Solar Panels

[Grumble]

In what sense isn't it brilliant...

My roof is hipped, so there isn’t much space up there to fit many panels. It’s a semi, so one side of the pyramid isn’t ours for a start. The two suitable sides would be SSW/WNW. Might be able to fit 5 SSW and 3 WNW.

Yes, small is a widespread problem. I should have thought of that. Maybe batteries and panels being cheaper these days, and higher electricity prices, that's making smaller fittings more economic. Though the 10 panels I have was the smallest fitting the installer I used would contemplate, but it is a common fitting size, what the average 3 bed house can fit.

You do occasionally see panels fitted on brackets on vertical parts of wall. So that could be an option to extend the fitment if you have sufficiently large window-free areas of wall on the SSW side of the house. Vertical is simplest to mount, but you can increase the collection power with brackets that tilt them out a bit. These would have differential shading (from your house itself) from the panels on the roof above. So it might result in a requirement for optimisers if you can't wire them in a separate run from those on the roof above. Similarly the panels in the two areas of roof would have differential shading, and should be wired in separate runs, or you'd need optimisers.

SSW side is almost all window! Windows much bigger than allowed under current building regs. Also it’s the front of the house and I don’t want to cover my front wall with solar panels.

[bjn]

Originally posted this on another thread, but more appropriate here.

Spend £5000 and save £46,000 over 25 years by putting solar, batteries and heat pumps into a well insulated newly built house. That beats most investments, insulates you against price volatility and is tax free as well. But house builders are shorttermist tory donating a..eholes and are kicking and screaming against any mandate to do so.

And the cost of batteries and solar is still going down.

[lpm]

Ripple has gone bust.

I guess we will now see if the separation of ownership is as robust as hoped - our investment is in separate co-ops that still own the assets. Whether we can still collect the money generated by the coops, without Ripple as an agent to manage the process, is an open question.

[Grumble]

Ripple has gone bust.

I guess we will now see if the separation of ownership is as robust as hoped - our investment is in separate co-ops that still own the assets. Whether we can still collect the money generated by the coops, without Ripple as an agent to manage the process, is an open question.

Very disappointing, I feel a bit guilty as the one to bring them up here, but I’m invested too. This is a risk with all start-ups I guess.

[bjn]

The email I had from the Kirk Hill Coop tried to be reassuring, saying that ops and maintenance are separately contracted and they doing fine.

[lpm]

In theory our investment is safe. But we will collectively need to hire a new management company. Or alternatively we could collectively sell our asset at a cheap price.

In practice it will probably cost us a bit, on top of an already mediocre return.

Really sad for the Ripple team. They tried to make a difference and failed due to over ambition. Sound like they never had a grasp on the financials and the accounting compliance.

[nekomatic]

Isn’t the statutory procedure when any energy related company gets into trouble that Octopus buys it out?

Seriously though, sorry to hear about this, and I hope the individuals who invested in it are looked after.

[IvanV]

This discussion prompted me to connect up to my solar panel system on my computer, to try and assess what has been going on there. And discovered it wasn't working because I changed my router a few months ago, and forgot about connecting that up to the solar panel system. Fortunately it is just the communication from the solar panel system to my computer that was down, it was happily doing its own thing without that communication, because it doesn't depend on it. I have confirmation of that from by electricity bills. The downside of that is that I can't actually control the inverter from my computer.

So I have just spent about 3 hours reconnecting my solar panel system to my new router. It involved very weird methods of getting your mobile first to connect to a wifi signal from the datalogger plugged into the inverter, and then telling it about the router through that signal. Of course the documentation was all wrong - including all the videos on youtube showing you how to do it, etc - because the (freshly downloaded) mobile app has been substantially updated, and many parts of the menus are totally different now. After I'd tried about 20 times, I couldn't believe it when somehow I randomly managed to simultaneously get the right procedure both on the phone and the datalogger to get them to talk to each other. And from there it was relatively straightforward.

[Brightonian]

Ooh, thanks Ivan! I got new broadband installed a few weeks ago and didn't think about the Wi-Fi connection to our panels system.

[badger]

Regarding Ripple - did anyone here attend the Kirk Hill Members' meeting on Thursday? I was in transit unfortunately.
Anything of note or is it all placatory/next steps?

[bjn]

Regarding Ripple - did anyone here attend the Kirk Hill Members' meeting on Thursday? I was in transit unfortunately.
Anything of note or is it all placatory/next steps?

I coudn't make it either, but they emailed me with a link to the meeting deck and a recording of the meeting. They are asking for indicative votes on a range of issues and volunteers to help with things. If you didn't get it, PM me and I can send you a copy.

[Grumble]

Regarding Ripple - did anyone here attend the Kirk Hill Members' meeting on Thursday? I was in transit unfortunately.
Anything of note or is it all placatory/next steps?

Yes, I did. It was mainly describing how events unfolded and what the Coop have done to disentangle themselves from Ripple. As bjn says you should get a link to the recording - they did say this might get sent out in two waves over Sunday and Monday, although this might have been resolved by them setting up a dedicated domain for the coop. They have committed to regular updates, but the main points are that the accounts are now being audited properly which has been accepted by Companies House and the FCA, and that the coop is looking for a new management agent which might mean a reduction on return if they charge more than Ripple did. Given that Ripple couldn’t cover costs it seems likely that they were over ambitious on the price.

[badger]

Thanks Grumble and bjn - I have just received the email.

I also found this yesterday which chimes with what you're saying https://bsky.app/profile/ab-initio.me.u ... k47disu22x

I really wasn't receiving much from them despite what I thought was a reasonable investment, so I guess I've already been a bit disappointed by it already*. Receiving a bit less than I do already will be less of a hit.

*This is undoubtedly also due to my inability to consistently understand the payback mechanism and my projection about using much more household electricity by now being wrong.

[lpm]

I listened to the recording.

Seem competent and well meaning bunch, giving up a lot of their time to run the co-op for us.

But I have reservations about volunteers administrating this thing for decades. I think I'd prefer us to collectively sell our asset and divvy up the proceeds. Ongoing monthly costs are going to be a drag on our returns.

Bit ironic that the complexity of the structure put off many people from investing originally, but now that complexity looks like it successfully protects our investment.

[Grumble]

I listened to the recording.

Seem competent and well meaning bunch, giving up a lot of their time to run the co-op for us.

But I have reservations about volunteers administrating this thing for decades. I think I'd prefer us to collectively sell our asset and divvy up the proceeds. Ongoing monthly costs are going to be a drag on our returns.

Bit ironic that the complexity of the structure put off many people from investing originally, but now that complexity looks like it successfully protects our investment.

Surely the idea is that the administration is done by a management company, the coop own the asset and keep the management company on the straight and narrow but ideally there shouldn’t be a lot for them to do.

[lpm]

I think that's true when everything runs smoothly. But problems always happen. Need to plan for screw ups.

The complications of savings going via Octopus or whoever, rather than a simple annual direct debit to owners, seems rioe for failure.

[bjn]

I think that's true when everything runs smoothly. But problems always happen. Need to plan for screw ups.

The complications of savings going via Octopus or whoever, rather than a simple annual direct debit to owners, seems rioe for failure.

Yeah, given it's taxed as income, rather than self consumption of my own electricty, there is no point to the complexity.

[Grumble]

I think that's true when everything runs smoothly. But problems always happen. Need to plan for screw ups.

The complications of savings going via Octopus or whoever, rather than a simple annual direct debit to owners, seems rioe for failure.

This is one of the points of discussion. Potentially a chunk of savings to come on management fees for simplifying payments.

[IvanV]

Do people clean their panels?

Mine are looking rather mucky. But it's barely rained for a month. I was having a look at them the other day, and thought that, in addition to the dust, there was some kind of algal or fungal growth at the lower ends, especially on the flat roof ones that are only at 20 degrees rather than 40 degree ones on the sloping roof. I tried polishing them with a dry microfibre cloth, but it wasn't doing much, especially not to the funny stuff at the lower edge. So I gave up, as it was rather sunny, and I didn't want to switch them off to use water at that moment while it was still so sunny. But later I was already too tired as I'm getting better from this nasty cold.

But my wife said, forget it. The funny stuff is pollen, not fungus etc. And it will wash off when it rains. Of course the weather forecast remains end-to-end sunshine for the foreseeable. Which is a good thing in many ways. But makes me wonder if I should get up there and clean the panels and see if it makes an appreciable difference. I've compared peak generation on days around a year ago, and it does seem to be rather higher. Though that was very different weather - sunny intervals with much larger swings in production. Maybe the present "totally blue" skies are actually milk-blue skies without any of the very clear intervals I got this time last year.

[IvanV]

Well I went and cleaned the ones on the flat roof that I could walk round, yesterday late afternoon once the sun was gentle. I discovered they were even filthier than I realised once I got soap and water on them. And it was algae, etc, not pollen as my wife suggested. Because it was the same as the stuff as on the rooflights that has been there all winter, that I cleaned at the same time. Not well enough for my wife who climbed up after me and polished them...

I'm getting just over 10% more peak power today. There's no evidence of any difference in the weather from yesterday, nor in solar yields reported elsewhere. And that's in cleaning 6/10.

I've worked out how I can clean the other 4 on the sloping roof. Fortunately they are only at low first floor height, below the upper floor dormer windows. I now realise they are filthy too. I suppose the typical installation at above 2nd floor height, such as my neighbours with more typical house shapes have, is much harder to access to clean.