 430w Panels x 22
16 on NW aspect and 6 on SE aspect
No battery storage - Věda a technologie
Wow that NW facing array is doing surprisingly well. Maybe closer to west than north? Great vid! Really nice to see someone sharing some real numbers.
Observing the shade at 3:08 and the final position at 4:45 I couldn't help but think there might be a few extra units to be found by mounting it a few cm further to the right.
But seriously happy for your numbers. My best day in April was 30th on a south facing roof. Looking forward to seeing how you get on in May
Thanks for the comment!
Yes, I'm very pleased with the performance so far!
The array is pretty much exactly NW, just 1 degree north of perfect NW orientation.
The SE facing panels are pushed to the right as much as is practicable. Less than the 400mm safety margin suggested by MCS.
May performance was also excellent!
I'll start working on the video this week in the evenings.
Fantastic video series, thanks for this. (There's a great video on YT by Martyna in Dallas with real world tests showing no benefit of optimisers vs panel bypass diodes with hard shading i.e. gables, buildings etc.)
Thanks, I do like her videos!
So my first full month with the East 8 panel 3360w/ West 10 panel 4200w solar and we made 587Kwh exporting 154Kwh of it and the battery's taking 238Kwh and house taking 194Kwh of it. We had one day when the battery's fell short and had to import 4Kwh till the solar picked up two real dark days in a row knocked the 19KW battery's down. All in all a bad month solar wise the weather was bad for the month hear in Devon predictor for the month was 700Kwh so a short fall of 113Kwh made in the month. But I'm happy with how the Givenergy system is working
Hi, thanks for the hard data and your experience.
I guess just more panels is the answer when there is just a lack of sun!
Maybe an additional ground based array may be possible and cheap to do.
Take care and keep on going M.
Thanks for sharing!
difference in generation may be a couple of things: your SE panels won’t be as efficient as pure south, and the NW will be more efficient than pure north, so it’ll bring the numbers closer. Also in winter with low sun you’ll probably get closer to that 2:1 with the low sun. But also you’ll still get benefits of overcast (and your optimisers may come into their own)
I have issues with stating they're less or more efficient because the most benefit from panels is obtained from aligning your production with your use. So if you wake up in the morning with sunrise and make breakfast or whatever with morning south east sun you're getting big benefit from it. Then you're off for work and come back in the afternoon when the sun is in the south west. Yes overall you produce more energy throughout the day but without sources of flexibility like timed heating with a heat pump or a home battery (or car... if it's not at work) those are great but just a pure panel install I would almost always rather have south east and south west facing panels. Middle of the day peak production will just be wasted for a lot of people and the difference is really marginal. Can't sell for practically anything in a lot of places back to the grid either.
Yes, great points!
Short and sweet. 15p per kWh seems like a steal for export. At what point in the year do you have enough power to cover heat pump needs? I believe that "Tim & Kat's Green Walk" said that it was March when that happens for them.
It's definitely interesting to use Octopus Agile for import as it's possible to optimise some of the loads during the day. I considered Flexible Outgoing for export but as I can't really control when I export, I decided to go with fixed.
I have recently installed 7 440W panels on a SW roof in London and a Tesla battery. I am using the battery to avoid paying for peak power. Overall, as far as I can tell, it makes less than 10% difference in the financial returns. If you have limited capital, I wouldn't bother with a battery.
EDIT: the issue with batteries is that there is usage cost. Let's say the battery system (including inverter) costs £5000, is 10kWh is size, is charged once a day (365), every day (assuming a full charge) and has a lifetime of 10 years, with no degradation or other system losses. That's £5000 / ( 10 * 365 * 10) = £0.14. So, per kWh, that's 14p.
Given that you can export a kWh at 15p, 15p is your opportunity cost. It's worthwhile discharging if you can do so for at least (14p + 15p) 29p per kWh. For Octopus Agile this is normally only between 4pm and 7pm. So the battery should be sized for the peak load only, in my view.
In the winter, it's possible to charge the battery in the middle of the night for a slightly lower cost. Let's not forget that energy prices are still high by historic standards (even though they are less than they were recently).
Totally agree! And that's with you being generous to the battery in your quick illustration.
I set out on this journey thinking I should size the battery to cover all loads, throughout the whole year.
Now if you take the holistic view, it only makes sense to have a smaller battery to cover peak loads.
When the delta between rates was higher then the savings for a battery were also higher.
On the HP being covered by generation, that happened in March quite easily for us.
Love your solar videos - it’s been an inspiration for me as I move house and starting to plan a system. Thanks!
That's good to hear!
We generally have 3 at home most days, so use is high for us so in April we used 925.4kWh including Home use, cooking, ASHP (for Heating and DHW) and EV in which that was 1000 miles travelled.
Solar generated 592.2kWh and 164kWh exported.
Thanks for sharing!
We’ve been 10-30% below solar pv average forecast for our system since installation late Sept 2023. Looking at production it’s simply not getting the sunlight, cloudy & rainy, bit of sunlight & it performs above forecast quite nicely. So hoping it can only improve, although with global climate forecast it might not! However, my headline stats are last April our gas/elec £191, this year elec (gas gone, heat pump & EV charging, increased standing charge!) April £22. So still happy. For us our home battery (just 10kw) has really helped offset Winter peak hr costs, in total all bills against grid used meant 13.5p per grid KW. Essentially offsetting 7.5p overnight to save peak daytime 28p, because we have used substantially more KW with EV & HP. But saved massively on driving & house heat/hot water costs.
All good things! Well, the second half of your comment. First half kind of sucks, but we have to make the best of a bad situation.
Been enjoying watching your videos as we're considering solar too. I saw you did research into the inverter but did you do the same for the different panel manufacturers? I want N-type IBCs but the different manufacturers have greatly different pricing so wondering if you looked into why and what you chose. Cheers!
I did go down the rabbit hole of researching specific panel technologies and manufacturers.
After a lot of getting into the weeds of it all, I decided just to go with the best bang for buck.
A lot of the hype around certain technologies and manufacturers does not seem to be verified by any real world data.
I could be very wrong.
Since my installation, i've had a nose around a wholesalers with a proper solar geek, good luck if you can spot any difference between SunPower, Trina, JA, Longi, Jinko, REC, Canadian Solar...apart from the price.
The general feeling I got from some super nerds was that 10 or even 5 years ago, panel selection was quite important but these days even the worst panels are better than the very best panels of 2 years ago.
We're spoilt for choice.
@@UpsideDownFork thanks, appreciate the info and reply! That's the sense that I'm getting too which is a big relief. Think I'm just going to pick something with a longish warranty and good price then!
Interesting video, espacially the figures for when in the day you are starting and stopped generation. In your example of the 21st April, we started getting power at 6:15am and finshed at 19:45 and we have a 16 south, 10 east and 10 west panels with a SolarEdge inverter. It could be location in the country, we have 05:51 as sun srise and 20:18 as sun set, I just wonder if the north face panels are getting "earlier" and maybe later light. April 2024 yield was 982KWh and our best yield was April 2020 with 1342KWh. As you can see there is a massive difference. I know that our east and west help at the beginning and end of the day, but I am now wondering if the north west face is helping with the yield for your installation.
SolarEdge does not start up until the power reaches a certain level, and will also cutout at a certain level at the end of the day. I have a 4 kW SE system (panels at 30 degrees), and a Victron 4.74 kW system (panels at 10 degrees), the Victron system always starts much earlier. Today the Victron system started just before 5:30, at 5:30 it was 20w. The SE system didn't start until a full hour later, when it kicked in with 188w, whilst the Victron was at 141w. In the winter months I've seen days with zero generation from SolarEdge because it simply doesn't get up to the startup voltage.
@@TheRonskiman My SolarEdge array installed Aug 23 starts producing at 4W and ends at 8W 😎 according to my graphs.
@@BassPunk Mine was installed in 2015, so an old inverter and different model. I'm also using an ET112 energy meter which measures the power coming from the inverter to the consumer unit, this is linked into my Victron system. Even the SolarEdge dashboard shows generation starting up at 6:30 this morning with 197w.
Thanks for sharing!
Would love to see the imported Kwh's in the monthly tables
Thanks for idea!
I thought it might be interesting to run this hot water idea past you/channel. While waiting for my export tariff (discovered need to apply rather late) I’ve been watching my huge daytime exports & wondering how to utilise, so I’ve been boosting hot water midday. It often takes just 30-40mins going to 4-6kw, this is covered between our peak 4-4.5kw solar & battery able to cover 2.9kw. It’s free in essence. Clearly the HP system in heat of midday is more efficient too, so just wondering shouldn’t hot water setting in Summer be midday rather than cheap overnight (cooler)? Pondering.
Yes, it's a good idea! It doesn't work for my schedule particularly well and because I've got export at 15p, I can always do the hot water cycle at less than that rate overnight.
Granted it's cooler in the middle of the night so the HP does need a little more power to get there.
I did an OpenSolar illustration of the exact same components that DSS have quoted me for, and their quote seems very competitive! Did you find that OpenSolar overestimated the costs?
Also are your spreadsheets available to download?
I found Dorset Solar Solutions were competitively priced and offered excellent value for money compared to other quotes.
I don't have any fancy spreadsheets. It's all a bit disjointed at the moment, but i'll try to make time to clean it all up and make it available for sharing.
Tigo optimised power: Is what you're getting from the Tigo's the DC power and the inverter gives you the AC power after conversion losses?
You're onto something here. It seems so obvious now you've said that. How did I not notice this before?!
It also means that my NW array is performing even better than I anticipated, relative to the SE array.
Thanks for commenting!
1:15 April was "duller" than previous April's and this is shown in many peoples solar figures. Your system bucked the trend of predicted generation because dull overcast days have more scattered light. Your North facing array would have performed better overall than on days with Full on sunlight.
I have 11.4kw of solar (Ground mounted, multiple inverters) 9.8kw South facing with morning shade and 1.6kw west facing.
April generation was 952kwh and 650kwh exported. Less than 150kwh imported.
Shropshire, UK
4.95kw of solar (south facing) on my sunsynk inverter generated 440kwh in April 2024.
April 2023 the same array generated 482kwh all tigo optimized. So approx 10% down. Year on year
3:29 I also have a sunsynk inverter and tigo optimizers.
The figures reporter by tigo cloud are DC at the panel (optimiser) level.
The figures on the sunsynk for generation are dc but after the mppt algorithm has found the best power points which I feel sometimes work against the optimizers.
Are your panels half cell? If so, does your sunsynk have the MPPT-Multi power point scanning option under advanced settings?
On my 8kw inverter it's under advanced but this feature appeared with firmware version M.5.3.8.6 / S.1.5.1.5 / C.E.4.3.8
Mppt multi power point scanning is also known as GLOBAL Power point scanning. Rather than the mppt scanning the typical range on the IV curve where the algorithm normally expects the max power point to be... it scans the full curve. If you have half cell panels or optimizers (dc buck converters) which sacrifice voltage to increase current.... its possible the max power point for a string with partial shading could lie lower in the IV Curve than the standard "local scanning" algorithm would expect so global scanning would find that sweet spot.
The downside with global scanning is some poor implementations of it can lead to the mppt algorithm spending more Time looking for a better max power point than is actually needed and so the mppt spends less time at max power point and costs you in generation.
I personally haven't noticed a big difference with the feature enabled but days are so variable its hard to compare.
3rd May I generated 8.5kwh all day.
6th May I generated 65kwh all day.
Thanks for sharing your experience! I've now enabled 'MPPT Multi-Point Scanning' and will monitor it this week.
@@UpsideDownFork post back or better still, do a video in a week or two to see if there's any difference.
Our first April figures are 885kwh from 15 x SW (6.5kw) + 9 x SE (3.9kw) facing pnels, 10kw solaredge system in West Yorkshire. Best day 30th (67kwh!) Worst 22nd (10kw) Had a few days when the wifi extender was on the blink but its sorted now so May's should be more accurate. I think Givenergy under reports and solaredge over reports so going with the lowers figures. Exported 450kwh, consumed 594kwh. Our installer dropped the ball with export mpan so hope to get that sorted soon as we have enough paperwork and have asked octopus to get it for us. Anyway we hope to hit our first 1Megawatt month in May too. 👍
Nice! 67kWh is a great result!
Hi, so what happens if you produce more $$ than you consume? Do you get credited to your bank account or it just stays as credit with Octopus?
I'm building up credit to use throughout the winter.
My total for April was 907 kWh, compared to last April which was 966 kWh, that's with 8.74kW of panels pointing various directions. For me the best month is usually May, last year it was 1325 kWh, June was 1305, July 1069 and August 1078.
Thanks for sharing! You're not down as much as some of the other commentors.
@@UpsideDownFork that's because I'm in the sunny south east 🌞
I thought that I was doing well making £45 in April! 11 panels on my roof, 5 to the SE and 6 to the SW.
That's nothing to sniff at!
5kW SSE array in Stratford-upon-Avon.
Per panel in Apr I got 48.6kWh compared to your SE panels getting 50kWh.
My best day also 30th getting 38.8kWh compared to your 42.7kWh.
My total in Apr was 583kWh compared to your 893kWh.
Filling my north roof eventually when next gen panel tech arrives seems logical ☀️
Thanks for sharing!
What wattage are your panels? Am I potentially generating more per panel because of my 430W panels? Or my 30 degree angle?
@@UpsideDownFork 415W Trina Tallmax, 32 degree tilt.
430x0.965 =415 😆
How about adding a small battery to get you through the evening peak? We have a 6.4kW battery and that covers the evening peak for us. However, now that Gary Does Solar explained it to me, I do like it when the import and export rates match and the grid becomes a giant battery; very interesting and I'd never understood that before... so, we won't be upgrading our batteries for the time being. Agile Fixed Export is 15p and the average import is about the same.
Right now, the sums look good for sticking with no battery at all.
Bonus is that I don't get the standby losses that a battery system has.
Winter figures will be different for sure and the battery could REALLY come into its own for 4 months of the year.
Thanks for the comment. I'm continuing to monitor and evaluate my next steps...and saving some cash for an EV!
@@UpsideDownFork I'd be interested in hearing you views on EVs. We have panels and batteries, so we're in the pounds seats for an EV, but I'm particularly worried about longevity and resale prices... it'd only take a battery manufacturer to come-up with a battery that holds twice as much or charges in half the time or weighs half as much, and a present-day EV would look like a white elephant. I'm considering leasing an EV rather than buying. Where are you at?
@@timminsit Because of the economies of scale, any emerging battery technology will take several years until it makes it into EVs. I don't have my finger firmly on the pulse with battery chemistry and technology but I do keep up to speed somewhat.
I'm looking to get a family car for a 5 year lifecycle.
I don't think we'll see any massive jumps in the next 5 years.
Of course, there will be iterative improvements, but if you have a look at the 2019 Kie e-niro which is now 5 years old, it had a range of 282 miles.
The current crop of new vehicles isn't much further ahead.
Working in the automotive sector, we have plenty of advocates and sceptics of EVs but the evidence is clear, they are more reliable and cheaper to run.
@@timminsit I'll also add that I personally think we'll see continued adoption of 800V architecture as seen in Hyundai Ioniq 5 etc. This facilitates extremely fast charging and also means smaller gauge cables needed in the vehicle, so weight savings to be had.
This will be a big win for those who don't have home charging or very regularly do long trips, bringing the experience closer to fuelling an ICE vehicle.
We'll also see a lot of legacy brands further optimising their drivetrain and software calibration to achieve greater efficiency to keep up with Tesla, Hyundai & Kia.
Currently a lot of the mainstream established brands have efficiency in the 2 m/kWh range, which isn't great when Tesla and the Koreans are comfortably in the 4's.
Everyone would notice a big difference if they went from a 20mpg petrol car to a 40mpg petrol car, as i'm sure many people will be happy to jump from their 2m/kWh Audi e-trons into the next generation of more efficient vehicles.
It's one of the reasons that Tesla owners are so fanatical about the ownership experience because they truly do cost peanuts to run.
If our car was my primary means of transport, I would have changed a few years ago as it would have given greater carbon and financial savings compared to a heat pump or solar panels for example.
@@timminsit Finally, on the longevity front. The vehicles that seem to suffer battery degradation and other such issues as they are aging are those that have passively cooled batteries, like the Nissan Leaf for example. Most modern ones that have active cooling/heating take very good care of the cells and have great longevity.
Packs are also becoming serviceable now by a handful of specialists, so if a cell goes out of tolerance for the BMS, garages can drop the pack and just replace a single cell. In the past it was a full new pack. The i-pace is probably the worst offender for this based on my personal exposure to the industry. For a long time, JLR were replacing full packs under warranty because of some weak LG chem battery cells. The warranty cost was in the region of £30k.
Now some specialists are repairing the packs out of warranty at a cost of £1-2k.
I have some quite intimate knowledge of the EQC as I used to work for Mercedes Benz during it's development, knowing some of the people involved in it's roll out.
That has proved to be far more reliable than they ever anticipated and the only bits that fail are the parts shared in common with it's GLC stablemate, so non-EV specific.
Depending on your anticipated lifecycle of your next car and your needs around size etc, you can pick up an EV on lease for under £200/month, which depending on your current vehicle and your mileage, the fuel savings may almost pay for itself if you already have solar/battery and smart tariffs working for you.
948 kWh April 2023, 842 kWh April 2024. 8.2kW installed WSW facing.
Thanks for sharing! 12.5% decrease from your data.
I have: 5.18kWp array, 5kW Inverter, 5kWh battery , based in the midlands
April 2024 I generated 450kWh
April 2023 I generated 511kWh
So 12% lower this year compared to last year
Thanks for sharing! Another commentor was also 12.5% down compared to last year.
Im on Intelligent Go hich i want to stay on because we have 2 EVs, i alo have a FIT deemed solar 50% export, currenly paying 6.8p/kwh i also have a 9.5kwh battery. Question.. is it possibl to forgo the deemed export and have my export paid for by Octopus @ 15p/kwh? Whether its worth it is another Q of course, we export very little in winter but eg last month we exported 74kwh which will increase massively over the summer.
Ah, I've just answered my own question.. it seems if you're on Go then they only offer a lite version of Outgoing, paying 8p per unit instead of the full 15p/ unit, so not worth doing in my case. I'll stay on deemed export, which rate actually goes up with inflation every year.
@@MikeGleesonazelectricsif you’re on intelligent Go it’s 15p as that’s what I am on. I believe it’s lower on standard Go.
Yes you can forego the deemed export and be paid for what you export by Octopus, easy choice for me as I always exported more than 50% over the year and now have a second system installed and export masses of electric.
Agree that intelligent go can get the fixed export at 15p.
@@UpsideDownFork we’re extremely fortunate to have got 2 powerwalls with our 9kW (6kWp) solar in Feb 2020. Apart from mid- winter we’re buying everything at 7.5 p and selling everything at 15p. We’ve gone from self using 75% of our generation to exporting over 90%. The way tariffs are changing it’s good to have flexibility to take the best advantage.
i was going to buy my council house with right to buy £50600 house is worth 135k ish but my mum as bed credit and she the one getting the discount so she needs to apply for mortgage with me so we cant so would u still put solar panel on a council house if they let me i will i have £30k in December i can take out my fix saving and i have £7.5k in my bank atm
I'm afraid I can't offer you financial advice on that.
Good luck whatever you do.
@@UpsideDownFork are solar panel much better then they was 5 or 6 years ago
@@deanwhittle1301 yes 👍
@@UpsideDownFork 3385kWh in the past 365 days it says we use so is that alot
@@deanwhittle1301 that is above average but so many factors that can change this.
5:34 Actually the south panels produce 50% more electricity, 33% points, which I'd say is a lot
Hi, it is, but most don't have the ability to install in the best direction.
So its surprising that the other directions still make so much, on what would normally not be used roofs.
Take care M
We have to make the most of what we have I guess!