Solar PV (9.2kw), battery (17.5kWh) & Octopus energy - Beating the energy crisis - February update

[Music] thank you [Music] this boy is electric welcome back everyone for another energy update video it's the beginning of March so time to go through the end of February update for our solar and energy usage and what a cracking month it's been not weather-wise not just stats wise but everything is all gelled together and the data looks exceptional for just about every metric so I'm really pleased with the results this month um so I'm really pleased with the system that we've got here so let's quickly cover that system we've got three solar arrays one's a 3.9 kilowatt solar array south facing that's on our fit tariff we're one of the last people to get onto the UK fit tariff then I added a 2.4 kilowatt solar Edge array and the third array we added is a split system with some panels on our east facing Gable wall and three panels on our garage roof that are slightly shaded that's using a Solace inverter a 2.5 kilowatt inverter but we don't get more than about 1.1 1.2 maximum power out of those because of the shading and the angles so that's the solar we've got we've then also got a vitron inverter that's connected to five us-3000 pylon Tech batteries so we've got 17 and a half kilowatt hours probably about 15 kilowatt hours usable of battery storage collectively that extra solar and the extra battery is meaning that we should be off grid quite a lot and we should be able to maximize during the winter the off-peak excellent tariff from octopus energy we're on the octopus go tariff so we're paying seven and a half Pence a kilowatt hour and uh yeah just before we start the stats yeah we haven't paid any Peak rate energy over winter any significant amounts a few kilowatt hours here and there other than that it's all been that the seven and a half cheap rate which is exactly what we wanted the battery and extra solar for so over the winter period everything has been working out really really well low energy bills decent amount of solar energy coming in and good usage of it in the house but before I get into this month's stats I'd like to start by reviewing previous years it's nice to know where we've come from and where we are now how we've got here that Journey so let's have a look at the grass for the last couple of years and look at annual usage so in 2020 we had one Peak where it was over one megawatt hour but then you've got this big Bank of um should we call them summer months from March through to September where we've got in excess of 600 uh kilowatt hours generated and that leaves the five months either side three months October November December and two months at the start of the year January February where we're not generating enough I've always said we need 500 kilowatt hours to be self-sufficient that's our number here but now I've added electric heating as well with the air-to-air heating I need another 100 to 200 kilowatt hours so actually in Winter we need around 700 kilowatt hours to be self-sufficient in 2021 January and February are very similar October though slightly better generation at 400 kilowatt hours but still five months where we don't have enough energy to be self-sufficient they're the winter months so if we look at the last 12 months we can really start to see that the extra solar panels we're adding are making a tangible difference October is well over 600 kilowatt hours heading towards self-sufficiency and even February the month has just gone nearly 500 kilowatt hours that leaves just three months of the winter period where we definitely haven't got enough solar energy and that is about as best as we can do with solar panels so with last March generating over 800 kilowatt hours I'm expecting this month to be self-sufficient so for last month the month of February 484 kilowatt hours three days over 30 kilowatt hours nearly half the month though around a 20 kilowatt hours and just one two three four five six seven days under 10 kilowatt hours averaging 17 kilowatt hours in total this chart clearly shows the uplift after the three winter months that I referred to earlier and the breakdown for that is 256 kilowatt hours from the 3.9 kilowatt Solace array 82 kilowatt hours from the 2.5 kilowatt solos array that's the East Gable panels and the panels over my garage roof and our 2.4 kilowatt solar Edge array generated 146 kilowatt hours looking at a comparison for other februaries this February was very very similar to last February and I thought that was exceptional so 256.5 kilowatt hours on our 3.9 kilowatt array almost the best we've had 262 back in 2019 the first year we had it installed that was actually the best and the thing that really made the difference this month was the new array the 82 kilowatt hours Import and Export then was pretty good 152 kilowatt hours imported and just 29 kilowatt hours exported on this graph though just 11 days you can see where we imported from the grid that means 17 days we were self-sufficient running just on battery and solar power usage wise just 70.7 kilowatt hours into hot water via the my energy Eddy device 192 kilowatt hours charging on Mini and golf on the zappy and 338 kilowatt hours recorded into the house marginally different numbers here in this summary but a good summary is 598 kilowatt hours consumed 477 came from generation we import the 149 and exported just under 29 kilowatt hours many were 75 green and all of that lovely greenness leads to a very low bill from octopus energy go tariff 22 pounds 71 we actually imported 132.9 kilowatt hours according to the agile app and averaged 9.15 Pence per kilowatt hour if we'd have been on the agile tariff 48 pounds 54 still coming down slightly so why are those numbers so good let's have a look at the individual devices to start with comparing February to January you can see the very top one zappy solar kilowatt hours 115 in February well in January it was zappy grid kilowatt hour so we've imported a lot less from the grid to put into the electric cars to start with the Toshiba air conditioning units 92 kilowatt hours instead of 158 it's a much reduced energy for heating as I said the zappy grid is much lower it's only 58 kilowatt hours Eddie solar the brown one 53 kilowatt hours it was actually 66 kilowatt hours last month so we've actually reduced the amount of kilowatt hours for hot water as well the oven was lower everything looked low as a heating and cooking and energy usage everything is lower for February than it is January and in summary solar 484 kilowatt hours that's 110 kilowatt hours better than last month and 90 kilowatt hours better than last year import just 133 a lot less than January at 525 and again half what we imported from the grid last February the bigger battery making a real big difference 34 kilowatt hours exported okay January was a little bit less but last year in February 59 kilowatt hours Eddie heating the hot water just 70 kilowatt hours this month I've been doing a test keeping the level of hot water in the mixer you tank as low as I possibly can sometimes around zero percent and then just heating up the hot water as we need it almost like a combination boiler and the result instead of January 104 kilowatt hours just 70 and that's half what we did last February in 2022 half that's a significant saving heating costs all of the heating elements that we have including the Toshiba air conditioning just 110 kilowatt hours more than half what we did last month in January it was a lot colder in January and yeah 344 kilowatt hours in February 2022 so a third of the heating cost this year round the cost 22 pound 70 last month was 52.62 and last February 33.76 so despite the energy cost going up a huge amount we actually spent less on energy this month overall this has been a fantastic February okay I hope you enjoyed that I most certainly did looking back at the stats there's some great numbers in there we're doing so so well and it's only going to get better in March onwards isn't it well that's the plan anyway every other March has always been better than February so it should get better thank you so much for watching really hope you enjoyed the video hope you found some useful data there for comparison or insight into what you might be doing let me know in the comments how you got on if you've got solar and what you're planning to do if you're about to go down the solar route thanks for watching everyone take care see you again soon bye for now

Channel: The EV Puzzle

Views: 9,317

Keywords: Solar pv, Solar panels, Home battery, Home storage battery, Renewable energy, Sustainable living, Octopus energy, Solis, Solaredge, Tesla Powerwall, Victron, Multiplus, Pylontech, Givenergy, Fox ess, Growatt, Libbi, Myenergi, Eddi, Zappi, Home assistant, Inverter

Id: SqmRvfU9t-A

Length: 9min 24sec (564 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 04 2023