New to solar panels, do they power my home directly?

Normally the electricity generated by your solar panels will be used to power you house when the sun shines. Only if you generate more electricity than your house needs will it be exported to the grid. You should see the electricity usage on your smart meter go down as the sun comes out providing your electricity consumption is the same.

It's quite possible to that you use more electricity than you neighbour. A £40 per month difference is not huge.

May I also ask a question re Solar panels please;

Do you still get charged a daily standing charge if you have these?

If you have a meter of any sort then yes, there is the standing charge still to pay

Thank you for your reply. That's interesting to know 👍

Well l can’t really comment as we don’t have solar panels. and don’t understand about them much.

@BPLightlog thank you for your reply!

unfortunately we don’t have access to any app as we are not technically OVO customers and don’t have an account/only use them for the pre existing FiT scheme. However, it would be worth querying this with OVO and trying to access this. 
 

I’ve attached a photo of the schematic for our Solar panel system - not sure if it we be of any help.

thanks

If you can invest in getting a battery pack fitted to store your excess energy rather than flog it back to the grid. Also investigate switching to economy 7 so in the winter charge the battery 100% on the cheap rate to power your house for most of the day.

Any control/monitor is not via the supplier but the inverter itself so if you look at Solax and the model number you should find their monitoring system although you will need the previous owners log in or get set up yourselves. 
They use what’s known as SolaX cloud although there should be an App as well. 

@BPLightlog perfect thank you very much for your help - as far as I’m aware the previous owners didn’t have this set up so I have opened an account and will try to add the inverter once I’m home from work. I’m presuming i won’t be able to see previous data from the inverter and will only get to see the data starting from now.

Thanks

Wrong part of the forum, but it may get moved. Regardless

380kwh/month = 12kwh/day

The £40/month difference = 181kwh@0.22p/kwh = 5.5kwh/day less

A lot for the “same” and the fact that you have up to 3.6kwhp of solar panels. It’s worth checking that it is the same in terms of using the same fuel for cooking / space heating / water heating as that can make a huge difference. + use of washing machines. 

FIT - I’m not on fit myself. What is your export rate? I believe the FITS were “deemed export” and based on theoretical values. I’m not sure if the actual generation values were measured, but i’m fairly sure they assumed that you only used half and exported the other half. 

SEG - I’m on seg and get 4p/kwh export. 

How do the panels power your house / do they power certain appliances? No, they don’t. The inverter feeds into your consumer box and powers all items connected to it. The inverter measures the incoming mains voltage and always produces a slightly higher output voltage than the mains, forcing electricity back into the grid. When you’re using more than generating, the electricity flows into the house and you use both, or just the grid when there is no generation. 

Panels producing 3.6kw @ midday - House uses 2kw (oven on) - Exports 1.6kw

Panels producing 1kw @ 4pm - Houses uses 2kw - Draws 1kw from grid

If you have a smart meter you’ll be able to see on this the energy consumption and it’ll show a negative value when exporting. If you don’t have a smart meter, get one, or get a energy monitor and monitor your mains. 

Makin the most of solar requires you to run equipment when the sun shines, or use a “diverter” to dump energy into the hot water cylinder. Or, charge a car during the day. For me, a battery doesn’t make sense. 

@supercitybity 

thanks for your reply.

I queried my export rate with OVO this morning and they said it was 19.01p/kwh but that is only for ‘any excess generated’. We have only manually submitted our first quarterly reading last month via the generation meter and will be due to receive payment in December.

Yes we have a smart meter for electricity - having issues with the app so can’t view daily usage at the moment. However, will be good to check daily usage and to see any negative readings at certain times of the day.

thanks again

If you are out all day then your panels will during that time be powering the only items that are on - probably a fridge and freezer, perhaps your Internet router and whatever else is on standby.

If it's dark (or darker than the solar panels need) by the time you're home, then sadly you won't be seeing much benefit from them in terms of consumption. You will get the FiT scheme payments which will offset them.

We're in North East England with E/W facing panels. Our latest full year from a 2015 FiT scheme has paid £529. Broadly, December and March quarters total about £80 between them, June £250 and September £200. If we didn't have batteries we'd export more but it wouldn't have made a significant difference for FiT. They do mean negligible grid consumption in summer as we use our own generated electricity all day and night. In winter we charge overnight on economy 7.

Just to note that you won’t see any export or negative readings via your online account - that’s why it’s important to be able to monitor the inverter. 

With such a good FIT payment there is little  incentive to maximise self consumption and no incentive to use it for hot water heating. 

As said, the smart meter won’t show export, the history will just show as no use for that time period.  

It should be able to show a range of parameters once you figure out the detail. 
Although from a different manufacturer, this is an example of mine which I can explore point by point 

BPLightlog wrote:

CraigM1996 wrote:

BPLightlog wrote:

CraigM1996 wrote:

 

…

will this show on the Solax app once set up? Or will this only show electricity being generated by the solar panels and not the electricity being consumed?

It should be able to show a range of parameters once you figure out the detail. 
Although from a different manufacturer, this is an example of mine which I can explore point by point

 

Perfect. So in theory as I won’t see a ‘negative’ reading on my graph, any point where my ‘Solar PV’ is showing a higher reading than my ‘consumption’ this is when I am producing/generating more electricity and would be the ideal time to use washing machine/dishwasher etc and my grid should be sitting at 0.

Yes although you could see a negative grid reading on this output (via the inverter), it’s your supplier account which won’t show the export. 
 

It’s not such a good time of year to show solar which is why many have batteries and charge at an off peak rate 

That’s a surprise; I’d check again. 

According to the latest tariff update from OFGEM which applies from April this year:  https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/publications/feed-tariff-fit-tariff-table-1-april-2024 the maximum export tariff is 7.14p/kWh.  You get that ON TOP of your generation rate.

Your generation rates will depend on date of installation and the energy rating of the house at that time: 

Ofgem:

Energy Efficiency Requirement Rating:

- Higher tariff rate will be applied if an EPC of level D or above is achieved before commissioning
- Middle tariff rate will be applied if an EPC of level D or above has been achieved but the Generator owns 25 or more installations
- Lower tariff rate will be applied if an EPC of level D or above is not achieved before commissioning. 

There isn’t a rate of 19.01 for generation either.  There is one of 19.02 for installations between July and end September 2015. 

Hope this helps.

@EverythingNeedsAUserName 

apologies that’ll be what’s confused me. The installation was completed in summer 2015 and that’s when they signed up to the FiT scheme so it’ll be the 19.02 figure that they’ve given me.