Can you go off grid in the UK?

With the unstable grid and uncertain prices for power, the grid is looking at charging homes with solar who export.

England is known around the world for its weather and those who live here know it rains and clouds over as soon as the sun makes an appearance. This is due to the geographical location, we are at the end of the gulf stream which feeds water from the Atlantic and also from Irelands boggy land, as the sun warms the wetlands it makes clouds that empty and cloud the sky’s of England. Where the air swirls often pull down cold wet air from the north, we end up with cooler weather, and on the tail end if we are fed air from the warm south, typically Spain and Africa we have dry heatwaves.

This image from Zoom earth shows the weather on the 17th, over Manchester we see the swirl moving south east and the tail end in Dublin will swoop down over the south east and midlands. As the day goes on, the weather west of Portugal will be heading up ( swirl is anti clockwise) while the white cloud ( upper left) pushes into both of these leaving the south sunny.
– Check out the weather here – Zoom Earth | Live Weather Map & Hurricane Tracker

Because of the weather going off grid on solar alone is not going to work, you could use the grid as a back up, but then with the rising standing charge, you would have to pay for the year while you may only use power for 3 months of the year. Perhaps a generator? this works but you would want a diesel and run on red ( non road use) to keep the cost down, but you would also need a “ample” generator of around 4-6kw.

For solar, you would need to have a higher voltage array which does mean fitting around 10+ solar panels in to a string (chain). But you could not have a standard roof fitting. The reason for this is that the sun angle and therefore production from the panels is around 3 hours peak, and summer and winter arrays need to be accounted for.
You would have a south array double stacked with the summer array ( flatter) below the winter array ( near vertical) to make the seasonal difference. You would then need to spread the yield in summer with a east and west array in between the angles of summer and winter.
Typically you would want more panels for winter, but for most homes in the city you would not have the ground space in which you can fit enough panels to meet the requirements. As a rule of thumb, we say you need at starting point of 4.6kw of solar panels.

One of the immediate benefits of off grid solar is the lower cost. Off grid does not have to meet the requirements of parallel operating within the grid. Like for like you would save around £1000+ on your inverter. You will save around £275 on standing charges, but you would have the cost of a generator as well as its running costs to consider.

Going off grid in the UK is not easy, but you can.

If you are considering going off grid in the UK then the first step would be to reduce the power consumption within your home, and take a look at the power you use. for most venturing on this path, as you will be out working during the day the minimal power use will go to the battery for storage when your home and when the sun is down.

In winter the solar production will be low, about 1x the size of the array. 1.5 is great and 0.5 expected.
therefore it would be a good idea to set up a charge from the generator to top up the battery to meet the shortfall. The best solution for this is an automation, with this you can use your inverter or home automation to make this happen based on external data ( weather forecast) or other telemetry devices.
Yes we are talking a smart home.
We do provide servers and installation of smart homes.

Having a smart home isnt about wifi plug sockets…
Weather forecasts are… well usually wrong.. so you would need to have live data, a home weather station can provide real data as well as integration into your home power use and solar production as as well as the battery data. you can then have maths do some calculations to work out how long the battery will last, if you need charging and to turn the generator on. you can do other things too, and you can talk and have the system talk back to you. a little like Garvies from ironman.. or you could just stick with the app.

Combining home automation with solar panels creates a smart home that maximises your use of clean energy and saves you money. Here are some ideas to get you started:

Optimising Appliance Use:

• Schedule smart appliances: Program your dishwasher, washing machine, and other high-energy appliances to run during peak sunshine hours when your solar panels are generating the most electricity. This reduces reliance on grid power.
• Smart plugs: Use smart plugs to control individual appliances. You can set them to automatically turn off electronics on standby or create custom schedules.

Leveraging Solar Production:

• Smart thermostats: Integrate your thermostat with your solar system. During sunny periods, the thermostat can automatically adjust heating or cooling to use solar-generated power.
• Pool pumps: Schedule your pool pump to run during peak sunshine hours, minimising the reliance on grid electricity to keep your pool sparkling clean.

Monitoring and Automation:

• Real-time tracking: Use a home automation hub to monitor your solar energy production and home electricity consumption in real-time. This allows you to identify areas for further optimization.
• Weather integration: Some systems can integrate with weather forecasts. This allows for proactive adjustments to your home automation settings based on expected sunshine levels.

Additional Benefits:

• Battery backup: Consider a home battery system. This stores excess solar energy during the day for use at night or during grid outages.
• Selling excess power: In some regions, you can sell excess solar energy back to the grid. A home automation system can help manage this process for higher benefits.

What uses the most power in a home?

Kettles, computers and showers.
Solutions – Gas kettle. The use of electrical power not great if you want to consider the actual kWh of a kettle.
Solution – Gaming systems can use around 700W of power, laptops 65w, while most computers use around 120w.
Solution – if you have a water tank, you can divert power to heat the water. A shower uses 8kw of power however a water pump will use around 250w and give you a excellent power shower.

Money making heaters
It is a bit of a joke, but it does work. This is crypto mining heating from asics. ( the computer that mines)
They do make money and produce heat, so the joke is that these are paying heaters. They use high pressure fans so you can pipe the exhaust of them to heat your home. but be aware these can be loud.
the income from them is around 4 pence an hour and prices can be found for around £150.

For any off grid system we would recommend a consultation. you are likely to need planning permission and to engineer some redundancy into your system so that you have “always on power”. Our kits can be engineered as a package which lowers the costs you would expect to pay in the UK.