That's interesting. We have an 8kW set up - originally through some ACT Govt subsidies for solar installation, which works well for MrsK and I, as she is retired and I work from home more days than not, so our peak use is during the day. I have been checking out battery options, but they don't stack up financially now. I plan to retire at the end of 2025 and replace my car with an EV, so the battery set up you have would make sense.
I had similar. Had to get up on the roof and install some PVC mesh under the edges of the panels and some "bird-deterrent" spikes in areas where the mesh would not work. The position of the panels on the upper-story roof and directly above the ground level patio roof made it a challenge to install the mesh along that edge. I am sure the neighbours were recording my antics hoping to make a fortune from a viral video if my scaffolding did not work as planned. Thankfully, neighbours did not profit from my efforts
.
Not in QLD so not dealing with those temps today, but very much in the same boat re: covering the roof with panels and loving my first summer of being able to use the a/c all day without fear of needing to take out a another mortgage!
I didn't get a battery either. Have only had a smart meter since early October (shortly after the solar install) so I have no accurate idea of my historical consumption habits by hour/day/etc so my thinking was that it made more sense to use the new solar install for a year and get some hard data to model my utilisation and better understand what battery solution - if any - would make the most sense. No point spending that money and getting something that is either too big for your needs, not big enough, or simply unjustifiable on the whole when you run the numbers. Having said that, when I look at the sheer volume of energy I'm exporting to the grid since my install was completed (i.e. some 4.8MWh since late September), I suspect a battery will make a huge amount of sense!
Yeah, that's been a learning curve for me. Seeing the utilisation in real time via the solar panels app has been quite the eye opener, but it's also allowed me to become smarter with my usage habits. Have a gas cooktop and hot water system, so at present, can't do much to minimise those costs.
Current billing quarter will be my first full one with solar. I'm expecting a bill, but significantly lower than the same time last year despite having made considerably more liberal use of the a/c. I'm also aware that I can likely get a more cost effective deal on in terms of energy supply, so I'll be continuing to explore that as well. For now though, it's a case of enjoying the savings (versus my historical billing) and continuing to optimise how I use the energy I'm producing.
Admittedly I'm not glued to the reports and real-time stats like I was in the immediate aftermath of the installation. These days, it's more a case of checking out how much we're making on particularly overcast days to get a better idea of what my "bad" days are going to look like (i.e. thinking ahead to winter), or checking out just how much we can generate on a "perfect" day and seeing whether we've hit a new daily generation record? Into the future, I think it's going to be more a matter of ensuring that the system is performing as expected so I can proactively identify any issues.For the first 3 months and up until the first quarterly bill I checked the system output was sufficient every morning before we used a major appliance and read the daily reports as to generation and upload to the grid. New toy syndrome
15 months downstream I haven't looked at the system stats for at least 6 months
In my old house FIT was 69c and now it's 4c - I export much more than I use but still get hefty bills especially in summer when the aircon needs to be on in the afternoon and night if it's hotI keep complaining to Mr Denali that the solar panel ads make out that you will be raking in money so I'm disappointed by how little we get for feeding back to the grid.
Mr Denali keeps telling me we won't pay a lower bill for the rest of our lives here not considering he's 63, I prefer more money
We have changed our power habits. Laundry, dryer, dishwasher run during the day only, preferably on sunny days.
Largely dependent on the battery capacity and how much power the fridge/freezer/etc draws, but battery setups are typically not designed to keep you running for days at a time. Of course, they will make all the difference in terms of mitigating the risk during outages - short or lengthy - in that they buy you time to make alternative arrangements and not lose the entire contents of said fridge/freezer.
We pump out five times what we use. We still get a bill. Of course much less than previous. Actually almost 10 times.I keep complaining to Mr Denali that the solar panel ads make out that you will be raking in money so I'm disappointed by how little we get for feeding back to the grid.
Mr Denali keeps telling me we won't pay a lower bill for the rest of our lives here not considering he's 63, I prefer more money
We have changed our power habits. Laundry, dryer, dishwasher run during the day only, preferably on sunny days.
My calculations are a Tesla powerwall 3 over its warranty period and if you maximise charging and discharging each day costs 50c to store and release each kWh. That's not including the cost of electricity required to charge it - from solar or grid.
Yeah the Tesla powerwall 3 installer - Penrith Solar, kept saying to me "once the battery is installed, all the power it supplies is free".
.22c atm. At that temp irrelevant what the humidity is. Come down here, it's cooler.
I swop you - refill my gennie please.
When we installed our solar panels in mid 2022 I looked at a battery, but the numbers didn't stack up either. We have 8kW of panels, and our aim was to get cheap electricity, as living in Canberra, heating is more of an issue than air conditioning. We have ceiling fans to get us through the 'hot' days, and put them in reverse for winter, to move the air around from the electric panel heaters on the walls. We run all the major appliances during the day. The one device which makes the power spike the most is the electric kettle when I put it on in the morning, before the panels kick in.
