Freezer on economy 7 overnight rate - possible/sensible?

[NY]

Why is it a good thing that no-one gets a feed-in-tariff? Surely it is sensible that whenever the electricity generated exceeds the amount that is currently being used in the house, it can be sold back to the generating/supply company rather than going to waste. Or is your comment related specifically to the FIT, as opposed to any replacement tariff that may be offered? Is there a fundamental and logical reason why power cannot be sold back to the grid at the same rate that it is charged - or is it purely down to electricity companies being greedy?

Do solar panels act as a UPS in the event of a power cut, or are they connected in such a way that if the power supply from the grid fails, the solar panels also cut their supply to the house? I ask because we get a lot of brief one-second power interruptions at this time of year because the electricity company are not doing their job of clearing overhanging branches off HV (33 kV) power lines; if we were to get solar panels, as a fringe benefit, would the issue of power cuts become less serious - as long as the power cuts occur during daylight hours...

[alan_m]

The electricity you receive includes the cost of distribution/meters, taxes such as VAT, the green tax and the warm house discounts, admin costs associated with processing of bills, bad debts etc.

There probably would be a good arguement for paying a better going rate for excess solar energy being fed back into the grid if it was generated when needed most - on a cold winter evening.

[Robin]

Andy has already answered that point and given you a link. But since you seem still unclear:

"Feed-in tariff" was not a generic term, it was the name of a specific scheme that closed in 2019

a new scheme, "Smart Export Guarantee", from 2020 provided for tariffs for power solar (and other) users export

[The Natural Philosopher]

It costs the electricity companies more to accommodate the intermittency than it does not to take the electricity.

Especially when they are paying ten times the market rate for it. That is the Evil of FITS.

Lets say you are an employer. Would you rather have a permanent employee at £10,000 a year, or one who comes in one day in ten for an equivalent slary of £100,000, to do work that you had already hired a reliable person to do.

Or is your comment

Its purely down to what it costs them. More renewable energy on the grid is in fact a cost, not a benefit. Its erratic and its unstable and it drops out the momentthere is a fault anywhere

That., mostly if they are grid connected at all.

I ask because we

No. It wouldn't do anything except make the jobs of people clearing trees more dangerous, as no matter how isolated an overhead has been made, some wanker is now still feeding power into it from some bloody solar panel

[Andy Burns]

It wasn't my comment, but ...

The original FIT levels were pretty obscene, about 10x what big generators were being paid, IIRC?

I think the "Tesla" SEG tariff does buy and sell at the same price per kWh, but you have to have two Powerwalls fitted and not buy more than a certain amount of power per year.

The latter (it saves frying the employees of the DNOs) though some of the "hybrid" inverters when connected to a battery bank do have a second output that's for local usage only, not for grid output.

Since a new-build can't really get away without having PV nowadays, and considering the pittance that's offered for export, I'd rather shove any excess into a battery (house or car) to reduce imports at a later time and if there's still any extra left over, into an immersion heater.

[The Natural Philosopher]

No one will buy a new house or a second hand house with PV

[Rod Speed]

Because it encourages those like Harry to bludge off everyone else.

Trouble is the substantial cost of network upgrades to allow that.

Yes, it costs the supplier more to accept power from consumers.

No.

No. They shut down when the mains supply goes down unless they are much more expensive to buy, essentially because without the mains, they have nothing to synch to. While it is certainly possible for them ot operate independantly until the mains comes back, its not trivial to switch back to synching with the mains when it returns and that costs more in the inverter.

Yes, except with the more expensive inverters.

Not unless you get a more expensive control system for it and even then you don't get a seamless glitch free handling of very short term power interruptions. You need a proper full time UPS for that and that isnt cheap for the whole house.

[AnthonyL]

The solar panels are not producing 240v AC at 50Hz. They need external power to drive the conversion.

I believe at some significant extra cost a "UPS" arrangement can be installed.

[Kron]

No they do not. Totally off grid solar panels work fine.

[Tim+]

Even when you’re partly right, nobody’s gonna pay much heed to a nym-shifting troll Wodney.

How pathetic is it that you have to keep doing this to dodge folk’s kill files?

<plonk>

Tim

[Andrew]

Why ever not ?. Provided the vendor OWNS the panels outright and has not rented his roof to some wide-boy scammers, then they will add to the value of the property.

[Andrew]

No they don't. They can be configured off-grid if needed. The grid connection is required if you intend to supply power back to your electricity supplier, and for safety reasons, if the grid fails the house inverter also shuts down (or diverts power to someother device that it also disconnected from the grid).

You can use solar panels off grid and feed the 48V DC into special immersion heaters intended for this purpose.