Solar Panels

[lpm]

Interesting.

Glitches like this will happen to early adopters. A bit like when the first bronze axe broke on its first outing, and Ogg went to advanced settings and discovered it needed more tin.

In another year you'll look out the window and will have an instinctive feel of what your generation is.

[EACLucifer]

Interesting.

Glitches like this will happen to early adopters. A bit like when the first bronze axe broke on its first outing, and Ogg went to advanced settings and discovered it needed more tin.

Less tin. Breaking would be due to too much tin, failing to take an edge due to too little tin.

Anywhere the first bronzes were arsenical, not stannic.

[lpm]

Interesting.

Glitches like this will happen to early adopters. A bit like when the first bronze axe broke on its first outing, and Ogg went to advanced settings and discovered it needed more tin.

Less tin. Breaking would be due to too much tin, failing to take an edge due to too little tin.

Anywhere the first bronzes were arsenical, not stannic.

5,000 years ago Ogg got a new bronzer maker in who expressed contempt for the previous guy. "He used arsenic did he? Not what I'd've done. And look at the mess he made of the hilt. I'm going to have to melt it down and start again. This is what happens when you go for the cheapest quote."

[EACLucifer]

Interesting.

Glitches like this will happen to early adopters. A bit like when the first bronze axe broke on its first outing, and Ogg went to advanced settings and discovered it needed more tin.

Less tin. Breaking would be due to too much tin, failing to take an edge due to too little tin.

Anywhere the first bronzes were arsenical, not stannic.

5,000 years ago Ogg got a new bronzer maker in who expressed contempt for the previous guy. "He used arsenic did he? Not what I'd've done. And look at the mess he made of the hilt. I'm going to have to melt it down and start again. This is what happens when you go for the cheapest quote."

The old bronze maker was not in a position to complain about this characterisation due to the peripheral neuropathy.

[Grumble]

So Ripple are going to have a vote around changing from a fixed price renegotiated each year to bidding for a CFD. A lot of Co-op members are not happy.

26 minute presentation below

https://youtu.be/qxYNWqvukZU?si=nUjb3I4fI3Xtpvxl

[bjn]

I bought into Kirk Hill for two reasons, one was a hedge against volatile prices, the other was to invest in green generation. Moving to a CfD gets a fixed price and so loses the hedge against price volatility. If prices are low, my return from Kirk hill will be low, but so will my electricity bill. When prices are high, I’ll get a higher return to cover my higher bills. I’d like to keep the hedge and so would vote no. Ivan or LPM will probably come along in a few minutes and tell me why I’m wrong.

[lpm]

Don't see why you are wrong.

Impossible to say which is going to be better, financially. Can't see it matters much. But as you say, keeping the current structure protects against upwards spikes in prices. Prefer not to chuck that benefit away, so also a No.

[lpm]

A lot of Co-op members are not happy.

I read some of the comments on that forum thing. Think it shows Ripple is a failure in terms of having an understandable structure. A lot of people have invested without understanding. Several have invested under the impression that they get in effect 27p per kWh. And still don't understand how ordinary electricity bills work.

Caveat emptor and all that, but the average Brit is too thick for their scheme.

[IvanV]

A friend recently had solar panels and battery fitted. He has gone with an Octopus scheme where they top up your battery at night from the grid at low prices, and then algorithms will decide how much of that you discharge back to the grid to earn profit at higher prices the next day, or just use it yourself, depending on how much you might get from the sun during the day. He's very happy, though I would have thought it worthwhile getting a bit bigger battery than the 6kWh he has if you are going to do that, at least to have enough for a day's use, more like 10kWh.

I don't think my equipment is sophisticated enough to join such a service. He can manage his inverter with a web-app - and indeed delegate Octopus to do that in real time - which is the trick. Whereas you have to press buttons on my inverter.

[Imrael]

A friend recently had solar panels and battery fitted. He has gone with an Octopus scheme where they top up your battery at night from the grid at low prices, and then algorithms will decide how much of that you discharge back to the grid to earn profit at higher prices the next day, or just use it yourself, depending on how much you might get from the sun during the day. He's very happy, though I would have thought it worthwhile getting a bit bigger battery than the 6kWh he has if you are going to do that, at least to have enough for a day's use, more like 10kWh.

I don't think my equipment is sophisticated enough to join such a service. He can manage his inverter with a web-app - and indeed delegate Octopus to do that in real time - which is the trick. Whereas you have to press buttons on my inverter.

I have a 12 kWh which can certainly do several hours. It does frustrate me a bit that the much larger battery in my car isnt available for this purpose. I know a few manufacturers are doing this, and it seems very sensible. Although maybe a bit niche in terms of how much of the right compatible tech you have to buy.

[Woodchopper]

A friend recently had solar panels and battery fitted. He has gone with an Octopus scheme where they top up your battery at night from the grid at low prices, and then algorithms will decide how much of that you discharge back to the grid to earn profit at higher prices the next day, or just use it yourself, depending on how much you might get from the sun during the day. He's very happy, though I would have thought it worthwhile getting a bit bigger battery than the 6kWh he has if you are going to do that, at least to have enough for a day's use, more like 10kWh.

I don't think my equipment is sophisticated enough to join such a service. He can manage his inverter with a web-app - and indeed delegate Octopus to do that in real time - which is the trick. Whereas you have to press buttons on my inverter.

I have a 12 kWh which can certainly do several hours. It does frustrate me a bit that the much larger battery in my car isnt available for this purpose. I know a few manufacturers are doing this, and it seems very sensible. Although maybe a bit niche in terms of how much of the right compatible tech you have to buy.

Likely a dumb question, but would use of a car battery for day to day storage reduce the long term life of the battery? I'm assuming that it would have a lot more charge/discharge cycles than typical use for private transport.

[Imrael]

A friend recently had solar panels and battery fitted. He has gone with an Octopus scheme where they top up your battery at night from the grid at low prices, and then algorithms will decide how much of that you discharge back to the grid to earn profit at higher prices the next day, or just use it yourself, depending on how much you might get from the sun during the day. He's very happy, though I would have thought it worthwhile getting a bit bigger battery than the 6kWh he has if you are going to do that, at least to have enough for a day's use, more like 10kWh.

I don't think my equipment is sophisticated enough to join such a service. He can manage his inverter with a web-app - and indeed delegate Octopus to do that in real time - which is the trick. Whereas you have to press buttons on my inverter.

I have a 12 kWh which can certainly do several hours. It does frustrate me a bit that the much larger battery in my car isnt available for this purpose. I know a few manufacturers are doing this, and it seems very sensible. Although maybe a bit niche in terms of how much of the right compatible tech you have to buy.

Likely a dumb question, but would use of a car battery for day to day storage reduce the long term life of the battery? I'm assuming that it would have a lot more charge/discharge cycles than typical use for private transport.

Fair question, and I dont know the answer. The discharge would probably be more "gentle" than in car use, and they are good for a lot of cycles nowadays, but reasonable concern.

[IvanV]

Likely a dumb question, but would use of a car battery for day to day storage reduce the long term life of the battery? I'm assuming that it would have a lot more charge/discharge cycles than typical use for private transport.

Not at all, it's a very intelligent question. And by chance, it is one of the questions I have been looking at recently as part of a wider V2G/X project. It is a survey project, not primary research. V2G is the acronym for "vehicle to grid" for the idea of using car batteries as temporary storage which can send power back to the grid when that is useful. V2X is the acronym for "vehicle to everything" which includes the notion of communications, which includes both V2G and smart charging - where the car charging is potentially delayed to avoid taking power when that would be inconvenient for the grid - but recognising you still want it charged for 7am or whatever.

First, we should understand that in a typical situation you need extra equipment to be able to use the car battery in this way. There is such a thing as an AC car, (and I'm not talking about AC Cars) where this equipment is onboard the car, so that the car can input and output AC. Because AC output is what you want to be able to use the electricity in the house or back to the grid. You can't just run the DC current from the battery back through a normal car charger and expect AC to come out the other end. Because such transactions are not reversible. You have to actively put an inverter within the car charger to be able to receive DC back from the battery and feed it into the house or grid. So, in the typical situation, for a normal DC car, you need a special V2G car charger which provides for V2G. And then you will probably need a lot of comms and algorithms, as probably the actual transactions that take place need to be based on the grid situation, and other factors like when you need the car, to determine what happens when.

It turns out that the answer to your question is, it depends. V2G/X can actually be used to extend the life of your battery. Because naive charging behaviour isn't actually best for the battery either. So if you set out entirely to maximise what you might earn from a V2G programme, that might well shorten the life of your battery. But if you set it up for optimal battery management, then you can earn some money and extend the life of your battery. And probably there is some kind of intermediate compromise that does reasonably well for your battery and increases what you can earn from V2G.

There have been a number of trials of V2G. What you conclude from it depends upon what price parameters have been set, and what kind of grid benefits the V2G provider can seek to earn. In one major trial, what the customer saved through V2G was only about a 20% improvement on what they would save through just smart charging - when grid conditions are used to determine which part of the night is the best time to deliver the amount of charge you need. When I read that, my reaction was, why should I do V2G for the small additional gain, when that cycles my battery more and potentially reduces its life. I was thus very interested to learn that there was an even better management program that actually improved battery life.

So V2G is looking rather more promising than I thought - I had tended to think it rather compromised precisely because of the thought raised by your question.

The missing piece in V2G, what could make V2G really useful, is responding to local distribution conditions, rather than to broader grid conditions. Mostly these programmes only consider the broader grid conditions, though not exclusively. Sometimes it has been possible - at least in some other countries, to take local distribution conditions into account. Though the value of doing so depends on you local distribution network, if it is very oversized then there is no benefit. But using V2G to avoid local distribution overloads - which also greatly increases grid loss because of the I²R loss factor - can potentially be a major source of value, as it avoids or delays proportionately very expensive local grid upgrade requirements. We don't have any kind of a system to reward small-scale providers for that value atmo in Britain, or direct their discharges for that reason.

Maybe when the project is over and if the client publishes the report, I should be able to give a link to it.