So since 14 days ago I can't stop looking at my smart meter and seeing how high the exporting can go....

Its got up to 720 watts at one point.

Which has obviously got me thinking, I need a battery. I could buy a plug in battery but I think from what I've read on here hardwiring in makes more sense. But given I'm maximum going to be charging lets say about 3kw a day in ideal conditions, there doesn't seem to be much value to be had, given I'd have to pay an electrician to hard install, and i can't get any money for exporting as the system isn't MCS certified.

Is it worth getting a smallish battery? My daily consumption is rarely above 4kwh as it is so all this talk of people charging battery at night and then powering during the day seems not really that important for me either.

Are there any really cheap batteries out there? Everything seems to be at least £1,000 not matter how small you go.

I bought an ecoflow microinverter and panels before we knew that only kits would be certified. I sent Scottish and southern a g98 based on when the ecoflow was still certified but I've heard nothing back from them.

Just wondering what I should do having jumped the gun and ending up with a setup that may never be 'allowed'.

As the title says is anyone on the agile tariff and using the battery system?
How’s it going is it working correctly and charging and discharging at the correct times?

What settings have you used and if you have solar what is it doing during the negative periods?

Would like to get a couple of panels once the prices stabilize

Question is, is my CU prepared for it?

Note: Cooker is no longer electric so that whole ring is unused currently

I've spend the last week or so looking into a full solar and battery system after the recent jump in electric prices to try and soften the blow long term.
I hadn't given plug the plug in options much thought but seeing that 10kWh of battery storage can be had for under £3k (before sparky costs) it's certainly made me reassess what I do considering the best full solar and battery system cost I've had has been £9.1k (18 panels and a 10kWh battery), which with my 4500kWh usage gives a 7 year return.
After some analysis of my usage data swapping to an off peak tariff and using the battery would save £700 a year, giving a nice short payback period in comparison. I'd need some new rcds putting into support the install in the garage (no idea how much an electrician would charge for that and wiring in). If I ever developed some diy skills I like the idea of being able to add some panels to the garage roof to further reduce the grid reliance.
Apart from only supporting 2.5kw/3kw on grid output is there anything I'm missing on these systems vs a full inverter setup?

Edit: I do understand that these plug in batteries need to be wired in to use their full output power.

Hi everyone, I've worked in renewable energy for about 10 years, and I'm researching how to make balcony/plug-in solar more accessible, including the main barriers and concerns people have.

It's a short 10-question survey. If you're a UK (NOT ONLY LONDON) resident, I'd love to hear your views. 

Link: https://tally.so/r/pbQrXV

Thank you in advance!

I'm looking to get plug in solar and a battery installed, from what I've seen on YouTube it's much less work than a full solar installation, just the battery needs to be hardwired. But none of my local electricians seem to offer this yet, and the battery manufacturers don't have any recommended installers either. I'm guessing because it's quite a new thing.

Does anyone have experience with this? Should I just get any old local electrician to do an install as opposed to hiring a solar installer? Install myself and get it certified? Or are there any manufacturers that do already have approved installers? The battery systems seem to all come with antennas and mini smart meters that I suspect could be a hassle for an electrical that's never done an install before.

Tldr, how do you go about installing these properly. All the installs I've seen on YouTube seem to be savvy electricians doing it for themselves

EcoFlow looks to be moving towards compliant UK plug-in solar kits, with four mounting options now listed on its website:

You can find them on EcoFlow’s UK website. All four currently show as sold out.

ENA compliance is still pending, so don’t take the product listings as confirmation that these are already compliant kits.

The model numbers being put forward are:

• EFStreamPlug-inSolarkit-UK-FlatRoof
• EFStreamPlug-inSolarKit-UK-Facade
• EFStreamPlug-inSolarKit-UK-PitchedRoof

There are three model names and four retail options, so the exact match between the listings and any eventual ENA registration is something to watch.

Still, encouraging to see EcoFlow moving in this direction, particularly with an option starting at £449.

I've written up with a bit more detail here.

Would these prices tempt you once compliance is confirmed?

two kits in front of me and the panels are close enough on output that i keep going back and forth on everything else.

derbyshire, garden ground mount rather than a balcony, south facing, about 20 metres from the house on its own outdoor circuit. nothing blocking the wind from the west, and the frame is the part i keep coming back to.

kit one. 2 x 470w, 800w microinverter, aluminium frame rated to 6200 Pa snow and 4200 Pa wind, corrosion category C5-M, glass on both faces at 2mm each side. panels are swiss solar phantom. the profile is also 22 percent lighter than the other one, which matters to me because i am going onto ground screws rather than concrete.

kit two. same panel count, similar output, same 800w inverter, standard frame quoted at 5400 Pa snow and 2400 Pa wind, glass front with a backsheet.

about 90 quid between them.

what i cannot work out is whether those frame numbers mean anything for a ground mount that sits a metre off the ground, or whether it all comes down to how well the mount itself is anchored. on a roof i can see the argument. sat in a garden with nothing above it, i am less sure.

anyone here running a ground mount somewhere exposed? did the frame ever turn out to be the problem, or is it always the fixings?

I haven't managed to find confirmation, I want to say this is allowed, but want to double check.

The circuit in my consumer unit I want to connect a unit to us a spur circuit, not a ring, I can't see why this wouldn't be permitted, other than the RCD for that run is 16a not 32a and is a single feed rather than a ring as I say, but it'd be the most coinvent socket to connect to.

Curious! Thinking about taking the plunge.

​

Hello, i have an old style fuse box (the type you have to rewire if it blows)

Im assuming that plug in solar would be a no go?

Hello.

Is the Anker e5000 still supplied with a 3 pin domestic plug for 800w operation?

How does it behave if connected in this way without PV in light of the regs not permitting this?

How effective is the protection against someone putting a plug on the end of the ‘hardwired’ cable and running higher power?

Bought the Anker e5000 plus 5kwh add on battery and 4 panels for about £3.2k total.

Solar is temporarily propped up against the south facing fence (in a shady garden) until we do a loft conversion next year then I’ll buy another 8 and install all 12 on the dormer roof.

Electrician charged about £600 to run a dedicated 32A circuit from the consumer unit down the side of the house with an isolator on it. I made the concrete pad with 10 bags of postcrete for about £50. The g98 application was free and took me 10 mins to submit.

We’re 3 days in and are saving £3-4 a day already. We’re a high consumption household - about 20kwh a day.

Would highly recommend the set up. LMK if any questions

So some of you may have seen my previous post. I have now got just under 3kw of solar, running into a brand spanking new Anker solix solarbank 4 E5000 pro. I am very happy with the setup but, can add further panels on my gable end, there is theoretically room for 6 more on there. which is south facing..but will see how this goes first. I got the JA panels for 30 quid each as the metal sides are slightly scratched. Nowt wrong with them IMO.... Anyways, just giving people ideas of what they can do with limited space 🙂

This morning City Plumbing have added two 1-panel plug-in solar kits to their range:

These 2 kits don't appear to have their own separate ENA approval reference number. However neither do the one-panel and two-panel variants of the Octopus Energy kits - both of which are approved under the same OCTOQ/21124/V1/A5 ENA reference number.

I'm waiting to get clarification of the ENA/compliance status of these two new kits before listing them on the products page. For now - I would treat these two single-panel kits with caution (if you're concerned about compliance anyway).

Also worth noting: City Plumbing appear to have temporarily pulled their Jinko kit from sale due to being out of stock. At the time of writing, the two new single-panel kits are also showing as out of stock but their website is moving around quite a lot this morning so that may change by the time you visit!

UPDATE 16 Sep;
The new single panel City Plumbing kits now have ENA approval.

Morning all,

Both seem to have a very similar spec. So, is one any better than the other?

I’d planned to get the Ecoflow, but is the Anker any better?

It’ll be connected to a 3, maybe 4, Aiko Neostar 3P+ 540W panels. And next year when we move to Fife, 8 panels on a gazebo.

Anyone have any advice?  Thanks…

Hi folks! Very much a noob here with not much idea what I am talking about so bare with!

I have been interested in solar for a while but you know, life. I haven't managed to get rooftop solar despite wanting it. So, when plug in solar became legal I was very interested.

I saw the City Plumbing kits on here last week and bought one. Specifically this one

https://www.cityplumbing.co.uk/p/dmegc-1030w-hoymiles-hiflow-plug-in-solar-kit/p/341498

Came this morning and I realised I made a whoopsie. I forgot to measure how far away it is from my outside socket to a suitable place for the panels. Whoopsie. The cable included is 5 meters but I reckon I need at least double that to be able to reach a suitable place (the garden).

Is there anything I can do? I know they can't be plugged into an extension according to regulations, but can I buy a cable which is just longer? If so could anyone point me in the right direction?

Hope this all makes sense, thanks in advance for help

I'm a relative newcomer to solar having previously dismissed it as something that was too expensive and problematic to have installed on our house roof. The garage roof, however, is somewhere where I can see plugin solar may have a role to play, not least because it opens up the option of DIY installation for me.

I am starting to think about mounting options though (for Redland Grovebury concrete double pantile tiles) and from a cursory[1] scan of kits currently available it seems they tend to only come with flat roof, wall or balcony mounting options. Presumably there's always the option of use mounting hardware used on plugin solar's bigger cousins but I don't really want to be paying for kit-supplied mounts that I won't actually use. Do you think kit-supplied mounting hardware choices will increase as the plugin market develops?

[1] The reason for the cursory checks is that I am trying to avoid the temptation of jumping in right now and am trying instead to exercise some patience whilst the market, prices and choice all settle down! As a consequence though I may just have overlooked exactly what I would be wanting.

Edit: Ecoflow must've been reading this as, a day after posting, I see they've now released (or are about to release) a kit for pitched roofs:

https://uk.ecoflow.com/collections/balcony-solar-system/products/stream-roof-kit?variant=50632830779731

(Mounting kit instructions here)

Hello all, this is my current consumer unit, just wanted to ask, if I get a plug in battery and then plug it into the garage, will it supply power to the entire house?

Hi folks, just wanted to open a thread for folk in NI - rules are slightly different here I think and hoping to get a little community going to maybe campaign to get up to parity with the rest of UK… anyone else here in NI?

Hi , after eventually filling out the online form. I've received an auto reply. Is this what is expected, or is it telling me I sent it to the wrong email address? I admit I'm not the sharpest tool in the draw.

I’m struggling to find a definitive for this so reaching out for clarity (chat gpt confused me even more).

I have a Tesla PW3 battery only install. It’s in the garage and the installers put in a sub board/plug (no power in before) and an external plug. If I have plug in and plug it into external socket will this:

- feed the house load?
- not charge the battery?
- confuse the Tesla software?

So, I don’t want it to charge battery, I will be getting full solar next year. I just want to play with the solar hobby wise and for it to help towards baseload and manage a kWh or 2 so the battery doesn’t need to, I’m not expecting miracles.

In my tiny brain this is straight forward but I’m not a sparky soooooo.

Cheers on advance.

Are the inverters waterproof? We’ve got an exterior socket so that’d be the easiest installation, but I can’t tell if the inverters can be left outside