Solar panel update.

[Evil Sid]

 

12 hours ago, Bill said:

Seems I just can’t win. Every time I roll a six, I end up going down a bloomin snake. ☹

I know that feeling bill. especially this week. had a split pipe on the petrol line so had to take the car in to get it looked at. The guy who maintains my car is in liverpool so a twenty or so minute drive to get there. spotted the problem straight away but he could not start work on it until the afternoon so i said no problem and would pick it up tuesday.  so bus train and bus home.

phone call later monday he has to take the  petrol tank off to get a it as the pipe runs over the top to wherever. much later on another call to say he was  going to finish before he went home but had spotted a problem with a rear tyre but car should be ready for morning whenever i wanted to pick it up.

so tuesday a bus a train and a bus later i got my car back and he showed me that the rear tyre had a split on the wall inside. i had arranged to have two new tyre fitted at warrington so was not overly worried. off to the nearest petrol station ti put some fuel in. two litres and all seemed fine six litres and i noticed a whiff of petrol. a quick check and i still had a fuel leak. so back to the mechanic. turns out the filler hose had not seated properly so 1 drained tank later and a bit of fiddling and it was cured. managed to salvage about a gallon of fuel so went home. 1 and a half hours to get back due to roadworks just before the start of the m62.

might go back bed for the rest of today.

[Confused52]

I find that kind of day is usually a Tuesday.

[Bill]

Finally, I’ve got rid of some of the software bugs and nothing has blown up now for a few days. Everything’s working as good as it ever will do and the new batteries are behaving exactly as they should, soaking up some of the excess power during these sunnier months.

Overall, the battery idea hasn’t lived up to my expectations, and at best they only help to recover about 18p per day. That doesn’t sound much but when you consider my average electricity bill now works out at about 50p per day then maybe it’s not too bad.

The cost of the batteries and the second inverter came to about £180 so it’d take nearly 3 years of sunny days to recover that cost. The fly in the ointment with my design was the length of time it takes for the inverter to synchronize with the mains and then ramp up to full power. So, turn the kettle on and it’s boiled by the time the inverters up to speed. I could modify the system to leave the assisting inverter running in a low power state to speed up the process, but it’s a lot of effort and the laws of diminishing returns come to mind.

To date this year, my shed solar has done £124 without any batteries so £300 a year or more looks feasible. My total spend was £900 so it should pay for itself in about three years and after that it’ll be generating more than my pension if I'm still around to see it.

 

Bill 😊