I'm trying to find out people who have Solar PV + AIO and how they have gone about it and is there anything to be aware of?
I'm trying to plan a new install with:
16 panels,
Solis 6kw inverter,
AiO,
Eddie
But is this wrong way to go about it and would I just e better of getting 9.5kw battery instead and a GV hybrid inverter?
Please share your thoughts as I sitting on the fence and although the AIO looks better on paper the 9.5kw might be better option?
We had an existing Solax invertor with 3.7kwh array and Zappi charger
Added AIO & Gateway, just wired the AC output from invertor to the gateway.
Does having 2 inverters cause any issues? Solex + built in one?
Doesn't seem too, just means converting from DC to AC to DC...
Its a shame the AIO doesn't have a direct input from the panels string.
Sorry for all the questions, but does the Solex deal with the Solar PV and topping up battery during the day and then after midnight it swaps to the cheaper tariff and uses the built in inverter?
max charge/discharge rates will be higher with AIO?
not a single right answer? e.g. do you have ashp?
with battery you will be forced to export excess more often? less of an issue these days with Octopus paying 15p for exports on fixed contracts. Also when importing at cheap rates on TOU tariffs the capacity may mean you cant completely fill the batteries at cheap rates - depends on inverter max throughput and battery capacity.
i have a 2021 install with 6.5kw solar, Gen1 5kw hybrid, 3 x 8.2kw batteries .. with ashp... if doing today I would definitely be targeting AIO
I have another property where we are building an extension with solar panels etc. Now exploring options. Assuming no DNO issues I hope to add 6.5kw panels & AIO. Checking if upgrade to more capacity available yet? obviously cheaper to install at start with zero vat .
Some people suggest Solaredge option with DC coupled is worth looking at partly because there are no DNO issues over capacity? and no (or less?) round trip losses? But i'm not sure what happens to excess production that can't be stored or used? In summer I would expect to produce more than we can use ourselves and batteries will be full regularly. Would we potentially be limited to say 3.5kw exports?
Hopefully its a non-issue anyway if we can get DNO agreement for higher exports!
SE battery is NMC on the single phase last I checked.
If you already have solar pv, does adding AIO require a separate MCS?
Bal I think MCS is only for solar. It'll need a DNO application though (before the project starts I believe!)
Bal I just had a long back & forth with installers (The Renewable Energy Company) about this, I originally wanted an AIO, but as I would have needed a separate PV inverter ended up going for a Hybrid and 9.5kW battery instead.
IMHO the all in one branding is misleading, as if you require separate additional hardware then it is not all in one!
anthonyangel If I understand correctly the AIO will do all the grid to battery and battery to grid - with big advantage of high charge/discharge rates and therefore whole home EPS... and much less wiring needed.
Depending on your needs a hybrid with 3.6kw(?) charge/discharge rate may - or may not - be the best solution!
As you say a PV inverter is needed for the PV solar output - But they are much cheaper and the saving on installation costs + advantages above still make AIO a very viable option for many
I have gone back and forth with number of installers and quotes.
It looks like I will be going with 16x Longi HiMo5 405W Panels (Integrated using GSE) 5kW Hybrid PV Battery Inverter + AIO including Gateway and will wait for the Givenergy Diverter instead of installing an Eddie now then replacing it later.
I think this will give me the most flexibility - Interested in any thoughts you guys may have?
I have tried to contact givenergy by phone a number of times as one installer informed me that he was advised not to use the givenergy inverter for the AIO but not been able to confirm.
From my understanding it will for now act like a dumb inverter and will just use CT Clamps to the AIO for readings?
Bal GE told me none of their inverters are compatible with the AIO you will need a DC inverter not a hybrid, the AIO has an inverter in it.
The inverter in the AIO cannot take Solar PV as I understand it? I need to speak to GE before I sign contract
Bal it's an AC inverter in the AIO, you will need a separate DC inverter (hybrid) like the 5kW you mentioned.
Just had 5kw Solis inverter and an AIO fitted with 19 panels on east / west split. You get 6kw charge and discharge with AIO - so we be charging cheap at night and selling at peak. Remember the string inverter is a fraction of the price of a hybrid, and unsure if a hybrid can discharge whilst still taking energy from the roof - as the two component system can with AIO. Just waiting on DNO approval, then I'll be onto Octopus flux. Already proven system can handle force charge and discharge - which is a great feature I've not seen on all systems. Just unsure about the extended warranty...
Make sure you get a LAN connection to both gateway and AIO, in addition to the com's cable. Keep em separate from AC cables too....
Just having mine commissioned as I type (fingers crossed) - 13 panels, GE Gen3 inverter, AIO and Gateway.
Thanks for the tip re LAN - installer was suggesting LAN to inverter alone would be enough given comms link between, so I'll ask them to LAN connect all three.
BlokeFromStoke Can I ask why Octopus Flux instead of Octopus Agile for import and export please? I heard some people use Intelligent / Go for winter, and then Flux / Agile for summer to get the best combo of cheap battery charging in winter, and a good return on export in the summer...
Also how do people control what happens based on pricing / timing of high/low tariffs? Is it done with the GE cloud / dashboard, or do I have to set this up with my own rules / settings via IFTTT?
One complication is that I have 10kWh of EV (can control via Wifi plug) to charge alongside the AIO - any tips / pointers on how to configure greatly appreciated.
26Left Hi there - not got any experience of EV charging - but the attraction of Flux is the high payment window between 4 and 7 - and you can empty your battery during this time with the schedule in the AIO. Not looked at Agile to be honest - do they have high rates for export?
26Left cool - make sure the Gateway firmware gets updated to version 5...
26Left ... and the gateway LAN cable needs an inline RJ45 female to female adapter to connect to the black network cable inside the bottom left of the unit - it does not plug into the LAN port....
BlokeFromStoke ... and make sure they secure the WiFi networks on AIO and Gateway - by default, they are open to the world!
BlokeFromStoke
The RJ45 adaptor is supplied with the gateway, interestly I had issues when trying to LAN on PCB rather than the black hanging cable.
26Left I've been wondering for a while about using different tariffs winter/summer. Does Octopus allow this? Also, it took them months to change my tariff after I switched to them so I'm not sure this would work any way?
Cheers, Mike...
BlokeFromStoke my system being fitted as I type. 20 panels, Solis inverter, plus another Harvi! Will mention LAN and secure wifi, thanks for the tips.
Just switched to Flux - and have setup 40% state of charge on overnight cheap rate @ 2000Watts (keep charge slow) - this should only kick in if I've not enough residual power from the day before. Next stage is to await my export notification...
Yes had a 35min call with Octopus yesterday and they were super helpful. The chap there said he knows of (PV + Battery + EV) customers who use Intelligent or Go in the winter for cheap overnight charging, and either Agile or Flux in the summer to get the best export rates.
Switching between tariffs every 6 months is fine - provided you don’t choose Tracker which l you can’t rejoin for 6 months or so.
My summary of what I’ve found out so far (not all of these tariffs are marketed from their home page - as they are in “beta” mode, but if you Google for the brand and tariff name they’re the first hits to come up):
Last time I checked using the historic prices available, I’ll be better off using Agile for import/export during summer months. I’m ineligible for Intelligent as I don’t have the supported EV car/charger, so will be best off on Go during the winter, when I can schedule car and battery to charge from grid overnight.
HTH
26Left how was /is your AIO running in period going, my team finish about 6pm, battery now drawing heavily from the gird as it passes 60%! Is this normal commissioning behaviour, is it just bedding in? Anyone know.
Jase1703 Perfectly normal.
The batteries fully drain to the grid, then fully charge from the grid as part of commission.
@"ProximusAl" many thanks for confirming that, doesn’t leave me much headroom tomorrow for my first day at solar school haha. Need to get my exporting strategy sorted fast.
ProximusAl Mine didn't but GE said that the calibration was done Shrug
Commissioning was buggy for me, took over a day.
Jase1703 installer ran out of time so coming back to commission Thursday…
The commissioning process needs to be looked at to streamline, and reduce the time it takes... seems to be quite an issue for many.
Be nice if the installer could do it pre delivery once they know which battery and gateway go together.
26Left Thank you for taking the time to lay all of that out. Appreciate it.
Cheers, Mike...
Placing my order today and
94jdh This what we will be doing and placing order today. However my install will be a good few months away as house is under full refurb and having extension done.
Bal Fingers crossed GE have a more robust commissioning process and their staff are better trained on it. The last two days have been an absolute farce, with conflicting instructions from GE tech support and what now appears to be a bricked Gateway and and offline AIO following a bad firmware update.
One thing that was let slip on the phone to me and my installer yesterday re your kit and ordering: I appear to have paid for more of an inverter than necessary. I have a GE Gen3 hybrid 5.0, when a "string inverter" would have been sufficient with the AIO & GW. Seemingly the inverter, AIO and GW can't all live on the same GE account anyway, so any benefit of having all GE kit talking to each other appears non-existent. The suggestion is that it would allow me to connect an extra battery unit off the Inverter at a later date, but I don't see why I'd want to do that when I should be adding to the AIO to get more backup for the house.
AFAIK my kit is wired as follows - but it suggests to me that a cheaper inverter (non GE?) would have been fine in this setup.
All-In-One (AIO)
BATTERY
||
GRID <==> SMART METER <==> GATEWAY --> HOUSE
^
|
HYBRID <==> (Option to add extra
INVERTER BATTERY here?)
^
|
PV ARRAYYes, a basic (no hybrid) invertor should work with the AIO/gateway. I have a simple solax invertor, connected directly to the gateway.
The AIO software/app just sees it as a solar input, so can tell it apart from grid supply, so knows what to charge the battery from, depending if I choose "solar" or "solar and grid" on the app.
thanks for the update, my install will probably be around 6month away so hopefully the firmware and commission issues will be ironed out.
I 100% agree could have got away with cheaper string inverter but was hoping to get away from multiple apps and also different support paths.
However from what you are saying it appears that AIO + GW has to be on one sign on and the inverter on another which is daft. Also why would you add another battery to the inverter surely the whole point of the AIO is you can add another AIO or 9kw battery etc?
Bal Finally have it all working as of yesterday. Avoid LAN if you can - it seems very temperamental to say the least, and it took a lot of rebooting, dip switch setting and sequencing of different devices to get it to work. The stock response from every technician I spoke to was to first put the boxes back into wifi mode...
26Left LAN was easy here, switch the battery/inverter off, flip the correct switch and connect lan cable and when it was turned on it was pretty much instantly picked up on network, same with Gateway (assuming correct LAN connection was used which in my case was a female/female block for the hanging RJ45 inside the gateway rather than the port on board).
Aside from the 4-5 jumps in 5m data at intervals during the day and the 1h 15m gap where despite working inverter data went MIA its been a lot better than wifi but that isnt saying much since the antenna wasn't installed during my install.
I've had problems with data gaps most days and most people suggest its due to the wifi connections and recommend LAN instyad. I'm pretty sure its not due to weakness of the wifi signal as the data starts and stops at the same time as our heating tariff is turned on and off by our radio telemeter. The current suggestion is that this might be causing interference with the wifi signal. Its odd as some days its all OK with no data loss whereas other days I might loose 8 or 16 hours of data. I've now installed powerline adaptors and waiting for the installer to come back and set up LAN connections to these instead. The data transfer rate on these is only slightly better than wifi but hoping that a LAN connection might be less susceptible to whatever is causing the data losses.
Yes you need an inverter to convert the DC from PV to the AC All in One.
Install here is a mess.
Compounded by installer leaving the Gateway (which we had connected to the AIO) in running mode.
So 4hrs later the battery gives up the ghost ..... surprise as it has no feed into it yet.
Support all gone home as it was 7pm so I used the "Don't touch" Divert switch. Been running that way for the last 3 days whilst they finish off the delayed roof solar and try and get it talking together again.
Tomorrow could be interesting as I am not convinced they have a clue at either GE support or the installer. Neither am I sure they will be able to get the AIO working with no puff in its batteries.
IanSm Sounds somewhat similar to my experience. Couldn’t commission Gateway due to a firmware / LAN issue. After a few days the AIO starts a continuous beeping so I switch it off. After a power cut the house is totally isolated so have to put Gateway into bypass mode to restore power to the house.
GE engineer came out (after several weeks) and swapped out the AIO batteries. Installer was then able to complete commissioning of the Gateway and AIO. Been a few weeks now and appears to be working correctly, although I’ve not been brave enough to simulate a power cut to see how it behaves.
26Left Just for a positive note, my AIO and Gateway have coped perfectly and transparently for power cuts, one of which was extended and very "severe" as it was whilst the Octopus engineer was fitting the smart meter, completely disconnecting mains wiring coming into the house. Both the solar PV and the AIO continued powering the house the whole time without even a flicker of the lights.
Had my AIO & Gateway installed and working now for a week. Good pair with a 5kw Solax inverter. All in all it does what it is supposed to do.
Best feature by far is the 6kw charge and discharge option, compared to most Hybrid systems that can only handle 3.6kw. This means cooking time in the evenings does not draw from the grid at all.
Also, simulated power outage by flicking the grid circuit breaker puts it into EPS mode with no hassles.
My issues atm:
All in all happy with the hardware, but the firmware and data reporting really needs urgent attention from GE.
Tim Adams Was curious you mentioned about having an ASHP which would change electricity requirements of the home especially during the seasons.
If you could build your system from scratch now, what would be the setup (solar, inverter, battery, brand/ecosystem)?
Midlandterrier Broadly I would go for a setup that included all the elements of:
solar, inverter, battery, ashp, EDV charger!
I would maximise the solar while about it... covering any available South, West or East spaces ... up to DNO maximum... and my budget!
I would ensure eps (emergency power supply) was part of mix - ideally with capability for automated switchover but bearing in mind that if you draw a lot (e.g. ashp and/or ev) then battery and inverter capacity is a factor. Something like Givenergy AiO will suit most people maybe? Tesla is good ... but expensive? Solaredge also have an offer afaik.
but i have no big views on brands etc. I'm not sure there are any I would avoid? More about cost and faith in the installer perhaps?