We take a very simple and practical approach to our home and garden. We have an allotment elsewhere and are looking for ways to gradually transition to growing more vegetables at home, as well as have a more wildlife friendly garden. We are one of the few houses in the village still on oil, and are exploring ways to transition off that with minimum disruption to our lives.
Solar panels seemed an easy first win to reduce our energy consumption
Approached Octopus first and got a quote from them. They required us to find a separate contractor to install an additional external electricity box. We therefore contacted our previous EV charger supplier to see if they could help, and found they could do the whole package for us so went with them. To reduce our electricity dependence on the grid
Notes adapted from the supplier’s quote: Your system comprises 13 Longi Hi-Mo X6 HTH 540W Black White Mono solar panels to collect sunlight and turn it into DC electricity.
The panels are connected to 1 Sigenergy Sigenstor 5kW 1ph Hybrid inverter, which converts the DC electricity into mains (AC) electricity.
A Sigenergy 8.8kWh battery storage system allows us to store excess energy from sunny days, so that we can use our generated electricity at night too.
Excess electricity is exported to the grid.
We are very pleased with the overall system and the quality of the work by the installer.
It took a while for the installer to be able to get the necessary certification (this was in large part due to factors outside their control). This means we have only recently been able to get an export tariff from our energy supplier, so that we are actually only going to start earning money from exports nearly a year after the original installation.
