Meet our new batteries by Sigenergy.
Hitherto our sixteen solar panels on the south facing roof of the navvy hut simply collected solar energy for immediate use or fed it into the grid. That was fine back in 2013 when they were fitted but since then battery technology has raced ahead. Indeed, nobody nowadays would fit solar panels without batteries.
For a couple of years we have been researching the subject but the whole idea was interrupted by our flooding and recovery.
We did however discover that there are hundreds of suppliers out there, all anxious to sell you extra panels and batteries galore. Our panels are on an advantageous tariff called FIT - Feed In Tariff. Extra panels would have to go on another tariff, SEG. Further complications arose because we are lucky' enough to be on three phase mains electricity. We would require a smart meter which we were told we could not have on three phase. It was all getting a bit confusing at a time when we could well do without it.
The whole idea faded away until we concluded that fitting batteries to our existing panels. A couple of the hundreds of solar firms agreed and we set about trying to purchase a system with Duracell batteries - a well known and reputable brand. Expensive, but we had been warned against cheap batteries. Trouble was that Duracell did not do three phase batteries and inverter BUT they had such a system under development for imminent supply. Imminent became prolonged so we ruled out Duracell.
Then we stumbled across the Sigenergy system. Dearer than Duracell but way ahead on specification.
The Sigen system even had the latest AI which would run itself intelligently, even to the extend of looking at the next day's sunshine prospects and taking account of our electricity consumption routines.
We have switched our Utility warehouse tariff to Economy Seven which has an off-peak (midnight to 0700) of just 8.8 pence per kWh, compared with 37 pence daytime and evenings! Furthermore, with 32 kWh of batteries we now harvest ALL of our electricity from the grid at that much lower rate - straight into the batteries for use next day. If the sun shines we harvest that too of course.
£12,000 worth of outlay but the Return on Investment, plus the massively increased energy efficiency made this a logical affordable thing to do. We shall see,
We did however discover that there are hundreds of suppliers out there, all anxious to sell you extra panels and batteries galore. Our panels are on an advantageous tariff called FIT - Feed In Tariff. Extra panels would have to go on another tariff, SEG. Further complications arose because we are lucky' enough to be on three phase mains electricity. We would require a smart meter which we were told we could not have on three phase. It was all getting a bit confusing at a time when we could well do without it.
