England has a feast and famine when it comes to solar, winter sees a low and summer tends to create more solar power than you can use, so here are some things that you can do with excess solar.
Feed in:
Feed in Tariff is gone and replaced by SEG the rate of pay varies from providers, from £0.041kWh to £0.27kWh depending where you go and what time. there are usually some catches where the higher rate of export pay means higher import payments as well as different rates at different times.
Crypto mine:
Crypto mining can produce cash, you will have to take your pick and take care when picking a miner as many have high power and high costs, these tend to be mid term investments where you would mine a coin and hold for the price rises. the price can also go down, but you have to balance the profit from the mining to the cost of hardware and the risk of loss , but it can be a little fun too. ( also see battery storage to compare)
Storage:
Storing power to use at peak rate or even off peak, will save you money in the long and short term.
due to the low solar production in winter months having a low cost supply ( cheap rate) and storing this for day or peak time use can save you considerable sums. If you have a standard rate of £0.23 and cheap rate at £0.05 – you would save £0.18kWh. therefore a 10kWh battery will save you £1.80 per cycle.
Pumped storage:
If you have space pumped storage is a simple and effective project to get into, Ill write a separate post about pumped storage, you have two tanks and gravity feed one with a generator capturing the flow of water to make power later. the excess solar powers a pump to put water in the other tank. ready for the night.
Power routing:
Even with battery storage, you may find that you still have too much power, you charge your battery and then the solar is just powering the load within your home, the excess can be used to heat water or charge an EV. These things vary in price and read the solar power and the loads and decide if you have enough power to “divert” power. one router will directly read the power and alter the power output to match the excess, this is typically a battery charger or water heater, but it can be used for storage heaters.
Smart Switches and Smart homes:
Having smart switches that turn on things when you have excess is a good way to use power, solar is up and down so these have to also be smart and are often computer controlled. Home assistant may help in turning on the washing machine, charging tools or running things that would take the excess power and put it to use. it helps to know the power of the devices you want to turn on or off and there are small devices that can do the work for you. RenewSolar does make bespoke smart devices for the home and other projects as well as provide servers to do the work and management. they also have monitoring so you can see in more detail and locally what’s happening with your solar and power.
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