We’re considering getting solar panels and battery from Ovo (we’re existing customers). Does anyone who’s already gone down this road have any thoughts - good or bad - on how it’s going for them? Thanks!
Solar panels + battery from Ovo: good or bad?
Hey
I’ll couple of our Solar members who can share their insight and opinions -
Let me know if I can help with any questions 😊
We have had solar PV since 2012 and it has been a very useful investment. Obviously at that time the installation wasn’t via OVO but you should find some MCS registered installers locally to compare.
I would also always recommend batteries as the solar generation never matches your usage and so it’s better to make use of all your solar power
Definitely worth doing.
Similarly to
HOWEVER, with the the addition of a very small 24 volt lithium battery a few years ago (nominally 2.4 kW) and a small additional inverter I found we can use every scrap of our low winter production of, say, 1 kW daily, because I use the battery exclusively to run everything in the house between 1600 hours and 0900 hours, recharging with an ordinary 24 volt charger between 0900 and darkness at 1600. This is not the modern way, as a new system will be able to utilise cheap nighttime tariffs and help with your larger daytime usage, and so be more efficient. As my wife and I are both retired we watch daytime consumption like hawks, and our evening and nighttime consumption averages only around 100 Wh (and that’s with a small chest freezer and a family-sized upright ‘fridge/freezer) just right for a 2.4 kWh battery so we buy perhaps half a penny’s worth of electricity from the grid hourly overnight. In the summer, of course, much of my rooftop production is exported (“wasted” from the point of view of our household, though not wasted of course in the larger community) because as BPLightlog says you can never use all of what you produce, but with batteries and a sharp eye you can go very close!
I would heartily recommend you to go ahead BUT with the usual caveats: seek expert advice, go for as much battery capacity as you can reasonably justify (somewhere between 5 and 15 kWh is normal nowadays, anything bigger requires some very serious thought). I take it you are UK customers of OVO? Our weather will not save you being reliant to some extent on the Grid. But it’s the “some extent” that can be vastly tweaked with good planning. And then, if you are car drivers, there’s the whole EV side of things which with imaginative tariffs and possibly enabling household or grid usage of the EV’s own batteries (if one has one’s own drive, of course), over the next few years is going to make a panel/battery combo even more attractive (although remember EVs won’t charge solely from your panels without help if your rooftop is producing less than 6 Amps).
I would actually suggest that in the very near future, because of increasingly interesting tariffs, that a household battery is almost more relevant than solar panels!
I can reassure you on one thing: after a decade or two of solar panels becoming ever more widespread in all parts of the UK there are no longer any myths or unanswered questions about productivity, the effect of differing annual solar irradiation figures in different parts of the Country, reliability of the kit, etc. etc.
Good luck….and get good reputable advice, remember there’s no such thing as daft questions, only daft answers! But ultimately friends, neighbours, colleagues who already have solar panels are a good first port of call….plus the OVO forum of course!
Walt, thanks so much for your hugely helpful reply!
We are indeed Ovo customers, living in the PE7 postcode area (edge of East Anglia) so the weather is generally drier / brighter than many other areas. Roof shape / angle / orientation are near-perfect. We’re looking at a 9kW battery + 12x 440W panels from Ovo. Total electricity usage in 2023 was 7838kWh (= high, not least because my disabled husband and I are at home pretty much 24/7/365).
I am particularly interested to know if anyone has already used Ovo’s own solar setup service, recently promoted. It sounds well worth considering, and the incentives seem pretty generous – at least to begin with…!
I’ve not done very much research at all, yet I feel this is definitely the way to go – my gut is telling me so! If there are any genuine downsides (apart from the initial cost, which we are fortunate enough to be able to afford), I’d like to hear them.
Sally
Hi Sally, sounds like your envisaged system is a perfect size…hopefully someone with experience of the OVO Solar offerings will be along shortly.
You and your husband will have a lot of fun exploring the different options and making the final choice: and don’t worry, the process with a good firm is smooth and the disruption nowadays is minimal.
Initially, if you haven’t already done so, ask your local friendly electrician (who probably won’t be a solar installer) to come and have a quick initial look at your meter (is it a smart meter?), consumer unit and your house’s general electric set-up. S/he may well feel confident about pointing you in the direction of one or two local MCS installers who will then chat further about the physical logistics and structural requirements and options…the eventual chosen installer will also liaise with the grid supply people (your local DNO).
All the very best, do let us know how you get on….
Hey
Wow, that’s some really good advice so far thanks to
This may also be of interest to you:
As Walty has said please keep us updated and if there’s anything you aren’t sure of then please pop a question on and we can do our very best to make sure you get some advice.
I haven’t gone into any deep calculations about PV arrays and batteries, because I live in a rented property. The cottage has no gas, (inadequate) night storage heaters and an Economy 7 meter/wiring system, but because the NSH became so expensive to run a couple of years ago, I switched them off and switched to a single-rate tariff. I use other means to keep warm. Storing cheaper energy as heat doesn’t work well, but does storing it in batteries work any better?
I could do some sums to see what the return on investment would be for a battery installation designed to charge at the E7 night rate. I assume that it’s 100% efficient in that no energy is wasted (except perhaps in a hot Summer when the proportion that is ‘lost’ as heat would in fact be wasted), but I’m not sure how to determine the required battery specification. I’ve noticed a few recommendations (you know who you are!) to work out how much you think you need, then double it. The variables are:
Daily consumption. For the past year, this has been on average 2.800 kWh with considerable deviation. An Excel histogram shows that consumption is less than 3.0 kWh on 70% of days, less than 4.0 kWh on 83% of days and less than 5.0 kWh on 93% of days. Bearing in mind the advice of those who’ve been there, I’d probably say I should go for 5 kWh capacity.
Maximum draw. This is more problematic. Although the meter does register the momentary draw in kW, it doesn’t record it and I know of no way to capture it. It could be that
Appliance | kW |
---|---|
Electric shower | 9 |
Bathroom heater | 2 |
Kettle | 3 |
Everything else | 1 |
Total max. draw | 15 |
I suppose I could go down to 12 kW if I could guarantee that no-one would switch on the kettle while someone was in the shower. I’ve no idea how the system would react if that were to happen, though, and I haven’t looked to see if there is such an animal as a 5 kWh battery that would ever allow for a power draw of 12 kW.
Still, if I could charge the battery each night, consuming say 3 kWh on average, that would cost 3 x £0.1636 per day, or £180 p.a. On the equivalent single-rate tariff, the cost would be 2.8 x £0.2271 per day, or £232 p.a. (rates from OVO’s E7 plans).
Saving of the order of £50 a year sounds like a 10-20 year payback period. However, a cheaper night rate (like some of those offered to EV owners) might make a much bigger difference. Octopus’s 8.5p rate, for example, would save £90 a year, bringing the payback period down to perhaps 8 years, which I might just survive.
Do my sums make any sort of sense? Are there other considerations I haven’t taken into account?
...
I could do some sums to see what the return on investment would be for a battery installation designed to charge at the E7 night rate. I assume that it’s 100% efficient in that no energy is wasted (except perhaps in a hot Summer when the proportion that is ‘lost’ as heat would in fact be wasted), but I’m not sure how to determine the required battery specification. I’ve noticed a few recommendations (you know who you are!) to work out how much you think you need, then double it.
The rule of thumb is to calculate a home energy battery to be around 90% efficient as it will lose power due to storage, losses in the inverter and other wiring resistances.
The variables are:
Daily consumption. For the past year, this has been on average 2.800 kWh with considerable deviation. An Excel histogram shows that consumption is less than 3.0 kWh on 70% of days, less than 4.0 kWh on 83% of days and less than 5.0 kWh on 93% of days. Bearing in mind the advice of those who’ve been there, I’d probably say I should go for 5 kWh capacity.
The daily requirements are one thing but you also need to consider solar generation calculations which are normally done by an installer but can be reviewed looking at panel orientation, declination/slope, shading from trees or other obstacles etc.
Maximum draw. This is more problematic. Although the meter does register the momentary draw in kW, it doesn’t record it and I know of no way to capture it. It could be that
And those combined kW draws are critical as momentatary grid power will be used during times of excess (compared to the inverter/solar/battery capability). The other considerations are in terms of general daily cloud cover (which is why I make the point of battery need). Your appliances will draw the power they need and if necessary, the grid will supply as a balancing point in the whole scheme. This is why when some expect there to be no grid need, it never works out that way as the power switching of the inverter can be relatively slow, even with capacity in battery storage, for a few seconds.
So I’d have to take an empirical approach and arrive at:
Appliance | kW |
---|---|
Electric shower | 9 |
Bathroom heater | 2 |
Kettle | 3 |
Everything else | 1 |
Total max. draw | 15 |
I suppose I could go down to 12 kW if I could guarantee that no-one would switch on the kettle while someone was in the shower. I’ve no idea how the system would react if that were to happen, though, and I haven’t looked to see if there is such an animal as a 5 kWh battery that would ever allow for a power draw of 12 kW.
Still, if I could charge the battery each night, consuming say 3 kWh on average, that would cost 3 x £0.1636 per day, or £180 p.a. On the equivalent single-rate tariff, the cost would be 2.8 x £0.2271 per day, or £232 p.a. (rates from OVO’s E7 plans).
Saving of the order of £50 a year sounds like a 10-20 year payback period. However, a cheaper night rate (like some of those offered to EV owners) might make a much bigger difference. Octopus’s 8.5p rate, for example, would save £90 a year, bringing the payback period down to perhaps 8 years, which I might just survive.
Do my sums make any sort of sense? Are there other considerations I haven’t taken into account?
Generally, you might expect a solar PV system to payback in something under 6 years. You would also get some sort of export payment on the SEG provision to add into the pot but most users with this type of set up would look to a TOU tariff which can easily drastically reduce any overnight charging costs required (during summer months, providing sufficient battery storage is installed, you would generally not need to charge from the grid at all).
And of course … you can never have too many batteries
Thanks, BP. I’m just not in the market for solar PV, sadly - that would be within the squire’s purview. A compact battery would in theory be portable, with a bit of judicious wiring, so I could take it with me if I were evicted.
I just had a quick look at prices for batteries. I’ve got a lot of rethinking to do ...
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