Solar panels and payback

According to the manufacturer's data, the battery I have weighs 110Kg. Not the easiest thing to get in to a loft. Mine is mounted on an outside wall of the house -at ground level.

It's a terrible idea to put batteries in a loft anyway - lofts cook and freeze, both of which are unkind to batteries. Unless you've insulated behind the tiles so the loft is a conditioned space, then it's just another part of the house.

Theo

Ah, interesting. That would imply that a garage separate from the house would also be poor/bad location.

From BSI PAS 63100:2024 (it's a free download, but they do want your inside leg measurement.

a) rooms in which persons are intended to sleep;

b) routes used as a means of escape that are not defined as protected escape routes, including landings, staircases and corridors;

c) corridors, shafts, stairs or lobbies of protected escape routes;

d) firefighting lobbies, shafts or staircases;

e) storage cupboards, enclosures or spaces opening into rooms in which persons are intended to sleep;

f) outdoors (ground-mounted or wall-mounted in a suitable enclosure) within 1m of: 1) escape routes; 2) doors; 3) windows; or 4) ventilation ports.

g) voids, roof spaces or lofts;

h) within 2m of stored flammable materials and fuel storage tanks or cylinders; and

i) cellars or basements that have no access to the outside of the building.

snip

Does that mean *direct* access - so, a door from the basement into the garden for example? Or access to outside via other rooms - door into hallway etc?

Or both, to avoid installation in a sealed-off space?

Given that list in my house any batteries would have to be ground mounted in the garden and if protection from rain and freezing conditions is required in a purpose built enclosure.

Possibly many terrace houses around my way would be the same. I and friends of mine were commenting on a estate of £1million+ houses that have been packed in like sardines on a smallish plot of land. Possibly not easy to find areas for banks of batteries.

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Mine was provided with a canopy to keep direct rainfall off it and the higher mounted inverter.. I suspect the enclosure itself is water tight. The label says IP65!

Oh I see. Now I understand. Thanks.

As per usual TNP has got everything wrong.

There are are hybrid inverters that have the ability to keep providing power while isolating the power from the grid. You will obviously have to install batteries to have power if the panels don't produce enough.

There doesn't need to be a phase difference. If the inverter is acting as if over-excited then the current will lead, if under-excited the current will lag.

A good location, is underground, below the frost line. If you've ever gone caving, you know what that temperature is :-) Perfect for batteries. The only issue, is holes in the ground tend to flood, so your payload would need to be waterproof.

Garages aren't that nice. The temperature swing is quite large. I would prefer a car port to a garage, for parking a BEV. And that's what I've got, is a car port. The car port idea, cuts off the temperature peaking issue a bit. For a BEV though, the disadvantage would be charging the thing when the air temperature is rather low. It would require battery conditioning, and increase the electricity used.

Paul

Some battery inverters have two outputs: one for the regular grid connection, and one emergency output when the power fails. The grid connection is also used for sensing the grid and grid battery charging.

How you wire that is up to you, but typically you'd have a transfer switch selecting one or other and feeding your CU. The inverter's mains input/output is always connected to the mains. When the mains is powered, the CU is fed from the mains. When there's a power cut, the transfer switch changes over to power the CU from the emergency output. The point of the transfer switch is it takes time to switch over so that it never connects both mains and emergency terminals together.

By over-excited I think you mean the voltage is higher, ie if Vout > Vmains then you'll push current into the grid, if Vout < Vmains you'll draw from the grid? All in phase?

Theo

Hah, there is no chance of that ever happening. The heat death of the Universe will occur sooner.

Well we have a car port, but its openness is what gave the scroats who burgled us the idea that we were out So we added garage doors and now it's a garage.

Or you could simply vote for a party the believes in nuclear power.

But considerably less than that of a black-coloured EV parked out on black tarmac in full sun all day in a parking lot, and left outside at night. What temperature swing would its batteries be subject to, particularly in some areas of North America?

Anyway, in a garage in very northern areas of that area the battery could have a small heater under it to prevent really low temperatures if it's neither charging nor discharging. If doing either of those its internally generated "waste" heat would prevent major temperature changes.

Do you think the scrotes, seeing a closed garage without a car on the drive think "they must park in the garage" or "the garage is full of stuff and they're out"?

And some EVs do use the main battery to heat and circulate fluid through the battery.

The other mistake we made was to leave the front gate open. Now, with lights on in the house, front gate closed, and car-port closed, those clues are removed.

No. By way of example you can have an over excited alternator supplying no power where the current leads voltage. And looks like a capacitor.

You can also have a poor power factor where the current is not a sinusoidal waveform. In which case it might be neither leading or lagging.

A wasted vote when that party has little chance of getting enough MPs to fill a taxi.