WEBVTT NOTE Transcript 2024-05-21 from MP3 by https://elvery.net/prototypes/transcribe/ on my MacBook Air M1 on maximum quality setting. NOTE Body significantly edited. 00:00.000 --> 00:08.480 We've just put a solar PV system in - we've got a Victorian property in Kingston. 00:08.480 --> 00:18.080 It's a bit of a strange sort of construction. We've got an office in a poorly converted roof, 00:18.080 --> 00:24.640 ... a pitched roof, that's not properly insulated. We've looked at some projects 00:24.640 --> 00:30.400 that include the costs of improving that insulation, and they're significant. We were 00:30.400 --> 00:36.560 shocked. We were perhaps a little bit behind the curve in terms of what these projects might cost. 00:36.560 --> 00:43.040 So we've had quotes of GBP30,000 (say), and it's taken a long time to get those quotes, 00:43.040 --> 00:51.840 and we just said, "That's madness. We at our dizzy age, we may not benefit from the actual 00:51.840 --> 00:57.760 energy saved." And I said, "Crikey, we've missed a trick here, what we should have done, perhaps, 00:57.760 --> 01:02.560 in here, in benefit of hindsight, we should have put solar in. We should have done that a year 01:02.560 --> 01:09.360 ago." It's taken us a year to work out that we should have put the solar in this time last year. 01:09.360 --> 01:16.560 So we'd like to be a bit greener, but more importantly, because I'm sort of semi-retired now, 01:17.920 --> 01:22.880 the bills in our house are huge, our electric and gas, partly because we're leaking lots of energy 01:22.880 --> 01:29.760 through our roof. We can't easily fix that. So I said, "Let's put solar in, and we can reduce 01:29.760 --> 01:35.360 some of our energy costs and make ourselves a bit greener so we can wear a small..." We haven't fixed 01:35.360 --> 01:43.680 all the problems of the house by putting solar in, but we can improve our robustness, for want of a word. 01:43.680 --> 01:49.759 So you've probably heard most of this, obviously, in the previous talk, and may know already know this, so we chatted to some people, people like Damon who's 01:55.920 --> 02:00.480 got solar, I know one or two other colleagues have got solar, one or two neighbours have got solar 02:00.480 --> 02:05.600 in our street, although we didn't realise they had it, because it just happens their solar panels are 02:05.600 --> 02:12.080 not visible from the road, but we just happen to know one or two of the people. 02:13.600 --> 02:20.000 We started to chat, we wanted the battery because they're affordable now, I mean, 02:20.000 --> 02:27.680 what I'm talking about today, we've got the VAT has been removed, batteries have reduced in price 02:27.680 --> 02:31.840 because of the... what's the word? The... the... the... 02:31.840 --> 02:38.240 - "The experience curve?" - Well, the... from the electric car business, batteries have plummeted, 02:38.240 --> 02:44.240 it's a bit of an extreme statement, but reduced massively in price. So batteries are now affordable, 02:44.240 --> 02:50.160 whereas they may not have been 12, 10, 15 plus years ago. So it seemed a no-brainer not to have a battery as part of our solar system.  And we've also added as Damon was just talking about, what people call solar diversion, but basically it means that using a smart bit of technology 03:04.880 --> 03:11.200 that works out that you've got energy left and that can be used to heat your water before you may export it.  So we've built one of those into our system too.  All again the things that Mark mentioned, you've got to look at your roofs, tiles, directions, how well you're positioned. 03:23.760 --> 03:30.320 We've got a very large roof, but we've got all sorts of obstacles. In fact, we've got some air 03:30.320 --> 03:37.600 vents and it... when we had a survey, the installer was worried that the existing air vents would be 03:37.600 --> 03:45.200 too high and would found the mounting system. But, you know, we measured that up and, you know, 03:45.200 --> 03:49.760 we got round that. But it would have been annoying if we'd had to put new air vents in the roof 03:49.760 --> 03:56.160 because getting people up on a, you know, quite tall structure, scaffolding and all the cost, 03:56.160 --> 04:01.920 it's expensive. It's best if you've got a roof that's already ready to roll. Batteries need to 04:01.920 --> 04:09.840 be stored ideally outside a property. I can't give you the complete picture, but there is 04:09.840 --> 04:14.880 sort of guidance today that talks about where you place your batteries. They've got to be 04:14.880 --> 04:21.839 the fireproof type, what's the word, provision in your home. It wouldn't be great to put them in a bedroom or hallway or perhaps a loft, they've got to be protected such that in the worst 04:28.560 --> 04:36.159 scenario there was an event with the battery. It wouldn't cause danger to life, so to speak.  We conveniently have a garage, and we've put our battery pack - there's a picture or two coming up - 04:41.760 --> 04:50.720 and we've put our battery in that. All subject to survey. I used the Which?... I'm not a super 04:50.720 --> 04:56.320 advocate of Which?. I'm not overjoyed about some of their assessments of products, but they have 04:56.320 --> 05:04.800 got a trusted trader list of people that would install solar and other trades, and I've actually 05:04.800 --> 05:10.560 used the Which? list. I've put our postcode in, I went through and got the top four or five, 05:10.560 --> 05:16.480 spoke to them all, and got them... I say got them round, got them to do something that 05:16.480 --> 05:22.800 wasn't obvious to us. Typically they won't visit your property unless you're actually going to 05:22.800 --> 05:29.360 make a commitment, because it's quite expensive to do that, to come to everyone's property. 05:29.360 --> 05:36.720 What they do is they do a Google Maps assessment of your roof, they'll quote for the size of system 05:36.720 --> 05:45.040 that you think you want and they guide you towards, and we were lucky that the installer we chose 05:45.040 --> 05:50.159 just happened to be in the area working on another house, and the owners came and had a look at our property as well, but that's not guaranteed from what I can see.  Typically you might have to pay a 05:54.960 --> 06:01.920 deposit for them to actually visit your property, and if they can't install it they refund the 06:01.920 --> 06:10.080 deposit. So that's what we've got in very simplistic terms. We've got 12 panels on the roof. 06:11.280 --> 06:17.760 As Mark previously alluded to, panels have got much larger both physically and their capacity 06:17.760 --> 06:25.680 to generate. We've got panels that generate 440 watts, or can generate 440 watts of peak power 06:25.680 --> 06:33.600 in, you know, in optimal sunlight conditions. We've got another thing that's quite new, we've got what 06:33.600 --> 06:41.680 they call microinverters. So because we've got three disparate strings, we've got three groups 06:41.680 --> 06:48.960 of panels on different faces of our roof. That makes it harder for the traditional inverters. 06:48.960 --> 06:55.600 We've got an inverter in each panel, makes it a bit more expensive, but means that panel A 06:55.600 --> 07:01.760 isn't affected by panel B or panel C. So they're effectively, they're sitting there generating 07:01.760 --> 07:08.160 mains voltages themselves. There's an example of one of the exhibitors' stands, they've got an 07:08.160 --> 07:15.200 Enphase, it is the brand, E-N-phase, but there's other brands I believe, and they've got these 07:15.200 --> 07:22.160 little boxes about so big, and that sits behind the panel. We've got 12 of those, so as an 07:22.160 --> 07:27.360 electronics engineer by training, it sounds a bit crazy, we've got 12 computers on the roof 07:27.360 --> 07:34.880 generating mains, all madness really. We've got a, that green box is a battery and a charger, 07:34.880 --> 07:40.400 there's two actually, it's two physical units, and we've got this energy, Myenergi, 07:40.400 --> 07:48.320 solar diverter, it says power diverter, it should say solar diverter, which actually then feeds 07:48.320 --> 07:55.200 electricity to our existing cylinder, what do you call it, immersion heater, we haven't changed our 07:55.200 --> 08:02.640 cylinder, we've got an existing jacketed 25 year old cylinder, and we're just using the heater 08:02.640 --> 08:07.760 the built-in heater, you can run two heats, so it's probably not optimal what we're doing, 08:07.760 --> 08:13.680 we could probably gain a bit more efficiency by having a modern cylinder with two, with two 08:13.680 --> 08:20.080 heaters, but you know that's more money, it all comes down to money. We've not done this 08:20.080 --> 08:25.520 directly for payback, we're doing this to be as I say, just to be a bit greener, but also to 08:25.520 --> 08:32.240 buffer ourselves.  Once you start generating your own electricity, even for any part of the year, if electricity prices go up ... I don't care, that's somebody else's worry!  We are generating more electricity at the moment than we are able to use, even though I thought 08:46.400 --> 08:53.040 we were quite high-end consumers, but in the night our batteries used to keep the electricity running, 08:53.040 --> 08:59.920 standby, power, so in truth by the morning our battery's empty, we I suppose needed a bigger 08:59.920 --> 09:05.200 battery I suppose, if things were ideal, but a bigger battery, it's across the board, we've got 09:05.200 --> 09:10.560 a battery system, there's lots of different solutions out there for batteries, we've got 09:10.560 --> 09:17.280 one that's expandable, you can add to it, not all are like that, some are fixed, some are not. 09:17.280 --> 09:22.800 How big is it? It's 8.7 kilowatt hours. 09:22.800 --> 09:31.280 Ah, there's a picture, so here's what we've actually got, because we're getting at the end, 09:31.280 --> 09:37.760 we've got eight panels on one roof, we've got three on another pitch, and one just obscured on the 09:37.760 --> 09:43.840 left, just one odd panel on its own, and there's bits of scaffolding there, so the actual, 09:43.840 --> 09:50.480 unfortunately not to scale, but the left picture is the batteries on the floor, there's a, 09:50.480 --> 09:57.920 suppose that's what, five litre bottle of fluid, so you've got some idea of the scale, above it is the 09:59.520 --> 10:08.080 charger, yeah it's the charger mains conditioning unit that does the management of the charge, 10:08.080 --> 10:15.200 and takes the feed from the 12 panels. To the right is a menagerie of bits of electronics and 10:15.200 --> 10:21.680 fused bits.  So on the right hand side up here is our existing smart meter, which we've only recently 10:21.680 --> 10:30.240 had, here's our existing, this was our existing consumer unit, smart meter, inlet to the home, 10:30.240 --> 10:37.840 100 amp, so there's the existing incoming supply with an isolator, this is an additional fuse board, 10:37.840 --> 10:44.240 I say fuse, they're not fuses, they're breakers, but an additional board for isolating the PV 10:44.240 --> 10:50.800 from the main supply. We have a little bit of detail, but we can't see, there's a whole 10:50.800 --> 10:57.040 load of current clamps, little coils, that go around all the various mains wires, and they feed 10:57.040 --> 11:02.640 back to those various bits of equipment in the garage, and tell each of them, allow us, 11:02.640 --> 11:10.400 sorry, to see how much current and energy we're producing. That's it, thank you, I must say I 11:10.400 --> 11:17.120 was really quite impressed, although we had to fix a couple of bits up, we had to do, we had to sort 11:17.120 --> 11:23.200 of, we asked, after they wired it up, we said, my wife said, well I don't like the way you've done 11:23.200 --> 11:28.720 this piece of wiring, could you move it, and they did it, but they did a pretty good job, 11:28.720 --> 11:36.960 I'm pretty impressed, I'm not easily impressed, and they were good, I mean we, yeah, we worked hard, 11:36.960 --> 11:43.840 we had five, six quotes, and yeah, we went through them both in terms of their financial, but what 11:43.840 --> 11:51.280 was more important for us, I think, was the sort of quality of the competency that the company 11:51.280 --> 11:56.560 projected to us, and we may have been lucky in the sense that they visited us as well, and that 11:56.560 --> 12:03.760 probably gave us a warmer feeling, but they just said the right things, whereas others we spoke to 12:03.760 --> 12:10.160 spoke only about panels and things, that's all they were sort of interested in, so these guys 12:10.160 --> 12:15.520 explained how it would work, although they, once it's installed and you've paid, they're, you don't 12:15.520 --> 12:22.560 see them for, you know, for dust, as it were, they're gone, you know, we'll never see them again. 12:22.560 --> 12:27.840 Because I can see there's a gap, there's a gap in learning, because we're completely new, it's 12:27.840 --> 12:34.640 completely new to us, we've got three different apps that, you know, monitor various parts of the 12:34.640 --> 12:40.960 system, and try to get our head round, what should we be doing during the day to maximize the use 12:40.960 --> 12:48.160 of the energy, these are some of the challenges that we're faced with as poor users. And an 12:48.160 --> 12:54.720 interesting thing on that from this workshop I was on yesterday, was we had some study data from 2013, 12:54.720 --> 13:02.880 and it does seem that people do change: they learn how to maximize that, and it doesn't matter where 13:02.880 --> 13:08.000 they're getting a different tariff, I mean people do quite quickly learn how to maximize the benefit 13:08.000 --> 13:14.320 from the amount of solar. We've been generating 26 [kWh] on the very sunny days that we've seen, the very rare few 13:14.320 --> 13:21.520 days we've had, we generated 25-26 kilowatt hours of electricity, which is a huge amount, and 13:21.520 --> 13:28.240 perhaps that's the result of having a modern system, and a system that's now much cheaper, 13:28.240 --> 13:34.240 yeah that bangs for buck, buying it today, the upside of buying it today is it's cheap, 13:34.240 --> 13:39.520 the downside is we've missed 15-20 years, that we where we could have been, you know, 13:39.520 --> 13:47.520 making money and/or saving ourselves money and being green. And what were the absolute costs? 13:47.520 --> 13:55.840 That system that I described that we put on the roof costs [GBP] 12,643 pounds plus a bit of 13:55.840 --> 14:01.920 tidying of roof slates. And that includes the battery? Yeah everything you saw, every single thing that 14:01.920 --> 14:06.800 was in those photographs. Whereas for a similar science system which I started some time ago, 14:06.800 --> 14:12.720 I probably paid three times that, starting in 2008, it made a huge difference. In terms of warranties, 14:12.720 --> 14:21.760 one is nervous, the panels are sort of material technology, although we don't, the brand is a 14:21.760 --> 14:27.200 brand. So these panels are all Chinese today, whether we like it or not, as far as I know. 14:27.200 --> 14:32.640 Japanese were sort of major players and inventors and innovators, but Japanese panels would be 14:32.640 --> 14:38.880 extremely expensive now, against the Chinese. The battery packs have got, the battery pack and 14:38.880 --> 14:46.400 inverter technology, sorry the battery pack and charger that we've got, by company called Fox ESS, 14:46.400 --> 14:52.960 that's got a 10 year warranty. The panels have got a 25 year warranty, the microinverters that 14:52.960 --> 14:59.760 are in the panels have got a 25 year warranty, the solar diverter has got a three year warranty. 15:00.000 --> 15:02.840 And I thought it was good value. 15:02.840 --> 15:06.840 It's about a thousand pounds per sort of, you know, 15:06.840 --> 15:10.120 panel's worth, if you like, as a rule of thumb. 15:10.120 --> 15:11.840 You can add to that battery pack. 15:11.840 --> 15:15.840 As I mentioned, you can take another slice and add it on. 15:15.840 --> 15:18.160 Maybe we might need to do that 15:18.160 --> 15:21.640 if we can justify that additional cost. 15:21.640 --> 15:23.520 Because if we export that, 15:23.520 --> 15:26.240 we're going to get with our existing providers, 15:26.240 --> 15:30.600 I can see almost nothing for the exported energy. 15:30.600 --> 15:33.960 Maybe we can move to a better energy provider, 15:33.960 --> 15:37.800 or maybe we can find a way of using more electricity 15:37.800 --> 15:40.240 by putting air conditioning in, which I'm thinking of today. 15:40.240 --> 15:42.040 - But what is worth getting on this workshop 15:42.040 --> 15:43.960 as the Centrica representative was claiming 15:43.960 --> 15:46.640 they thought their export rates were good. 15:46.640 --> 15:48.840 You see, you can switch retailer to... 15:48.840 --> 15:49.800 - Sure, sure. 15:49.800 --> 15:51.320 I took a view, 15:52.400 --> 15:56.560 the sort of the engineer bit in me says, 15:56.560 --> 15:57.960 don't change everything at once. 15:57.960 --> 16:00.680 We've only had this solar working about a week. 16:00.680 --> 16:02.560 We had some snagging. 16:02.560 --> 16:05.280 We had a current, one of those plants didn't work, 16:05.280 --> 16:08.120 and that caused a bit of disruption in the install. 16:08.120 --> 16:11.480 So that install that was supposed to happen over two days 16:11.480 --> 16:13.360 was delayed by another week and a half 16:13.360 --> 16:15.200 while they got spares, by the time 16:15.200 --> 16:17.680 they could get an electrician back to change that. 16:17.680 --> 16:21.560 So the install was not quite as seamless as was planned, 16:21.560 --> 16:23.600 but that's sort of life, I suppose. 16:23.600 --> 16:27.160 We've also had all those components, I say all, 16:27.160 --> 16:31.880 they all communicate wirelessly or cable 16:31.880 --> 16:35.920 to your existing Internet router 16:35.920 --> 16:37.840 provision in your home. 16:37.840 --> 16:41.360 And we've got most of our equipment out in the garage. 16:41.360 --> 16:43.960 Our WiFi is not brilliant in our house. 16:43.960 --> 16:46.880 Our house, like many Victorian houses, 16:46.880 --> 16:49.560 is quite challenging, WiFi-wise. 16:49.560 --> 16:52.760 And although they installed it and said "it's all fine," 16:52.760 --> 16:54.960 of course, two days later, 16:54.960 --> 16:59.160 one of the units stopped communicating and we lost contact. 16:59.160 --> 17:02.680 It doesn't stop the solar generation. 17:02.680 --> 17:06.640 So you're not going to lose energy or provision. 17:06.640 --> 17:09.240 You can't see it on your phone or computer. 17:09.240 --> 17:12.400 So I've actually had to fix that myself, that bit. 17:12.400 --> 17:14.320 But that is your problem. 17:14.320 --> 17:16.560 That is not the installers'. 17:16.560 --> 17:18.700 They're installing solar. 17:18.700 --> 17:22.760 They're not coming to sort your IT networking 17:22.760 --> 17:24.320 infrastructure out. 17:24.320 --> 17:27.120 They can only do their best on the day. 17:27.120 --> 17:28.400 - I think this is an important point. 17:28.400 --> 17:29.800 A well-designed system. 17:29.800 --> 17:32.800 You might lose the ability to see what's going on, 17:32.800 --> 17:35.240 but it should all completely continue to work. 17:35.240 --> 17:36.360 My view with my own is, 17:36.360 --> 17:38.720 if I get run down by a bus tomorrow, 17:38.720 --> 17:41.080 the rest of my family shouldn't have to do anything clever. 17:41.080 --> 17:42.400 It should just continue to work 17:42.400 --> 17:44.920 and we can change WiFi rather than whatever. 17:44.920 --> 17:46.160 So you should always build your system 17:46.160 --> 17:49.840 so that at worst, if your Internet goes down, 17:49.840 --> 17:53.040 it just does something sensible and continues to work. 17:53.040 --> 17:54.280 And yours is like that. 17:54.280 --> 17:55.480 So that's how you should build. 17:55.480 --> 17:59.200 - We've not touched anything. 17:59.200 --> 18:01.520 One piece of feedback I've given them, 18:01.520 --> 18:04.480 they asked me for feedback and I've given it to them. 18:04.480 --> 18:05.720 - Oh dear! 18:05.720 --> 18:07.320 - Yes, exactly. 18:07.320 --> 18:08.920 And they're still recovering. 18:08.920 --> 18:12.320 They don't seem to give what I would call a handbook. 18:12.320 --> 18:15.940 You get all the manuals from all the different 18:15.940 --> 18:19.520 appliances, but there's no overarching 18:19.520 --> 18:21.360 from this install. 18:21.360 --> 18:23.840 And I would put money on it. 18:23.840 --> 18:27.680 It might be most installers I would hazard a guess. 18:27.680 --> 18:32.040 You don't get a user guide that tells you what you've got 18:32.040 --> 18:36.140 in your system and what Damon's point about, 18:36.140 --> 18:39.000 what, how do you change, if something broke 18:39.000 --> 18:41.660 or you had to replace item A, 18:41.660 --> 18:44.440 what are the implications on the rest of the system 18:44.440 --> 18:47.440 or what settings do you have to replicate? 18:47.440 --> 18:49.080 There's no, there's nothing. 18:49.080 --> 18:52.360 It's just left working and that's, it's up to you, 18:52.360 --> 18:53.760 over to you. 18:53.760 --> 18:55.760 I think there's a gap there. 18:55.760 --> 19:00.000 The gap for a third party service, I don't know. 19:00.000 --> 19:01.960 - Or you could just pay, it would be worth having 19:01.960 --> 19:04.880 a premium install service where one of the things they do 19:04.880 --> 19:08.400 is such a guidebook and secondly is some guaranteed 19:08.400 --> 19:09.920 support time on the end of a phone. 19:09.920 --> 19:10.760 - Yeah. 19:10.760 --> 19:12.960 - That would well be well worth many people paying. 19:12.960 --> 19:15.360 - Yeah, I get why there isn't that, 19:15.360 --> 19:18.120 but I don't think that's good enough. 19:18.120 --> 19:21.360 But because they're accountable, 19:21.360 --> 19:23.360 they're going to pay more. 19:23.360 --> 19:25.040 And this business, like all these things, 19:25.040 --> 19:27.640 it's very, you can see it, you can see it. 19:27.640 --> 19:31.240 All the quotes we had by one and two were all pretty tightly ..., 19:31.240 --> 19:33.040 they were all very similar. 19:33.040 --> 19:36.840 It was actually quite hard to work out one from another. 19:36.840 --> 19:40.520 So I can't give you too many numbers 19:40.520 --> 19:42.840 because I don't know them all myself. 19:42.840 --> 19:46.200 I think we've done well with a good value system, 19:46.200 --> 19:48.600 but only time will tell. 19:48.600 --> 19:51.440 Ask me the same in six months time or something. 19:51.440 --> 19:52.280 Yes, sir. 19:52.280 --> 19:53.760 - Any issues about planning? 19:53.760 --> 19:54.600 - Any-- 19:54.600 --> 19:56.040 - Issues about planning? 19:56.040 --> 20:00.000 - Well, as I understand, two things have to take place. 20:00.000 --> 20:03.000 You have to use, we've used, well, I don't know about have to, 20:03.000 --> 20:04.920 but we've used an MCS, 20:04.920 --> 20:09.000 what's the word, approved installer. 20:09.000 --> 20:12.760 They have to validate that, 20:12.760 --> 20:15.160 and they seem to take responsibility 20:15.160 --> 20:19.360 for that planning question as I would understand. 20:19.360 --> 20:20.200 We've not had-- 20:20.200 --> 20:21.680 - I'm going to argue with you here, Alan. 20:21.680 --> 20:23.200 So I'm the general-- 20:23.200 --> 20:24.040 - Sorry, let me finish. 20:24.040 --> 20:26.720 We've not had to, we've not applied for any planning. 20:26.720 --> 20:27.560 - No, sure. 20:27.560 --> 20:30.360 - And I don't believe that's required in our area. 20:30.360 --> 20:32.800 - General Permitted Development Orders 20:32.800 --> 20:36.080 for England and Wales, anyway England, 20:36.080 --> 20:39.880 say that providing you stick to certain rules, restrictions, 20:39.880 --> 20:42.320 you do not need permission for so. 20:42.320 --> 20:44.040 Now, where you do get restrictions 20:44.040 --> 20:46.240 are if you're in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty [AONB], 20:46.240 --> 20:48.560 you're in a heritage site, listed building, 20:48.560 --> 20:49.640 there are a few restrictions, 20:49.640 --> 20:54.640 and 10% of Kingston buildings are in conservation areas. 20:54.640 --> 20:57.200 So there are a few restrictions, 20:57.200 --> 20:58.880 but the rest of the 90% of us, 20:58.880 --> 21:01.240 unless you do something absolutely ludicrous, 21:01.240 --> 21:02.480 you don't need planning. 21:02.480 --> 21:03.400 Now, ... go on. 21:03.400 --> 21:07.480 So, and the other thing, one thing that the provider, 21:07.480 --> 21:12.480 the installer has to do is get permission 21:12.480 --> 21:17.720 to your home to attach your solar panel network 21:17.720 --> 21:21.120 to the grid, and that's getting DNO [Distribution Network Operator]. 21:21.120 --> 21:24.960 So there is a bit of sort of implicit permission-getting. 21:24.960 --> 21:27.800 - But again, if you stay, but there was a certain limit, 21:27.800 --> 21:29.200 you just tell them afterwards, 21:29.200 --> 21:30.040 but you have to tell them. 21:30.040 --> 21:32.960 - Yeah, five kilowatts peak, I believe, 21:32.960 --> 21:35.040 is the-- - 16, sorry, 21:35.040 --> 21:38.280 16 amps per phase, which is 3.78 kilowatts. 21:38.280 --> 21:42.720 - Okay, but no, we've got the maximum, I believe, 21:42.720 --> 21:47.720 five kilowatt peak is the maximum normal permitted connection. 21:47.720 --> 21:50.440 - Normally 16 amps per phase, 21:50.440 --> 21:51.280 you may have no advantage, 21:51.280 --> 21:52.760 but we always get permission for more. 21:52.760 --> 21:54.120 - Okay, well, we've got it. 21:54.120 --> 21:56.400 So I don't know if that's answered it, 21:56.400 --> 21:58.280 but we've done nothing. 21:58.280 --> 22:00.120 Yes. 22:00.120 --> 22:00.960 - Thank you. 22:00.960 --> 22:02.720 That's really interesting to hear your experience 22:02.720 --> 22:06.440 in installing co-located battery with solar. 22:06.440 --> 22:08.320 I agree, I suspect that it is probably not in their interests 22:08.320 --> 22:09.640 to share too much by way of a 22:09.640 --> 22:10.680 manual at the end of it, 22:10.680 --> 22:13.800 because they don't necessarily want you to be experts 22:13.800 --> 22:15.600 in the system after having installed it. 22:15.600 --> 22:17.160 But I was interested in your experiences 22:17.160 --> 22:20.800 of that part of it in terms of how you've managed to, 22:20.800 --> 22:22.160 you said you think you mentioned you mentioned 22:22.160 --> 22:23.720 you get an app to sort of-- 22:23.720 --> 22:25.760 - Well, we've got, you get an app, 22:25.760 --> 22:29.240 there's an app for the microinverters 22:29.240 --> 22:34.240 that have got their own online app / cloud, 22:34.240 --> 22:36.680 which stores the data, 22:36.680 --> 22:38.320 how much energy you're producing, 22:38.320 --> 22:40.800 how well each individual panel, 22:40.800 --> 22:43.160 let the remotely access those, 22:43.160 --> 22:45.320 they being Enphase, 22:45.320 --> 22:48.520 can remotely access them and sort of install the level 22:48.520 --> 22:50.760 that you've got, you and I can't access. 22:50.760 --> 22:53.440 But we can see, look at that app 22:53.440 --> 22:56.240 and just see how much energy each panel's producing 22:56.240 --> 22:58.280 at any time during the day and export. 22:58.280 --> 23:01.480 You can export spreadsheets or not spreadsheets, 23:01.480 --> 23:04.800 but you can export the historical data. 23:04.800 --> 23:06.160 We've barely got enough, 23:06.160 --> 23:08.680 so we're worrying about that at the moment. 23:08.680 --> 23:11.040 And then there's an app for the battery pack 23:11.040 --> 23:14.160 and there's an app for the solar diverter. 23:14.160 --> 23:15.720 And but they're three different, 23:15.720 --> 23:18.040 because we've got three different companies, 23:18.040 --> 23:20.920 three different manufacturers of equipment, 23:20.920 --> 23:22.280 there are three different apps, 23:22.280 --> 23:24.920 there's no single overarching ... 23:24.920 --> 23:26.120 - So for example, 23:26.120 --> 23:28.960 if he got his batteries from Libbi, 23:28.960 --> 23:30.560 which is also from Myenergi, 23:30.560 --> 23:31.960 then as it happens, 23:31.960 --> 23:34.040 by coincidence then the batteries and the diverter 23:34.040 --> 23:35.280 would share an app. 23:35.280 --> 23:37.240 So there are choices you can make 23:37.240 --> 23:38.080 if you want to make it. 23:38.080 --> 23:40.120 - But we've got one at the battery app, 23:40.120 --> 23:42.000 just to answer your question, 23:42.000 --> 23:44.240 to be slightly less unfair. 23:44.240 --> 23:47.720 The battery app actually shows you pretty much everything. 23:47.720 --> 23:50.520 It shows you the amount of energy you're generating. 23:50.520 --> 23:53.680 It shows you the status of the battery, 23:53.680 --> 23:57.000 and it shows you the amount of energy you're exporting. 23:57.000 --> 23:59.560 So if you just look at that one app, 23:59.560 --> 24:02.240 you get an overview of what's going on. 24:02.240 --> 24:03.800 So it's-- 24:03.800 --> 24:06.280 - And you can get that information to be able to tell 24:06.280 --> 24:08.840 whether something's not working within that system, 24:08.840 --> 24:10.640 like one of the panels is not working. 24:10.640 --> 24:12.400 - Yeah, well, the battery's starting to-- 24:12.400 --> 24:15.920 - Pictorially, if you look at the, 24:15.920 --> 24:20.600 we look at our Enphase, the microinverter, 24:20.600 --> 24:23.280 I could have put some pictures of that in. 24:23.280 --> 24:26.640 I've got pictures, but not here, ... 24:26.640 --> 24:29.440 Yeah, you see each individual panel. 24:29.440 --> 24:33.760 You can actually set up, I discovered, 24:33.760 --> 24:36.000 yeah, I said it lost its WiFi. 24:36.000 --> 24:39.400 The irony is, I discovered afterwards, 24:39.400 --> 24:42.680 you can get it to send alerts if there's a fault. 24:42.680 --> 24:46.560 But unfortunately, because the fault was 24:46.560 --> 24:50.000 that the WiFi broke, it obviously wouldn't be able 24:50.000 --> 24:52.640 to send an alert, so that's a bit of a-- 24:52.640 --> 24:55.000 - Oh, there's loads of hundreds of status LEDs 24:55.000 --> 24:57.440 that we've struggled a bit to try and work out. 24:57.440 --> 25:00.320 But you don't need to know, you don't need to know, really.