Advice needed - planning to upgrade to 3-phase electrics - but I have solar panels (inherited rental arrangement) - what are the knock on effects of going 3-phase?

obviously I meant 22kW EV charger! 😂

Hi ​@NKen63 ,

Transparent unfortunately left the Forum a few years ago, but we do have other members who might be able to help! ​@BPLightlog and ​@Firedog might be good ones, but we’ll let other members know who might also be a good fit.

Speak soon!

Oh, and OVO does offer 3-Phase Meters! I’m not sure on the progress of Smart Meters yet for them (I’ve definitely seen a few in the wild!) but it’s definitely in-scope for OVO.

Thanks for the ping, ​@Blastoise186!

Three-phase (‘3φ’ for short) electricity was (the?) one thing that had me terminally baffled right up to ‘S’ level physics and, indeed, ever since, so I’m not much use here, I’m afraid.

I did notice, though, that item 0 is missing from your to-do list: arrange 3φ connection. That will involve your DNO and could be expensive.

As Blastoise says, OVO have been known to install 3φ meters (IIRC, they have used varieties of the Aclara SGM 143x-B). The bottleneck (which to a support agent might become a ‘computer says no’) is probably the shortage of 3φ-trained engineers to carry out installations. It might help if you lived near Bristol or Glasgow …

As Firedog mentions, 3 phase will likely be expensive assuming there’s no nearby feed - it might even require an upgrade to your transformer .

For your solar array, much will depend on size and current configuration. I have seen a system with a solar pv feed on one phase but it might be problematic and cause balance issues between phases (you usually need to try to balance power draw across all phases). If the array is large enough, a 3 phase inverter might help if the panels could be split or if you could add panels to make the feed better but from your description, I’m not sure that is possible. 
All of your other points on rewiring would be needed and so again, there’s a significant expense to consider.

Just checking a particular part of your requirement. It is easy enough to get a 22kW AC charge point as it's just feeding three phase into the car, however, not all cars can charge at 22kW AC. Mine does (Zoe) but most will top out at 11kW and some just 7kW. If you are thinking of charging multiple cars at the same time then two or even three 7kW charge points might be better. The reason for this is multiple cars. Yes, a 22kW charge point will charge the car in two or three hours at most but if you needed two cars charged up overnight you would have to get up in the early hours to swap the charging lead over. There may be an issue with having two cars charging at the same time with Charge Anytime though.

Peter 

The only part of your query I can, perhaps, help you with is the kiln. I have a kiln (Skutt Firebox 14) that I use for glass fusing and it plugs into a normal household 3 pin socket. A friend of mine, however, has a kiln that requires a 3 phase connection and she had a dedicated feed put in for it. She also has solar panels.

​@NKen63 

It's me again. Looking back at your question the bigger issue might be the the solar panels and the inherited rental arrangement.

I would gather that the company that owns the panels are paying rent to have their panels on your roof. I think it would be a lease agreement and your ability to install three phase may depend on their ability to resore the outgoing export arragement. If changing to three phase prevents export because of a technical reason (I have no idea, I'm seriously out of my depth here - some suppliers might say they cannot provide a technical solution for that) if you have signed a lease/rental agreement then they could perhaps stop you from doing that. An alternative might be that they might want to remove the panels and associated equipment leaving you to make good any damage to your roof. You may even be able to do a deal to buy out the lease/rental agreement for a very reasonable price bearing in mind they will have significant costs in recovering second hand equipment which is possibly no use to them.

Perhaps the best course of action is to start a dialogue with the solar panel company. I'm assuming the sale of the house to you was conditional on you you signing a lease agreement with the solar panel company. If not then they have no contractual hold over you to ensure that export has to take place. See if you can buy them out for an even lower price.

A somewhat interesting scenario and not one that I  had thought of associated with solar panels. I would be interested to hear how that goes.

Peter 

Thanks for the comments so far I’m going to go through them and reply to specific questions. For now I can clarify that the solar rental is one that we didn’t have choice of when we bought the house and there were still too many years left to make it worth us buying them out. That may have changed now and tbh the inconvenience of not being able to do any work to the roof and actually not getting any ‘rent’ from the solar company means I’d be happy to get rid and the set up our own system with battery etc so we’re getting the benefits. 
I’ll be back with more but for now lots to digest thanks all for your input 

Thanks for the reply on that. If they're not getting any rental then they might be open to offers. It doesn't sound like they're going to get any more income from their investment otherwise.

Peter 

Ah that’s where the solar company has got us at the moment. They get to benefit from any generated power that we don’t use (and we’re not permitted to store it eg in a battery) and we have to pay if we cause an interruption or if we want to have them removed! Still feeling annoyed by the whole agreement and it’s been 7 years since we took it over, but we love the house and the vendors weren’t prepared to budge on it. Bit of a tangled web working out who the agreement is with these days as they seem to have changed a few times too.

Hey ​@NKen63,

Welcome to the community! 

You've received many helpful replies so far, and it's wonderful to see so many community members offering advice and support! If you have the time, please share some photos of your current setup. This can be really helpful, as it allows everyone to see what you’re working with, and we can often tailor our advice based on your specific circumstances. Please keep us updated; we look forward to following your journey!