FIT ( feed in tariff) and SEG are the two payments you could get from solar. Solar in the UK is a bit feast and famine, making most installations have excess power which is exported (sold) and the money goes into your pocket, FIT has gone and SEG is a low rate of pay, in this article we make 7.5 times the SEG payment by using the excess power to generate money.
FIT (Feed-in Tariff):
This was a government program that ran from 2010 to 2019 in the UK. It aimed to boost renewable energy use by offering homeowners payments for the electricity they generated, regardless of whether they used it themselves or exported it back to the grid. The payment amount depended on the technology used (solar, wind, etc.), capacity, and when the system was installed.
SEG (Smart Export Guarantee):
Launched in 2019, the SEG replaced FIT. It’s a broader scheme that allows you to receive payments for exported electricity only. With SEG, you can still benefit from using the clean energy you generate, but the focus is on feeding excess power back to the grid.
Payments:
Unfortunately, FIT is no longer open to new applicants. However, if you have a pre-2019 FIT system, you’ll continue to receive payments as per your original agreement.
SEG payments vary depending on your energy supplier’s specific tariff. It’s not a fixed rate like FIT, but it allows greater flexibility for suppliers to offer competitive rates.
So, which is better?
It depends on your setup. If you have a battery storage system and use most of your generated electricity, SEG might be sufficient. But if you export a significant amount, FIT’s fixed rates (for qualified systems) would have been more lucrative. We found something better!
Lets have £0.60 kWh as a comparison.
exporting solar power to the grid usually amounts to payments of £0.04kWh there is some variation but this option brings in the money for less costs, especially were MSC installations have not taken place.
We found that MSC installations had a sur charge on all hardware as well as the installation costs, a ball part figure here would be around +£3000. if you DIY the installation then you would not have the MSC and you could opt for octopus non msc to obtain payments for your solar export, for a fee of £250 and some other work which could add around £375. Ill just round that to £600.
How much do I get paid with Octopus SEG?
Unlike FIT, SEG doesn’t offer a fixed rate. Octopus Energy has several SEG tariffs available, each with a different export rate. Their basic SEG tariff offers a flat rate of 4.1p/kWh for every unit of electricity you export.
However, Octopus Energy also boasts some competitive advantages:
- Fixed vs Agile Outgoing: They recently announced that customers on their “Intelligent Octopus” tariff can now choose between a fixed rate (currently 15p/kWh) or an agile rate for exported electricity, offering more flexibility [Solar Power Portal]. This agile rate can be beneficial if you generate most of your power during peak hours when electricity prices are higher.
Is Octopus SEG right for me?
Here are some things to consider:
- Export vs Consumption: If you have a battery storage system and use most of the electricity you generate, another SEG supplier with a slightly higher flat rate might be sufficient.
- Agile vs Fixed Rates: If you can predict your generation patterns and export a significant amount during peak hours, Octopus Energy’s Agile Outgoing option could be more profitable.
- Import vs export rates: you could pay more for importing power depending on what type of system you have installed.
Energy monitoring important factors.
For any profit or calculation to be made, it is important to view the actual power that you export and what you use to what is your excess. Excess solar is the power that you cannot store in your battery or use within your home as a normal load. While some may “Average” a higher output the commonly used data apps may give you a false impression of the solar power excess and generation. Lets take a look at common systems to work out what you have to give you a start.
Example Solar with a battery 10kwh, load generally 500Wh.
In this example the home use is 12,000w (12kWh) per day (24hrs).
Ill split the day and night, so you have 12 and 12 hours giving you two 6kWh periods.
in one period (day) we would need to make 6Kwh for our day load and another 6kWh to charge the battery for the (night) This would mean that our solar would need to produce 1 Kwh per hour. ( plus around 10%)
A battery would have max charge current of 40amps (1920w)
We would want to have a high performance solar installation so you aim for a 4 hour period in which to make the power, that would mean 12kWh / 4 hours, meaning that the array would be 3kw.
A standard installation would have losses of around 40% meaning the total size would be 4.2kw of solar.
Therefore your excess should be around 2kwh per hour over the summer (£0.64 per day).
Example grid tied solar ( no battery) Load 250wh
A GTi is a solar installation without storage and all excess goes to the grid, you will have a range of power options, but typically most would aim for a 3.6kw system (g98). normal operational installations would have around 4 kw of solar installed and the losses on average are around 35% giving you 2.6kw.
This gives you around 2.35kw excess or around 9.4kw export (£0.196 per day).
You will have to look into detail on how your system performs and your actual data as it will differ. take care with production numbers as these are often a mean over 5 minutes. Solar can jump 90% in one second and there is a difference in instant power to hour averages, or 5 minutes.
How we did it
We have two systems one grid tied and one off grid, they can be combined to support the house load in winter by switching both to two grid tied systems. Our Excess often reaches 1.6kwh (instant) so the array is split and the off grid is charged into batteries giving us a charge of around 4kwh per day and we also have an excess or around 200-600w still from the gti.
We use a crypto miner and we adjusted the hardware to lower the power, we did find software which allows us to easy change the power requirements from 300w to 800w. You can just remove the power to the Hash board to adjust the power use of the miner.
Crypto miners come in various sizes, mine different coins, and use different power. this is general information. so you should get some idea of what you are working with in terms of power and performance. there are also calculators on line that will tell you want you will earn from a miner and the cost of power to see the profitability.
The key here was to know the power we made from solar was less than the power used by the miner.
The second important part is that you would make more money than SEG (£0.041kwh)
Right now, we are making £0.22 per hour from litecoin mining. The miner is consuming 500watts, so 1000w is double and therefore we are making £0.44 per kWh. which is 10 times that of SEG.
How we would suggest doing it?
Crypto is a general complex matter, I was asked why i did not get involved back before it started, at the time it was a gimmick and pie in the sky. Clearly now if I have gambled i would have made millions. or I could have lost the lot.
I had not looked at mining until recently and well, its complicated, not straight forward and well just out right confusing as it has many parts to it and even its own language…
Buy a old miner, but not too old, the hash rates will dictate how much money they make, new miners are 100 times faster than the old ones, but they have a thing that slows things down to make it a leveler playing field ( not so much).
Look at the miner and how much power it draws, then divide this by the boards it has, this way you can lower the power (and hash) to work within the power budget.
Some older miners are not worth it, and it is confusing to deal with the currency and also the rates on which the money is made and also the values used.
This is what I mean; I make in 2 minutes 0.00001406 LTC. this may seem like a fraction, and it is, but when £1 LTC is £62.92 and one hour is 0.0004218 (£0.027) with a 500Wh load, I make 0.054 per kwh.
The rate I make the coin varies this is fairly tied to the coin (ltc) value, so it may be valued at £80 to the £1.
Now here is where it gets a bit of a bonus. Most coins that are established tend to grow in value. some more than others, so if you make £0.50 ( crypto), when the coin is £1 Crypto = £50 GBP and that rises to £100 GBP, my £25 earned by solar becomes £50 GBP Therefore in the kWh payment of things, we go from £0.43 to £0.86 Kwh. You would want a stable coin and the big jump in value occurs over months. They can also drop in value, so going for a higher risk may not pay off. If you do not get SEG then the only venture lost here is the miner which you can pick up for £150-250. ( less that the cost to register on octopus).
The hash rate and type of mining pool ( a group of miners) can effect how things work in terms of payout. if you have a older miner with a low hash rate you would earn less, but you would pay less as the new miners costs ££££. the pool type of work. can also differ. its a bit odd I don’t understand it, one is a paid for the hash of the group, the other is paid for the work you do is about the best way I can explain. this is labeled PSS PPFS and some other things.
Another thing to watch for is different pools make or pay different amounts, this may sound odd or obvious but I was losing a lot of money on one pool that seems okay, which I switched I doubled the money. so you may want to shop around.
Will RenewSolar offer any mining hardware and gadgets?
I have been pondering this. it would seem to make sense to offer something that automates the powering of the miner in relation to the solar and excess. It is not really simple for maximum profits.
Clearly your power you make is worth £0.26kwh (your grid rate) so you using this power is the best profit to make, its only when it comes to excess power that it makes sense to make money. This means that the load and production as well as battery charge state would all have to work together to make it work and this would mean providing hardware and writing software to make it all comes together. in principle its not hard, but I also found the coin values also make a difference to the payout that they make. so it may have to be linked online as I don’t think some would want to do anything unless it was a profit.
I noticed the difference where LTC was at $84 the profit was good, below this was no more than seg. This of course would be more interesting for those who are paid by seg as the value point of solar changes within 3 sections.
I would say bespoke hardware will be made and I shall be making something in the next few weeks to test out here.
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