Solar... who's clued in?

fjohn860

Alice in diaperland
Our 2 person household is similar.

I've got a few solar quotes to either add a second system to complement our 12-ish year old existing system or just remove and replace everything. I've spent the last 4-6 weeks trying to convince the wife that we should spend the money. Her thoughts are we might only be living in this house until 2029 (planning on travelling around Aus for a year or so, then possibly moving into a different house in our return).

Screenshot_20230726_081142.jpg
 

silentbutdeadly

has some good things to say
Thats the term I was looking for, energy audit. Need someone who knows what they are doing. We have stuff on controlled load tariffs etc.

Our house is all windows, so not going down the double glazed path as it will cost an absolute fortune. We recently had all the windows tinted, every single light changed to led. Our hws is due to be replaced soon. All the pumps we have are non-variable, so will be replaced as they die.



Yeah, this is a snapshot from the Origin dashboard:

View attachment 401394



We have the AC set to come on early morning to get rid of the condensation in winter. Last winter it was really rainy and humid, we ended up with mould and replaced an entire house worth of window furnishings. Not keen on repeating that!

During summer we actually hardly use the aircons, just fans - we are up on a ridge, its breezy and the house wraps around the pool in a u-shape. The guy we bought it off is an architect and told me he designed it that way to capture the breeze across the pool to cool it down before it enters the house. Actually works.

Extra fridge non-negotiable - it's my beer fridge!

The dryer - gets used on rainy days or when we need something in a hurry.

It's a fair whack of consumption, however we are both at home all the time if that makes any difference.
Blimey...we use a tenth of that. No solar system is going save you on its own.
Start here with these guys https://renew.org.au/what-we-do/energy-consult/
 

MasterOfReality

After forever
As long as I can halve my bill I'll be happy.

It is a large house on acreage, 5 bed 3 bath, pool etc, 2.7 - 3 m ceilings, floor to roof windows etc. Its a monster to run.

5 person family, although kids at school during the day.
 

Scotty T

Walks the walk
Sigh, I haven't even looked at our bills because we do a direct deposit that always leaves credit there for many years now, but I know the small solar system has stopped 47.38 tonnes of CO2 entering the atmosphere.

Australia has the largest houses in the world on average. Solar can't fix that. There's a lot of talk lately about generational housing, co-housing, and developments on existing properties, we need to embrace those ideas and promote them.

Sadly most Aussies are still way too NIMBY for a granny flat or attached apartment, they want their oversized space all to themselves, and the McMansion to encompass the entire block. There are also no incentives and definite blockers in some states. Nor do they care about efficiency, so we have massive houses with shit energy ratings.

We are doing it anyway, and making the house 8+ stars, and still a smaller house including the attached 1 bedroom apartment than average new builds. The average is 235sqm, we are fitting a 2/3 bedroom home and a 1 bedroom/study apartment into less than 160sqm of floor. We will barely have to heat and cool the house at all, even in the hotter future.

I just pulled up some of the homes from a few popular builders, they don't even mention energy efficiency, it's the last thing on most customer's radar. Maybe because most of the country doesn't require it on real estate sales, and most places are required to meet 6 star these days on new builds.

Our plan:

Cooling load: 12 MJ/m2
Heating load: 59 MJ/m2
Total load: 71 MJ/m2

Our 8.2☆ design uses 57% less energy to heat and cool than a 6.0☆ one and 85% less than the existing 2.8☆ house. 2.8 is being generous for our house too, in reality it's so leaky that the (old and poor) insulation giving it a couple of stars is not very effective.

Here's a handy chart that only goes to 6 stars for cooling and heating load in the ACT:

 

MasterOfReality

After forever
Ended up getting 19.3kW worth of panels installed, running through a 15kW Sungrow three phase inverter.

Trying to wrap my head around the app that monitors consumption and production. I'm convinced something isn't right but I'm new to this so might be completely wrong.

For example:

IMG_4061.PNG


How can the system be generating 15kW, the house using 15kW and still exporting 14.3kW? Also, sometimes the production exactly mirrors the consumption.

And:

IMG_4081.PNG


Is it possible to have a negative daily load consumption, or one that large for the matter?

Also, if I go to my Origin account and look at the numbers for a particular day, nothing corresponds to what I'm seeing in the Sungrow app.

I have contacted the installer to look into it, but yeah, fuck its hard to understand when the numbers might be on the piss in the first place.
 

BKMad

Likes Dirt
Ended up getting 19.3kW worth of panels installed, running through a 15kW Sungrow three phase inverter.

Trying to wrap my head around the app that monitors consumption and production. I'm convinced something isn't right but I'm new to this so might be completely wrong.

For example:

View attachment 405437

How can the system be generating 15kW, the house using 15kW and still exporting 14.3kW? Also, sometimes the production exactly mirrors the consumption.

And:

View attachment 405436

Is it possible to have a negative daily load consumption, or one that large for the matter?

Also, if I go to my Origin account and look at the numbers for a particular day, nothing corresponds to what I'm seeing in the Sungrow app.

I have contacted the installer to look into it, but yeah, fuck its hard to understand when the numbers might be on the piss in the first place.
I had the same issue with the sungrow when I had a system installed. Something wasnt setup right and the installer fixed it - I cant remember what the issue was. From your screenshot, your house is probably using 0.7kwh and the rest is probably going into the grid, but as its setup wrong the way its displayed is all wrong.
 

MasterOfReality

After forever
I had the same issue with the sungrow when I had a system installed. Something wasnt setup right and the installer fixed it - I cant remember what the issue was. From your screenshot, your house is probably using 0.7kwh and the rest is probably going into the grid, but as its setup wrong the way its displayed is all wrong.
Yeah its bizarre, sometimes it looks normal but most of the times its like this.

This is the second inverter, the first shat the bed after two days!
 

MasterOfReality

After forever
Billing is monthly????
Wait until then maybe and have a good look at that.

That graphic with he house is confusing,
Quarterly but I can access daily/monthly data from Origin using their smart meters, which I'm assuming are the most accurate.

When the graphic is live you can see the direction of the energy, in the case above it was going from the solar panel to the house, and solar panel to grid. House was not drawing energy from the grid. Apparently.
 

MasterOfReality

After forever
Yeah something definitely not right.

1702875430624.png


I'm sitting here with two ducted aircons blasting, pool pump going flat out, two fridges, septic pumps etc etc.
 

LQQK

Likes Bikes
Out of interest, how much power does your energy provider allow you to export back into the grid?
I have an 8.1KW system, with a 6kw inverter, often it shows it's producing 6kw for most of the day. The reason I didn't get a bigger system, is that my energy provider (Ergon) only allows a maximum of 5kw at any one time to be fed back into the grid. On week-days and school-days we just don't use a lot (except when the hot water system kicks in), and the feed in credit is bugger all.
 

MasterOfReality

After forever
I made -$1,821.95 yesterday. How good is that haha.

Have lodged a ticket with Sungrow as both the installer and solar company are non responsive at the moment.
 

mark22

Likes Dirt
Pretty in depth analysis of trying to make solar to battery to EV play together, may be of some use to anyone considering.
 
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