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Saving Energy using Solar Panels

PeterRT

We have 10 off 550W solar panels installed in our garden with an 8.2kWh battery and inverter in our garage. We are with Octopus as our energy supplier on the Flux tariff for electricity and the fixed tariff for gas.

I have thought about how to use technology to further reduce our use of energy. To start with, I used the Flux tariff to write software using Python that enabled the battery to be charged in the early morning when the price was low and discharge in the evening peek period when the price is high. This has the main benefit of helping to stabilise the grid network. It also helps save energy during the winter period by ensuring the battery is charged up to service the home particularly when there is little sun; this also reduces the cost a bit. I use a Raspberry Pi to run the software. I limit the discharge to ensure that there is sufficient energy to supply the home during the night, this is about 30%.

Then I decided to use the MyEnergi eddi device to control the hot water tank. This boosts the temperature in the tank soon after the battery charge has finished in the morning and maintains the temperature when the solar panels have recharged the battery. This ensures that hot water is available for use during the day. When we started this we found that we had to replace the original 70 year old hot water tank because the immersion heater had broken and replacing that would break the old tank. This helps save energy during the warmer spring, summer and autumn periods by enabling us to turn off the gas boiler, including the pilot light, and only use the gas for some cooking purposes. Gas usage is down to about 50kWh per month (10% of normal) and the overall cost tends to be in credit or close to 0.

Any energy usage from the grid is offset by the export of excess energy from the solar panels. Ensuring the battery is charged up at the beginning of the day maximises the export of excess energy. This is offset a bit by the use of the MyEnergi eddi, which uses about 30% of the battery energy on average. Still this avoids the use of gas to maintain the temperature and is more effective. We don't yet know how well the eddi device will work in winter, maybe we will have to boost the temperature with gas in the afternoon if there is no sun.

Our energy bill for April was £69, May £6 and June £29 in credit - so it appears to be working.

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  • Then I decided to use the MyEnergi eddi device to control the hot water tank.

    PV feeding an immersion made financial sense when exports were "deemed" (e.g. 50% of generated under the old FIT arrangement), but now I think many people are on an smart export guarantee tariff, so every unit not exported means a reduction in income - it effect it costs about 15p/kWh to heat water that way (compared with maybe 6p ish to do it by gas (depending on boiler efficiency etc)). Environmentally it's swings and roundabouts of course, but quite likely your kWh might be better spend displacing a kWh of gas fired electricity generation (at perhaps 60% efficiency)  than gas fired local hot water generation (at perhaps 90% efficiency). Depends on your gas boiler of course - if yours still has a pilot light, I guess it's not in the efficient condensing category...

    Another approach (which I've got) - is to have solar thermal panels in tandem with PVs (if you've got the roof space of course) - simple thermal panels get many more kW out of a sq m of roof than PVs, even if it's only "low grade" energy as warm water, it's perfectly useful for heating (even pre-heating) a stored hot water system. In my case it feeds a thermal store that provides space heating as well as domestic hot water - so the thermal panels make a contribution to the underfloor heating in winter too.

       - Andy.

  • in reply to mapj1
    mapj1 said:
    Considering the no of folk turned away each year applying to study medicine and dentistry, compared to say engineering, part of the answer to me is obvious - not it seems to the politicians.

    More medical school places! Hang on, it is already happening (under the last government): https://www.gov.uk/government/news/350-extra-medical-school-places-allocated-in-nhs-training-boost.

    One of the other problems is that being a full-time partner in (NHS) general practice is no longer attractive, so there may be more doctors who work a total of fewer hours.

  • in reply to Chris Pearson

    so there may be more doctors who work a total of fewer hours.

    Still not seeing the problem in training more folk. -a larger pool of qualified people doing a 4 day week able perhaps with the offer of overtime to come in if there is a crisis. I'm not suggesting lowering the intake standard, but not turning away folk who could.

    Rather that 350 extra places it seems like not enough -  just adding a few hundred on what that article suggests is 7500 training places a year is an increase of about 5% - the sort of figure that gets lost in the tides between individual years in other subjects.

    Looking at the same thing another way, what is a reasonable  MTTF of a UK GP ?

    Apparently the UK has about 38 kGPs in the NHS at the moment and about half as much again working but not in the NHS. Then there are all the other sorts of doctor a medical student may become that are not GPs.

    Assuming no career changes  then maybe very roughly one NHS and half a private kGP retires and must be replaced per year.

    Retirement ages and lifesyles are changing that and that 1k5  figure is clearly an hopelessly low estimate  as this suggests a job continuity like no other field.  Folk take sabbaticals, move abroad, have families, get ill you name it  so that covers another factor of 2 or 3 probably, and ignoers all the other roles, then that 7k5 medical student figure is not looking overly generous.

    I'm not sure that we should expect total career lock-in from a degree choice - no other subjects do - not all folk who do maths degrees in the UK  (comparably about 8000  of them each year apparently) go on to be professional mathematicians, or even maths teachers - you need to train quite a lot more than you need.

    Mike.

  • in reply to mapj1

    As regards seeing a GP - After a certain age (maybe 45) everyone needs to see a GP or equivalent)- it is called preventative medicine- every six months. For men that includes a PSA test.

    A large proportion of Primary care medical staff here in the US are nurses with advanced medical degrees in selected areas. I had my six monthly check up last week with my female Advanced Primary nurse. It has been shown from research that women are better than men as they listen to their patients with more "eye to eye" contact time.

    I would't even attempt to explain the US Medical systems, as it is so different from yours.

    Peter Brooks

    Palm Bay 

  • in reply to Peter Brooks
    Peter Brooks said:
    As regards seeing a GP - After a certain age (maybe 45) everyone needs to see a GP or equivalent)- it is called preventative medicine- every six months. For men that includes a PSA test.

    See an actual doctor?  Fat chance.

    My old GP retired several years ago, so I was allocated a new one in the practice.  I have never seen him (or her - I don't know as I have never seen them).  I'm not convinced that there are actually any GPs any more in the particular surgery I go to.

    It seems to be staffed by nurses who use instant messaging to chat to a remote GP somewhere.  For all practical purposes, the nurses are prescribing medicines now.  The GP is only there to approve it.

  • in reply to Simon Barker

    Hello Simon:

    The advance medically trained nurses provide a regular nurse with an upward path for advancement from just doing bed pans!

    If a medical problem comes up, one is booked into seeing an actual specialist doctor (example procedure for fixing ingrown toe nails).

    Scripts for medicines are issued without a doctors approval BUT only after getting "buy in" from the patient.. 

    Peter Brooks

    Palm Bay 

  • in reply to Simon Barker
    Simon Barker said:
    For all practical purposes, the nurses are prescribing medicines now.

    Very highly (and appropriately) qualified Nurse Practitioners, though?

  • in reply to Chris Pearson
    Chris Pearson said:
    One of the other problems is that being a full-time partner in (NHS) general practice is no longer attractive, so there may be more doctors who work a total of fewer hours.

    My former GP is a similar age to me, and retired about 5 years ago (under age of 50) to move on because of unnecessary issues and pressures in the profession at the current time. There are a multiplicity of issues for those in the profession.

  • in reply to gkenyon
    gkenyon said:
    Very highly (and appropriately) qualified Nurse Practitioners, though?

    I'm sure they are.

  • in reply to gkenyon

    Sound like your former GP was "Burned out" due to early COVID.

    Did you hear that all those British "kludge" ventilators were never used and I think had now been trashed. 

    Talking about COVID, the US had decided to have another  round of vaccine shots (against a later strain ) for everyone, late this year.

    Peter  Brooks

    Palm Bay 

  • in reply to Simon Barker

    We also have them trained for Cardiology.

    Peter Brooks

    Palm Bay 

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