solar pv question please help me!

[carpenter1]

i have pv solar, and saw this product

 

"SolarImmersion- A highly efficient proportional/ modulation based solar PV hot water system at an affordable price. It diverts 100% of your surplus power to heat water & works even on cloudy days."

SolarImmersion - Surplus Solar Energy Water Heater |

 

does any one have one?

 

or know about them?

 

what i want to know is if i am only producing say 1kw in the winter

and 500w of that is used in the rest of the house,

so 500w would go down the grid

 

so this diverts the remaining 500w to the water heater, But it is a 3kw water heater, so do i have to buy in the remaining 2.5kw to power the hot water tank?

 

or do the element vary in power use? so only uses the power it gets?

 

 

please help me

 

any thoughts please

[farmer rod]

what normally heats your water?

 

does your electricity meter go backwards if you are not using the generated power?

[Justme]

Yes they work.

 

No you dont import the missing 2.5kw.

 

Should you use one?

 

In my opinion no.

 

The FIT was designed to encourage export. The only reason devices like that exists is due to the deemed 50% export payment. You can use 100% of the power & still get paid for 50% exported.

 

If your meter goes backwards then you are:

 

a, using an illegal installation & your installer & you should have reported that fact to the DNO / billing company

b, much better off not using the SolarImmersion.

[Garyjp]

I would have thought quite inefficient too. Far better to sell it via FIT as mentioned

 

 

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[Justme]

I would have thought quite inefficient too. Far better to sell it via FIT as mentioned

 

 

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Sadly not. Most installs get paid for 50% of the total production as having been exported.

 

So they can use it all & get:-

 

100% X FIT production rate

50% X FIT export rate

Dont import 100% of the power they made so save on the elec bill

 

Its called having your cake & eating it.

[agg221]

Sadly not. Most installs get paid for 50% of the total production as having been exported.

 

So they can use it all & get:-

 

100% X FIT production rate

50% X FIT export rate

Dont import 100% of the power they made so save on the elec bill

 

Its called having your cake & eating it.

 

Sort of, but the reality is that, assuming you are out all day at work, your power consumption is way lower than your generation capacity. Then you come home and it gets dark, so you use power when you're not generating it. This means that in practice you use much less than 50% of the power you generate, so if you don't do something like this you end up 'donating' a substantial proportion of the power you generate to the grid.

 

Alec

[kevinjohnsonmbe]

Organise your life (and appliances) to maximise elec draw during generating hours and minimise during non generating hours. Dishwasher, washing machine etc etc set on timer, in sequence to switch on one after the other. Difficult to answer your direct question, haven't seen the kit but I wouldn't use it, we have PV, thermal and biomass so pretty well covered!

[Justme]

Sort of, but the reality is that, assuming you are out all day at work, your power consumption is way lower than your generation capacity. Then you come home and it gets dark, so you use power when you're not generating it. This means that in practice you use much less than 50% of the power you generate, so if you don't do something like this you end up 'donating' a substantial proportion of the power you generate to the grid.

 

Alec

 

 

Thats the whole point of the product this thread is about. It ensure that every unit is used onsite every day.

 

I think the average figure for export was running at less than 70%. Now with the plethora of these products I am expecting it to plummet drastically.

 

People that know they will be large exporters tend to have an export meter fitted to make up for that fact.

 

 

When the ratio between total generated & exported FIT rates was much higher (43p & 3p) the export portion was not significant. Now that its more like 15p & 4p getting paid accurately for your export is more important. That or ensuring you use more of it onsite. Using it for jobs that can only be done my electricity is fine. However using it to displace other fuels for a heating function (space or water) is madness.

[grantross]

I bought an immersun unit last year about October/November for my solar PV setup.

The boiler for hot water has not been on since February and the panels are dumping all excess energy into the immersion heater to heat water. There is still a huge percentage of power getting exported. Checking the unit it is showing 580 KWh have been used since installation. The rest is used round the house or exported. Considering an average year is about 3400 KWh - thats still a huge amount getting exported. When you only get paid 4p per unit for export - I would love my electricity company to charge that for us to buy!

Overall I find it a great product that evey solar PV ownerer with a hot water tank should purchase.

[grantross]

Sorry missed the bit about the power.

 

The unit measures:

 

1. The power generated by panels eg 1KW

2. useage of house eg 500W

 

My unit has a 150W safety margin to ensure you are not importing power and will dump the equivalent of 350W to the immersion heater.

It does this by pulsing only a percentage of the cycle so the the full output is not gained. It may sound doubtfull but it works - checked operation for 2 days checking PV output, elec meter readings and proportional controller. It does not import power on low PV days.