An aside to the EV drivers thread

There's a guy locally who cleans the dust out of games consoles and replaces the thermal transfer paste. Not sure if he makes a living or just pocket money. And several people who replace phone and tablet screens. Same skills probably let you fix PCs (replace hard drives, keyboards, etc).

With such good videos on YouTube there is much less of a barrier getting into general repairs than there used to be. But I agree, it's probably hard to make a full time living, more an opportunity for the retired or semi retired. There are a few sewing machine repair people around.

As you say, the opportunities are probably increasing with all the small electrical (often cordless) stuff around. I think I am being given a dead microwave, so might get around to making a spot welder to rebuild battery packs.

Would it not be feasible to justify on the basis that:

- Insulation reduces the energy requirement / carbon emissions of the building below. Even say a stables, a grain store or a workshop might require heating or cooling for some months of the year

- A roof suitable for mounting PV would allow further reduction of the building's carbon footprint, for example powering whatever equipment might reside within.

- PV panels (may) reduce the visual impact of the new roof (it really depends on how it looks and what was there before). Although that might require you to design how it will look.

I'm not a planner, but those seem in keeping with agricultural usage. 'Providing a public charging space' might not. Although perhaps charging for farm vehicles?

Theo

Wouldn't it take a significant number of panels to make enough power, to think about selling it ?

Here is an example of a solar powered charging setup.

This article exposes more of the details. On a winter day, I doubt 4.3kW will be forthcoming, but, you do have a battery pack to store it. It apparently has a solar tracker (the panels move) but it doesn't give details.

Customers can install AC charging terminals or even a DC fast charger (although in this case it's not as simple and might require multiple EV ARCs).

One of the biggest advantages of EV ARC is simple and quick deployment - "no trenching, no construction, no permitting, no utility bill."

The company appears to have already been bought out.

Paul

Electric roller skates perhaps?

Brian

Exactly. Depends on the motor type of course, but current limiting seems a good place to start. If the system starts to heat up then it won't allow much current to be drawn. Brian

There is a requirement coming in to force during 2023 for commercial buildings having heat input to meet a certain insulation standard. I have no intention of heating the main section which will continue as storage/farm workshop. However, for visitors and people working on site, I need to improve the toilets and wash area. I had in mind the wall mounted air source heat pump discussed elsewhere.

Rather expensively as most of my tackle is 3 ph.

Visually pretty awful unless flat to the 12.5 degree roof: less than ideal.

Currently there are 3 or so vehicles/day on site not including our domestic cars. If the government succeeds in killing i/c some of these are likely to be electric in future. Building electricity is metered and billed so they can use a 13 amp link already. Just trying to give the planners a leg up:-)

...

It seems like there are two separate issues - getting it through planning and making it pay as a commercial proposition. It sounds like what you actually want to do is get it through planning, and making it pay back is secondary.

To that end I'd look at some compromises: for example, the roof slope isn't ideal but do the calcs over mounting at the optimal angle. If putting PV on the roof would sell it to planning, it doesn't matter if it's optimal if the alternative is no permission at all. But then maybe you can mitigate lack of output by adding more panels - cost/benefit tradeoff again. Panels are getting cheap enough that it's tilting (ahem!) away from fancy mounting systems: just fit as many panels as you have space for, even if some aren't perfectly oriented.

Likewise, once you have PV the question is what to power with it. You could, for example, divide the array and have three single-phase inverters. Or you could charge a battery. Or you could go off-grid and power a specific load (hot water? grain dryer? brewhouse? anaerobic digester? swimming pool?)

The main thing is to paint a picture for planning and decide what you will commit to doing for the application. How you actually wire it up and what you do with the energy afterwards would seem to be something you can change later. It may be that the 2023 insulation requirement on its own would be enough (pitched as 'we're building to the latest standards / by the time the works are completed we'll meet new regs')

But you do need to know what they are looking for and how much slack they will give you about promising to do things in the future.

Theo

Indeed! I was only intending to point out the advantages of a large South facing sloping roof for when solar PV becomes economically viable without promising to actually do it:-)

There will be a modest ongoing year round requirement for hot water for hand washing. Currently a mains oversink heater.

Rapid battery charging was targeted at the robot centre who call here to collect stuff before driving to site and again a potential benefit rather than a promise.

We will both be dead long before then

After you:-)

I suppose with electricity prices going up and panel costs relatively stable they might eventually reach parity but I fully accept this is not the way to power the country.

Roll on nuclear. Preferably owned by us rather than France!

That's a big greenhouse.

I didn't make the GS caps but it worked, but when I look I see that have become capitals by themselves.

Bill

Success of the year was some emilie F1 cucumbers. Huge crop and no male flowers. Peppers got attacked by caterpillars and more tomatoes than we could eat.

Ah, now seen the pics.

That looks like a pretty straightforward solar install. It's about £100 per panel (~330w), then you need some rails and fixings for them. I wouldn't bother angling them, just fit flush to the roof - that makes dealing with wind loading easier as you just need some flashing, you don't need a spoiler to stop the wind catching them. It's not perfect alignment but you instead spend the cost of angle mounting hardware by buying more panels to counteract the suboptimal angle.

Standard panels are 1m x 1.6m so maybe single or double height along the length? It would probably look quite neat and planner-friendly. It wouldn't be implausible to sketch out a panel system if one was needed as part of a planning application.

What you choose to do with the power afterwards is a different question, but a 3kW 3 phase inverter starts at £500, going up to 80kW (£3200).

Prices ex VAT from:

You can DIY although you'd need to check regs if grid tieing as it might be a G99 installation (>16A per phase) which needs DNO approval (I think you can DIY if DNO approves, subject to the usual Part P rules about consumer unit work). You only get export credits if you use an MCS approved installer.

Theo

OK Theo. Thanks for the details. I guess the panels would reflect a fair bit of light at some Sun angles so not really a visual enhancement! Tempting to just keep quiet as the planners haven't threatened any enforcement action. I am drafting out a list of justifications and will run it by a couple of local architects for their comment WRT the planning dept. Sadly this is metropolitan green belt and fiercely protected.

The recent Grand Design filmed in Sussex, of a triangular house squeezed in next to a main road and the London to Bognor railway has a zinc roof and solar PV's that look as though they are stuck onto the roof in between the up-stands running along the side of each long strip of zinc.

Who told the planners though ?. Are you overlooked by housing ?.

Just paint it dark green.

Hmm.. I stopped watching those as the repetitive format got boring.

I guess Tek screws with a sealing washer would work for my roof.