Is a Home storage battery our 'missing link' (and do specialist advisors exist for this stuff?)

Evening!

Trusted specialist advisors are somewhat difficult to find for this sort of thing - especially since it’s possible that some of them might be more interested in your wallet than the quality of their advice. Fortunately, you’re in the right place to get completely transparent advice free of charge. So transparent in fact, our specialist advisor is literally called @Transparent ! Because he’s completely invisible half the time (and he won’t make your bank account turn transparent either). XD

I’ll let him try to help out with most of the battery storage part of this thread, but I can advise on some of the other parts. Please could you post photos of your setup and fill out your profile for us if you haven’t yet? This will definitely prove useful because it’s very much case-by-case. Thanks!

Just a heads up, since you’re already claiming Feed-in Tariff payments, you’re not eligible for the Smart Export Guarantee because you can only get one or the other and it’s mainly based on when you made the claims. FiT did not require a Smart Meter, but SEG does. Even if you’ve found attractive export rates from other suppliers, it’s possible they’re referring to SEG and if they are, I’m afraid you’ll have to disregard them. Research these things carefully!

As for V2G/V2H, the vast majority of these are still in trial phases right now and aren’t yet available on the open market. I’d definitely recommend keeping an eye on things though because there’ll be developments over time.

It’s also worth noting that some suppliers only offer the special Smart Meter deals if you’re signing up as a new customer, do NOT yet have a Smart Meter and be willing to upgrade. To be completely honest though, I probably would advise caution in regards to switching suppliers right now - many of the smaller suppliers are currently in very risky positions so you may want to stay put for now and have OVO do the Smart Meter upgrade for you (plus, OVO uses Aclara and Flonidan smart meters which are more reliable than some of the other meter brands!).

With that being said though, you can definitely have a Smart Meter and have FiT at the same time. While FiT isn’t compatible with Smart Meters, having one won’t interfere with FiT (SEG however doesn’t pay as much as FiT on average) so you don’t need to worry about losing out if you upgrade. I suspect you’re getting FiT and SEG mixed up, but there’s literally no possible way for you to have claimed SEG back in 2013, so it’s only possible that FiT was what you went for. 

I hope this helps with getting some of the puzzle solved. I’ll keep an eye on this thread in case I can help further.

Thank you @Blastoise186 - I have learned a great deal from @Transparent already and he doesn’t even know that yet ! So thank you both.

We receive a Feed In Tariff for Generation (large bit) and Export (considerably smaller bit) for our solar panels. I have to confess I needed to Google SEG when you mentioned it as I have no idea what that is… 

I do trust the advice of our installers despite a wobble with them over invoicing at one point. I’m just conscious that they will only advise about the bits of tech they know about (and fit), and won’t recommend something they know nothing about (and don’t fit) . A whole new world, and what a minefield it is.

Yeah, it’s pretty complicated stuff and not the easiest to figure out.

My understanding is that FiT/SEG can sometimes be affected by the use of battery storage (especially for SEG) because the rules regarding the exports are a little funny about it - and usually only permits payments if the exported power is actually coming directly from the solar panels and not from other sources like a storage battery. I think you can sometimes have both anyway as long as the system is wired up so that the solar panels are exporting directly and that the storage battery is only used for your own energy supply (plus you’d need to prove that to OVO as well). But definitely worth double checking either way.

And yeah, if you’re getting a lot of cash out of FiT, then I’d definitely be suggesting to stay on that rather than migrating to SEG - because you’d have to otherwise opt-out of FiT to opt-into SEG and I don’t think you can switch back. If it’s not broken, don’t break it!

Transparent is well known for learning a lot about multiple technologies and he does a pretty good job about remaining neutral and unbiased. He tends to take Wednesdays off, but there might be a few other volunteers who spot this thread so you’ve got a pretty good chance.

I can totally relate to this feeling, @Bev! Got to be said these things can get very complicated and it’s often difficult to work out what might be the best option in terms of making your home the greenest, most energy-efficient it can be.

Luckily we do have a wealth of knowledge here amongst our community members who might be able to offer some advice in terms of lessons they’ve learnt/research they’ve also done in this area. @sylm_2000, @juliamc, @PeterR1947 and @Transparent, any ideas on where to start?

Just wanted to clarify this point - getting a smart meter means your FiT export readings will monitored on your smart meter, rather than estimated at 50% of your generation reading, as they are currently. Obviously we’d still really recommend making the change to a smart meter as it would allow much closer monitoring of your energy usage and brings with it other great benefits for the future of the grid. 

Morning @Blastoise186 absolutely. That’s completely our thinking, we’re working on the assumption that a Smart Meter is probably where we’re headed. We know we would lose some tariff because we know we are not exporting 50% a lot of the time. But this is only one reason not to do it, there are lots of other reasons not to. There is at least one tariff out there as we look at them today that would make up for the feed-in tariff but needs a Smart Meter. But switching again must also have an environmental cost - this Economy 7 meter is less than 3 years old. We paid for it to be changed as  charging our car at night at that stage made financial sense. And I suppose that’s my dilemma really. Keep fiddling, keep taking stuff out, keep putting new stuff in just for it all to change again.

Don’t worry about having a Meter Exchange done to upgrade to a Smart Meter, even if the current one is fairly new. OVO will make sure the removed meter is disposed of safely and as much of it as possible will be recycled. It’s not usually possible to re-deploy a removed meter but a new use will be found for it somewhere and in one form or another.

Upgrading will also make it easier for you in general anyway - especially since Smart Meters like the Aclara SGM1412-B are capable of controlling storage heaters for example if needed, so that they only run during the cheaper hours. Plus, it’ll make it easier for you to get meter readings in on time so it’s one less job to remember each month! You won’t be charged to have OVO do this MEX and it will work with all other suppliers if you later switch, since SMETS2 meters are fully compatible with basically every supplier in the UK… Well, maybe not the ones that have gone bust recently, but you get the idea.

Hello, me again. The one with many questions.

We contacted Indra about Vehicle to Grid/Home chargers and theirs are still in development. 

Qasar look like they’re installing, for businesses at least - VoltaEV website. Anyone had a Qasar Vehicle to Home/Grid charger installed for their EV?

Thank you

It is possible to have a smart meter and keep your deemed export; I was with Octopus but kept SSE as my FIT provider and deemed export.  Unfortunately, with the V2G trial I’m on I was obliged to have metered export so I have lost the deemed for ever but currently get paid 5p or 10p for exported kWhs depending on time of day

Thanks @Blastoise186. A friend of ours has had a Smart Meter for months and it isn’t working (no signal or something like that) so they’re still submitting readings and are spending an inordinate amount of time trying to get it sorted out. Which is another reason why we haven’t rushed to do it. Losing part of the tariff was our main reason though, until we have a compelling reason to change. That’s partly why I was asking for advice. The other side of the debate is I have been advised not to switch to a Smart Meter until we absolutely have to and I’m struggling to find people who advocate doing it (apart from the energy companies) until you have to. We don’t have storage heaters, we have Economy 7 because at that stage it was the cheapest option for charging the car at night - we’re on the Heat Pump trial. Thank you for the info, very much appreciated.

Hi @PeterR1947, that’s interesting, thank you. I didn’t know that was possible. How are you getting on with the V2G trial (if there’s a thread where you’ve explained everything and would prefer not to again, feel free to send me there !). And which charger do you have?