Nowty Towers Vs UK Grid Storage

[drjim]

Just read that and went out to spray the ones on my shed roof. Lovely warm water coming off and an increase in output.

The shed is now next to the above ground swimming pool so I reckon a bit of hosepipe, spare pool pump and a piece of guttering will make a nice panel cooler/pool heater for the next couple of months! Bit of arduino control fun too potentially.

Inspiring as always Nowty!

[nowty]

The Nowty Towers daily generation record is currently 100 kWh. Yesterday I generated 98 kWh with a little cloud. Today its sun, sun, sun but a little hotter and less wind. My SMA forecaster is suggesting I might get around 102 kWh or 103 kWh today.

I sprayed my ground mounts with cooling water and achieved an instant 13% power boost.

Don't know if my water spraying made the difference but I beat my daily generation PB by 1kWh, there is still a few watts trickling in but it won't make the next kWh.

NowtyPB for daily generation is now 101 kWh.

77 kWh AC coupled and 24 kWh DC coupled.

I'm wondering with the larger battery bank whether I should decommission the non FIT grid tie inverter and move the generation to another charge controller.

DC coupling is more efficient battery charging but AC coupling is more efficient if its immediately exported as its generated.
I'll have to have a long think.

[ivan]

That's pretty impressive! What's your maximum export - 3.68kW? Have you tried asking for more? Around here, Western Power ALWAYS said 3.68kW, but then after the FIT goldrush subsided, they started regularly offering people 5kW or even sometimes higher, if their neighbours didn't have PV also.

[nowty]

That's pretty impressive! What's your maximum export - 3.68kW? Have you tried asking for more? Around here, Western Power ALWAYS said 3.68kW, but then after the FIT goldrush subsided, they started regularly offering people 5kW or even sometimes higher, if their neighbours didn't have PV also.

Years ago I could typically not export more than 2kW without exceeding 253V or even tripping an inverter. Sometimes late evening, even without any exporting the voltage here would be around 257V and I've seen 260V on a couple of occasions.

But about 3 years back suddenly overnight the grid voltage dropped by 7V and its stayed that way. Now with 5kW export the grid voltage at my grid point is typically around 249V.

[ivan]

I installed a 12kW system with a 5kW export limit on a friend's property (5kW being the maximum level set by Western Power for his system). It would regularly trip inverters out due to high voltage during mid summer (and his motor capacitors had a tendency to fail prematurely!). Eventually he complained to Western Power and they turned down the tappings on his transformer - the voltage dropped and everything worked ok after that. I imagine you may well have a shared transformer so maybe either other properties have complained about high voltage or UK Networks are monitoring the voltage on the line and adjusted it in response to your feed-in?

[Stinsy]

I installed a 12kW system with a 5kW export limit on a friend's property (5kW being the maximum level set by Western Power for his system). It would regularly trip inverters out due to high voltage during mid summer (and his motor capacitors had a tendency to fail prematurely!). Eventually he complained to Western Power and they turned down the tappings on his transformer - the voltage dropped and everything worked ok after that. I imagine you may well have a shared transformer so maybe either other properties have complained about high voltage or UK Networks are monitoring the voltage on the line and adjusted it in response to your feed-in?

The problem occurs when you are very close to the transformer, and someone else a long away away from it complains about low voltage...

Here is a chart showing what a few of my smart devices see:

[nowty]

I installed a 12kW system with a 5kW export limit on a friend's property (5kW being the maximum level set by Western Power for his system). It would regularly trip inverters out due to high voltage during mid summer (and his motor capacitors had a tendency to fail prematurely!). Eventually he complained to Western Power and they turned down the tappings on his transformer - the voltage dropped and everything worked ok after that. I imagine you may well have a shared transformer so maybe either other properties have complained about high voltage or UK Networks are monitoring the voltage on the line and adjusted it in response to your feed-in?

I don't why or how they reduced the voltage but it was done without a power cut. The most annoying problem before the voltage was dropped was my EV charger would go into error mode at 254V and refuse to start. My workaround was to put on a heavy load say 5kW to drop the grid voltage, wait a couple of mins for the EV charger to come out of error mode, then start the EV charger and then turn off my other heavy load. As long as the EV charger was set high enough it brought down the grid voltage enough by itself. But then when I went on IOG tariff it was a nightmare because the EV charger would stop and start.

[Fintray]

That's pretty impressive! What's your maximum export - 3.68kW? Have you tried asking for more? Around here, Western Power ALWAYS said 3.68kW, but then after the FIT goldrush subsided, they started regularly offering people 5kW or even sometimes higher, if their neighbours didn't have PV also.

Years ago I could typically not export more than 2kW without exceeding 253V or even tripping an inverter. Sometimes late evening, even without any exporting the voltage here would be around 257V and I've seen 260V on a couple of occasions.

But about 3 years back suddenly overnight the grid voltage dropped by 7V and its stayed that way. Now with 5kW export the grid voltage at my grid point is typically around 249V.

I had a similar experience a couple of days ago, I was exporting 3.6kW and the voltage was 252.6V then it dropped to 246.6V, about 90 minutes later it went back up again.

[nowty]

Only 99kWh today as its getting even warmer, still its my 3rd best ever.

Today I noticed what I think was the first ever install in my local area.
I assume they are having an upgrade.

[Fintray]

Only 99kWh today as its getting even warmer, still its my 3rd best ever.

Today I noticed what I think was the first ever install in my local area.
I assume they are having an upgrade.

Nah, the house has been sold to a Daily Fail/Torygraph reader and they're having the green crap removed...