Haven't got the battery yet, despite ordering the system in the first week of October last year. Have got nominally 4.68kW of panels on a flat roof with a 3.6kW hybrid. Today the inverter is sitting at a steady 3.2kW and has been for over an hour. Most of it's going out to the grid as well. Just weighing up if it's worth getting a diverter and having lots of hot baths.
I wanna Battery! Waaah!
Yikes, thats some delay. Maybe get an extension lead and sell to your neighbours
I’m pushing over 3.3kw and chucking upto 2.8kw into the battery and crudely chucking energy into the hot water (4.5Kwh so far) and the battery is now full and the hot water is hot so is now chucking nearly all of the solar back to the grid.
I'm still learning about all this, can I confirm, we have the same basic setup, when the battery needs charging we can draw up to 6KW from the PV, once the battery is full that drops to 3.6kw, is that to be expected?
We're also not seeing the battery toping up that 3.6KW if we're drawing more power (for example plugging a car in), the PV provides 3.6KW and then it draws 4KW from the grid rather than the battery???? Is that because the inverter is only rated at 3.6KW?
Ta
Paul
mrand31 We waited from February 2021 to November 2021 to get the battery installed.
Pauljmiddleton
If it's a 3.6kW hybrid, then it can handle a maximum of 4.5kW from the solar panels. It can output or input a maximum of 3.68kW to/from the mains and charge/discharge a maximum of 2.6kW to/from the batteries. The batteries are limited to 0.5C i.e 1.2kW per 1.2kWh battery, 2.6kW per 5.2kWh battery etc.
The 5kW hybrid is exactly the same for the battery powers, but can coke with up to 6.5kW from the solar panels and handle 5kW in ot out of the mains.
The inverter should mix and match the solar, battery and mains powers to suit, within those limits. They also seem to be able to run at a bit more than 'rated' values for a while!
A comment on my initial post:-
I think it wasn;t the inverter clipping yesterday, just an odd conluence of sunshine, roof angles and timing that caused the solar panels to hold at an almost constant output from 11:30 to 13:00. Today being quite a bit cooler than yesterday and with a bit more breeze, the panels have been hiting 3.75kW as opposed to yesterday's 3.2 kW. That probably is the inverter's limit. 😀
Not sure I am just jumping on somebody else's post and should really be starting a new one but I guess it's still relevant in that it's helping to decide on batteries!
So when we've fully charged the batteries the Solar Power tails off to 3.6KW and just sits there, plugging in the car doesn't drain the battery, nor does having say the kettle and the oven on (using more than 3,6KW together). My assumption was that if the solar panels are running at 3.6KW the batteries could supplement the extra need, which doesn't seem to be happening, it's just drawing it from the grid.
Pauljmiddleton Hopefully I'm right here but the inverter has a maximum output of 3.6kW AC. If it's already maxed out at that capacity converting solar (DC) to AC out, then it won't have any spare capacity for draining the battery.
This would be why some customers have multiple inverters - a pair of 3.6kW inverters each with batteries would give you up to 7.2kW of AC output, and a max throughput of 5kW (2.5kW each) from the batteries.
The only time you should see "generation" figures much above 3.6kW would be (I think) when the battery is charging, since the battery and panels are both DC and thus the inverter doesn't have to do any work to shunt up to 2.5kW into the battery giving you a max figure of about 6.1kW.
If those more educated want to correct me please do, or let me know if I'm right!
That makes perfect sense to me, that's my assumption as well, 99% of the time it's not an issue so I'm not concerned, so long as it's doing what it should do 🙂
Our main EV charging is done overnight on GO, it's just on days like today when we generating enough PV electricity, it would be nice to use ALL that power to charge the car. 🙂
Thank you
@Pauljmiddleton
I know how you feel. I'm planning on adding a second battery next spring as we come off our fixed tariff in May 23. With 16kWh of storage I'd probably switch to Go rather than Agile, just for the more reliable pricing over winter when we'd be making most use of it.
Our stats show us still saving money on Go rather than Agile, but we're currently waiting on the certificates to allow feed in, so at the moment it's all wasted electricity. 🙁
No that's pretty much it.
The Hybrid 5 has a total DC capability of 7.6kW (5kW to AC and 2.6kW to battery at the same time - if you have enough panels screwed to it)
Once the batteries full it goes back to 5kW (including simultaneous battery discharge)
Thank you. Figured that was the case. 👍
hoggy I did no think or understand this was the case, but now I look back through my data I see that indeed the inverter solar output has been 5700W at one point while battery charging 2600w and house and grid export made up the rest. A most useful thing to understand - thank you!
Just to add this is why I stop my battery charging at more than 1kWh on Sunny days. Ok it forces more to the grid all the time, but ensures that it’s not at 100% during peak solar hours. In this way I can capture about 10% more energy overall. I have 6kW panels on a 5kW inverter on outgoing agile.
The rate may not be great, but better than clipping!
The hybrid inverters will let you use more that the rated value of generation if it's going to the battery.
I've got a 6kwp array and a HY5.0 inverter, if I set the battery charge rate down to around 1kw it means the battery is usually still charging when I'm getting above 5kw of generation.
Saves dumping the extra kw into waste heat at the inverter this way but it's micromanaging the system too.
yandards that’s interesting as we have the same setup and have both come to the same solution 👍