Brilliant news! The UK's Labour Government are going to make "plug in solar" legal.

Grab some panels from Lidl, hang them off your balcony or out your window, plug them in to your mains. Done!

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-to-go-further-and-faster-in-becoming-energy-secure

#Solar

@Edent
For anyone reading this who thinks "you can't buy plugin solar panels from Lidl!" here's a link to Lidl Germany where that is definitely a thing:

https://www.lidl.de/h/stromerzeuger/h10031840?pageId=10067761%2F10067532%2F10031840&sort=price

@Edent

If I'm reading this correctly this allows consumers to feed solar into the grid. Do they get paid for doing it or is it just a case of if the sun's shining you might want to put your washing on?

@OneInterestingFact
Yes. If you have an export tariff you'll get paid for every kWh you pass back to the grid.

@Edent I look forward to the govt's publicity making that clear.

@OneInterestingFact @Edent

I look forward to the government ever making anything clear.

@Walrus What did your MP and Senedd member say when you complained to them about this?

@Edent

Oh, come on. I don't have to make sense when I take cheap shots, do I?

@Walrus @Edent Aren't the issues with unlimited / random feed back in to grid related to the infrastructure to handle it.

I may be wrong, but I assumed the hassle to get the limit on what we can feed in to to technical, not political.

If it is purely political, then hell yeh. Feed in that sunshine, and battery,

@revk @Walrus @Edent
I'm not an electrical engineer so this might not be the whole story.

As you add generation to the local distribution network, and assuming there's not enough local demand to consume it all, the voltage rises. Eventually it gets to 258V (230+12%) which is the upper tolerance limit. At that point, local generation starts to shut down.

1/2

@revk @Walrus @Edent

All well and good, but folk then start to complain to their suppliers (and from there to the DNO) that, on sunny summer days, their solar inverter has shut down and they've missed out on savings/earnings.

The DNO limit / permission process is designed to keep export low enough that the local network rarely reaches 258V and they don't get deluged with complaints from their customers.

2/2

@sheddi@mstdn.party @revk@toot.me.uk @Walrus@toot.wales @Edent@mastodon.social There were mutterings recently of dropping the substation voltage to nearer the lower end of the tolerance band to accommodate more domestic PV contribution.

Nominally we are 230V but most British¹ domestic supplies are still 240V when measured.

__
¹ Northern Ireland is a separate grid and might be doing their own thing.

@Edent Temu entered the chat.

@Edent Hmm, I've not got a balcony, but...hmm I wonder where we could put this in the back.

@Edent I love the idea of this, but the suicide plug on the end scares me. Assuming they have some pretty quick cutoff times or something in case you pull the plug out?

@jpwsutton Yes. The inverter which turns DC from the panels into AC for your home needs a "carrier" frequency to work. It has to match the Hz in your wires.
If it loses that, it instantly shuts down.
That's how all inverters work.

@Edent Makes complete sense. I guess I'd just never considered that would be fine on a type G plug too, but no reason why not I suppose!

@jpwsutton@mastodon.social @Edent@mastodon.social its also limited to 800W so unlikely to cause problems on the physical plug/socket

@Edent
A subsidy, plus mandatory Solar + batteries on all new buildings.
Add to bus shelters, bicycle shelters, car parks etc.

This encourages poor quality solutions and changes nothing.

@raymaccarthy you do know the UK hugely subsidises solar, right?

And that new-builds will have solar by default. That's already law.

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/rooftop-solar-for-new-builds-to-save-people-money

I've got to ask, why are you such a doomer about this good news?

@Edent
Because it's mostly PR.
The Solar UPS was already possible without this is change and far better as It can make bigger savings & security.
The so-called "balcony" solar makes little difference. This is ONLY useful for people wanting to sell to grid that have maybe only one or two panels. You need a lot more, especially the darker half of the year to make a difference and then the extra cost of a certified electrician isn't significant.
Solar without the LiFePO4 batteries is stupid.

@raymaccarthy
No, that's not really correct.

A battery is only good if you can plug stuff in to it. Which means you need to route your cables around - and it'd be impossible to plug an oven in to it.

Balcony solar goes:
* Panel out of window
* String to inverter
* Inverter to mains via plug

Then *all* of your devices can use solar. Not just the ones within cable reach of your window.

Anyway, if you want more of my thoughts on solar - https://shkspr.mobi/blog/tag/solar/

@Edent
No, that's nonsense.

Talk to an electrician and look at power of panel.
A typical 400W panel only gives that for a few hours each day in clear sky in Jun/Jul. A cheap "balcony" system is 1/2 that.
Maybe 10W to 40W at noon in Dec/Jan on average.
Without a battery you can't use ANY of the 400W if the mains supply fails.
You don't plug anything into the battery!
You plug into the inverter or inverter/UPS. The Electricity companies don't pay well for the Solar to grid!
Oven is irrelevant

@raymaccarthy
I have rather a lot of experience with domestic solar.

The point of balcony solar isn't to power your whole house. Nor is it to island your home in event of a power cut.

You're arguing against something that it explicitly isn't designed for.

It's to trickle feed energy into your home in order to reduce what you're drawing from the mains.

@Edent I concur. My solar panel (400W, absolutely not ideally positioned) does cover the base load of my apartment easily on most days when delivering power. That has reduced my electricity bill by around 15% compared to the year before. So it basically pays itself back in around 3 years. Good enough for me. @raymaccarthy

In germany we have it since a few years. In the beginning you needed a permisson of your electric company, but this has also gone. It helps a lot, cause people also now start the dishwasher or the washing machine, when the sun is shining. So you relieve the grid. And the amount of new small solar plants every year is much higher then the expactations.