A long thread on owning a solar PV system for the first time. I got mine a month ago. And it has changed the way I consume electricity.

It's a 4.4kW system (in practice I haven't seen anything higher than 3.8kW, which is OK). The game changer is that it came with a 4kW battery.

The PV cells supply the house demand first. If they're not producing enough (like when I turn the oven on) the battery kicks in to assist. If the battery can't supply enough either (rare), we buy from the grid. At night, the house runs off the battery.

Now, using electricity is a GAME. Can I beat The Man by buying as little electricity as possible? There's an app on my phone to track what the system is up to. And I am now highly incentivised to smooth out my electricity usage so as to only use MY electricity, not imports.

So I wait for the oven to heat up and the element to cut out BEFORE I turn on the hob. I make very sure I turn the hob down as soon as the pan boils. I turn the washing machine on half an hour later when the daylight is bright enough to power it from the PV.

It's all the behaviour smart meter displays tried to promote. But when your smart meter says you're drawing a lot of electricity, you just sort of shrug your shoulders, because what else can you do? You're paying for the electricity anyway, either smoothed out or in one big hit.

I keep reading that if we could reduce the 'peakiness' of our electricity demand it would mean we need fewer power stations (is that right?). Seems to me that solar PV + battery storage is a suprisingly effective promoter of such behaviour.

Other stuff: in the morning, the PV supplies home electricity needs first, and battery charging second. Once the battery is full, any excess electricity is exported to the grid. I expect my neighbours are actually using my electrons.

My household generally consumes about 7-8 units of electricity a day.

At the moment the PV is producing about 23 units a day.

In the last four weeks we've bought just 14 units of electricity from the grid.

And yes, in the winter we won't get so much from the PV. But I know from evening sun that even low sun will keep us ticking over quite nicely and substantially cut our electricity bought from the grid.

We're not getting paid for export electricity yet but have switched to @octopus_energy and are sorting that out. We're going to switch to their agile import tariff too (in winter, if the PV doesn't fully charge the battery I'll be able to buy electricity at cheap times to top up)

Of course solar PV isn't for everyone. Difficult in flats. There's a cost to buy and install (we put aside some money when we downsized). But I've been amazed how I've already changed the way I consume power.

And that's, maybe, replicable?

Oh, and we're going to get rid of our gas supply (and its associated standing charge). Boo for fossil fuel tech setting off miniature fires in a box in the kitchen. We're going all electric.

Questions:

Why aren't PV+battery systems mandatory on new houses?

Why, at least, aren't new houses required to have pitched roofs facing south, as passive provision?

Is there not, like, a climate EMERGENCY going on?

ENDS