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in today's video i'm going to be doing a
complete run through of my recent solar
panel install looking at everything from
a homeowner's perspective i'm going to
be discussing what you can and perhaps
shouldn't be doing yourself
i'm telling you how i've got on with the
solar panels inverter and battery system
[Applause]
so let's start from the beginning why
did i decide to install solar panels
well having just gone through the
install process from my charge point
which you might have seen in a previous
video it seemed to make sense for me to
install solar although i'll come on to
towards the end whether actually it's
that beneficial in terms of charging up
your car with april fast approaching and
the price cap about to be lifted i had a
sneaking suspicion a lot of people would
pile into solar once they realized their
electricity bills were going to soar and
it wasn't an easy decision for me to
have to make because this kit is not
cheap and it's basically cleared me out
and i didn't quite get in in time either
because i part ordered the kit the rails
and the solar panels before april but
availability plummeted and prices went
up in may once the price cap had gone
but what are your options when you're
thinking of installing solar panels well
you've got two main options on the
panels themselves all black or the
standard panels that i've gone for you
might be thinking about black panels
because perhaps you're worried about
what the neighbors might think curb
appeal you might want to try and make
sure it doesn't affect the look of your
house but you must remember that black
panels are less efficient than the
standard ones why because the black gaps
in between the photovoltaic cells absorb
heat instead of reflecting it and the
hotter a panel gets the worse it
performs and you also need to take into
account the fact that black panels are
actually more expensive than the
standard ones the standard ones tend to
be more powerful mine being 415 watts
should you go with an in-roof or a rail
system now an in-roof system is clearly
more streamlined it also dispenses with
the worry you might have about birds
nesting underneath the solar panels but
let me tell you this because of the way
it's installed it's effectively like
installing i don't know vlan's window in
the sense you've got to take the tiles
off you've got to install soakers to go
around the panels i think again you
might correct me on that but certainly
they fit into some sort of a tray system
they according to my installer take
three times as long to fit as the
standard rail system that you'll see in
today's video and with three times the
duration it's going to cost you a lot
more and actually given the massive
domestic demand and lack of supply at
the moment a lot of the installers are
choosing not to fit the in roof systems
because it's so much quicker to fit rail
systems like mine
the other point to make about integrated
solar panels that you might not have
thought about is because they're
integrated into the roof rather than
having all that lovely air circulating
underneath them they do get warmer and a
hot solar panel as i mentioned earlier
is less efficient and they reckon they
can be up to 10 less efficient than the
on rail systems at risk of staying the
obvious the orientation the position you
put your panels is really important you
want them to be on the south south west
or south east roof of your house and if
you don't think that's important this
was tuesday at half past 12 on a hot
sweltering day but with no direct
sunlight batteries only at 17
charge a couple of hours of sunshine and
they're straight up to 100 and the other
point that you probably haven't
considered when you're looking at solar
panels is at the very least you're going
to need an inverter because what that
does is converts the dc current that
comes out of the panels into ac that
your house can use and the inverter will
also do all the clever stuff like decide
when the power should be channeled into
your house or into the batteries or even
exported to the grid if that's what you
choose to do and you'll have an app with
that inverter which enables you to
monitor what's going on and make changes
you might not be thinking about
installing batteries but i'd say this is
pretty important because otherwise
you're only relying on powering your
house during the day when the sun's
shining once the solar panels have
charged the batteries you can use that
excess energy that's still being
degenerated by the solar panels too i
don't know heat the hot water tank via
the immersion heater
heat your hot tub run your dishwasher
any other host of requirements and
there's another point to make here in
the winter when the solar panels are not
going to be generating anything like the
electricity that they do in the summer
if like me you're on an ev tower if i'm
on the octopus go tariff which gives you
a cheaper seven and a half pence per
kilowatt hour electricity during the
night for four hours during the night
between half past midnight and 4 30 in
the morning then you get during the day
time you're going to want to use that
cheap rate
at night to charge your batteries up so
that then you can run your house off
those batteries during the day so what
supply device decide to use for my
install well it's surprisingly difficult
this i
googled and contacted i think maybe four
or five local companies a couple of them
never bothered to come back to me one
told me to come back to them when i'd
installed the new roof i didn't
understand why they couldn't do a survey
before that and one of them is that is
the most local installer that i've got
around here they took about three months
to come back to me with a quote and then
told me that they couldn't do anything
for me until september unfortunately sam
on our discord chat group that you can
access through my patreon channel had
done a similar install up north and i
contacted the company that he used they
don't install this far south but they
did agree to supply me with the kit
which i'll come on to in a minute so
that i could install the solar panels
myself
and they agreed that they might send the
electrician down for a day to install
the inverter and batteries what actually
happened in the end is they were doing a
job down in cardiff and were able to pop
back up on the way back to install the
inverter and the battery battery system
which i'll come on to in a minute i'm
not gonna mention who they are today
because they're so busy they actually
don't want any more work which is a
great shame because they're a fantastic
company very conscientious scrupulous
with all the paperwork that you have to
provide and with a kit that they've
supplied which brings us nearly onto
that kit i'm going to quickly list here
all the kit that i've used for this
project we've got the 14 canadian solar
415 watt super high powered solar panels
i've then got eight end clamps 24 middle
clamps 36 of these runusole roof hooks
which i chose specifically for my plain
rosemary style roof tiles and on the
rails i slotted a 4.4 metre rail into a
3.3 meter rail to give a 7.7 meter run
across the roof and obviously there are
four of those up the roof along with
four rail connectors to splice
each pair of rails together
i've got this roll of four millimeter
single core dc cable 36 hook stops which
enable you to walk on the rails that's a
very important point without breaking
the tile below and i was also supplied
with four male and four female mc4
connectors although i actually only
needed two of each i've got the end caps
that i've decided to use you don't
always see these but i thought it'd be
so much neater to put them onto the ends
of the each rail cable floor 22
millimeter chipboard i'll mention that
more towards the end to go up on the
loft so that we could safely locate the
inverter and battery system you've got
the lux power 3.6 kilowatt hybrid
inverter four 2.4 kilowatt-hour pylon
batteries giving me obviously a total
output of 9.6 kilowatt hours and a data
cabinet to put them in the system also
has this generation meter and two rotary
isolator switches well the tools i use
the most significant would say i'd say
would be the impact driver 6 by 80
millimeter wood screws although i went
for marine grade a4 stainless steel
probably not necessary
my socket set crimping tool
cable clips and nylon bands to tie the
cables against the rails now i'll come
down to whether this was a good idea or
not before the end of the video but i
decided because i was retiring the
garage roof there are a couple of videos
well four of the videos on that to be
precise uh that you can check out on
this channel i thought it would make
sense for me to install the solar panels
myself and with that in mind the company
that supplied them provided me with a
very helpful sequence of events which
i've repeated here so the first thing i
had to do was install the hooks
using the wood screws that i just
mentioned renusol was in the supplier's
opinion the best mounting solution and
uses this rubber hook stop so the tile
beneath doesn't break either when you're
walking on the rails which is a very
important point or i suppose later on
when the wind is buffeting those solar
panels in the future
now they are meant to be installed this
way up but i wasn't going to do that
because that's just going to be a
massive dirt and dust trap so as a lot
of other installers have done i've
actually stored mine this way up i've
got to be honest with you i don't think
this um system is a perfect solution
don't honestly like these hook stops
because
they raise the tile up
and this would provide a perfect entry
point for rodents bats wasps and the
like to get in underneath the tiles and
make their home between the tiles and
the breathable roof membrane so after
experimenting with everything from
reticulated foam to lead roll i decided
the simplest thing to do would be to
fill up the gaps with sand and cement
mix
it was quite a tricky process trying to
work out where to position these hooks
and i ended up doing a very low-fi
diagram in microsoft word which gave me
a bit of an idea of how to space the
hooks on on one hand and as you probably
guessed the hooks themselves are screwed
into the rafters
not going anywhere
and then it was just a question of
trying to estimate how far up the roof
to position them which isn't the easiest
job i did take some markers at this
point from the renusol installation
guide a link to which i'll enclose in
the description below this video
and that tells you important stuff like
spacing between panels and how long the
rail should project out of the side with
the hooks in and the roof tiling nearing
completion i was able to install the
rails and this again was quite an
important step because with most of the
roof tiled the rails are an important
way that you can walk across the tiled
roof
and a couple of ladders fitted neatly
onto the bottom rails which enabled us
to walk up and down the rails on the
roof very safely and my carpenter mate
john who you see here in these in this
clip had the brilliant idea of stringing
a chalk line between the top and bottom
rails enabling us to get all four rails
to line up perfectly as i was re-tiling
the roof i put the dc cables in position
and you can see here the two longer
cables caught up ready to be threaded
across the length of the roof tied off
to the rails with cable ties i was
instructed to wire the panels up in two
strings of seven as you can see in this
diagram with the cables at each end of
the string so panels one and seven go
back to the inverter location so in my
case i ended up with four cables two
from each string going back to the
inverter the solar panels come supplied
with male and female mt4 connectors so
that they can be easily connected to
each other but you obviously need to add
a male and female mc4 to the dc
extension cables at each end of the
string and for this you need a crimping
tool i bought this one from amazon we
then had some fun games trying to work
out why we couldn't tighten our mc4
connectors so that all the thread would
disappeared like the ones on the back of
the solar panels until we realized that
they were two completely different
designs that locked off very differently
it was time to install the panels
themselves and we started from one end
making sure the first two panels were
trued up against the roof verges not an
easy task as the verge itself wasn't
completely level the end clamps were
bolted in place and we could then work
across the roof pushing each middle
clamp into the rail and then bolting it
down to fix the corresponding two panels
tight to the rail
[Music]
at this point i had one panel missing i
had an accident clearing out the garage
loft when the bed head fell and smashed
into it so after doing that install you
have to ask yourself was it worth it
well i'll tell you i actually don't
think it was unless i'd been retiring my
roof which gave me the huge opportunity
to get all of those hooks in the right
place and unless i had a youtube channel
which was going to give
us a really interesting talking point by
showing how this install is done i
really don't think i would have bothered
to have done it a couple of reasons for
that number one the installer said to me
that he charges 600 pounds for his team
to do that install and it would normally
take them one day seems quite cheap to
me but anyway
but number two
because i did that part of the install
those works wouldn't be covered by their
normal warranty care package so with the
panels in and the wiring in position uh
i turned my attention to the possible
location for the inverter and batteries
i mean you've only got to look at my
garage to realize that it didn't make a
lot of sense to have these located at
ground floor level so i decided to put
them up in the loft which wasn't
bordered and has a lot of clutter in it
at the moment so my loft needed flooring
at least partially to enable them to
install the kit
and after a bit of research i settled
for this cable floor 22 millimeter
moisture resistant tongue and groove
chipboard flooring all of which i bought
from buildingmaterials.co.uk
and delivered by travis perkins i should
point out that i bought this stuff and
i'm not being paid by them to mention
them in today's video
now i'll probably do a video this at
some point but suffice to say for now i
had an experiment with the rather
bizarre but effective plastic rail
system that comes with the ryobi hp
circular saw and glued the boards
together with my egger adhesive and
these splax floorboard screws purchased
and here's a first through wii shop
which i'll come on to at the end of this
video now i do plan to board out the
whole loft space at some point but for
the time being this created a good space
for the installers to work with and a
suitable location for the inverter and
batteries two other things to mention
the inverter is connected to the
consumer unit in the garage and because
i've got battery storage i needed comes
from the inverter to the meter box where
a ct clamp connects to the meter tails i
installed an armored cat5e cable as part
of the charge point install as the
charge point also has its own ct clamp
and used a pair of spare wires from that
for this connection so let's talk now
about the inverter and batteries for a
minute can you self-install these well
the obvious answer is no because these
works are almost certainly notifiable
under part p
but even if you did and i personally
wouldn't recommend it given that you're
working with
direct current from the solar panels but
also i wouldn't recommend it if you're
planning to perhaps export any of your
surplus electricity back to the grid
because you need a whole host of
certifications and approvals that your
installer if they're any good will
organize on your behalf for example you
need an mcs installation certificate you
need to
notify the dno or your district network
operator that the installation has been
carried out for their approval should
you wish to export because what you then
have to do is apply separately to your
electricity provider for a smart export
guarantee or seg and when i did that to
oxford oxford octopus i had to submit my
mpan the dna approval confirmation
and also the mcs certificate and what
about the cost for a system like this
well i'll include a full breakdown of
the cost of my kit on my patreon page
but suffice to say for the time being a
system like mine is going to cost you
right now between 10 and 12 000 pounds
so is all this cost worth it and will i
recoup it and how quickly with average
bills set to soar to 3 200 pounds from
october payback for the solar outlay
should be quicker than ever before but
what will my monthly bills be like with
this new system well let's have a quick
look at how the lux power app works
with the inverter there's a very
intuitive interface which at a glance
shows you exactly what's happening and
remember what the inverter does it
converts that dc power to ac and then
you have to configure it or it decides
automatically whether to send that power
into your batteries into your house or
if you've chosen to export it to the
grid at times like this you can clearly
see the house is running entirely off
the electricity generated from the solar
and not drawing anything from the grid
and in this shot you can see how even
though our house consumption is seven
and a half kilowatts that's the car
charging in the background we're only
drawing 3.8 from the grid because 3.7 is
being contributed by the solar and 196
watts from the batteries and here with
the house requiring just 524 watts
earlier on today and the battery is
fully charged
we're exporting to the grid and at this
point the solar charging has kicked in
you can swipe right to see a full
timeline of your solar and battery
charging status consumption and what
you're drawing from the grid over a 24
hour period and at this point i've gotta
say i'm having massive problems with
that indra charge point which i
mentioned in my last video it's randomly
charging at full power and it should be
waiting for the off-peak tariff and it's
a lauren to itself as to when it kicks
in for solar charging which it should be
doing now but it's not in solar mode
there's no battery priority margin or dc
coupled mode that you can change in the
settings all of which will be designed
to tell the charge point not to charge
the car off the batteries as it's doing
here only to draw charge off excess
electricity more for me for not buying a
solar ecosystem product like the zappy
but then things have moved very quickly
since i installed the charge point at
which point i had no idea i'd be
installing solar panels and batteries
also when you are in charging in solar
mode as i was over the weekend you get
anything between one and three just over
three kilowatts which is the sort of
power you get from a three pin plug ie
for my 78 kilowatt hour ev battery
you're going to be charging incredibly
slowly now i only had the system
installed on the 28th of may so i can't
at this point compare bills across
multiple months to tell you about the
drop in consumption and the savings that
i've made and it's further complicated
the fact that we're now coming into a
heatwave when our electricity
consumption is going to be lower but the
times when i've been off grid are
massively going to impact on my bills
and the only two things that really
distort that at the moment are the hot
tub which i'm using sparingly and also
the ev but because of that interesting
visual you get with the app and now that
i know real time what i'm consuming i
have become quite obsessed and notice
when the consumption skyrockets and
take evasive action to try and prevent
it for example by turning the hot tub
heater down if it suddenly kicked in
during the day so i'm trying to treat
the hot tub like a large hot water tank
and sort of charge it sparingly
particularly during night time hours and
when i've got excess electricity that i
can charge it with and i recently had an
unvented hot water tank fitted with this
tesla immersion so i could in theory
heat the hot water tank from surplus
electricity as well rather than from
using the boiler
now the ev does complicate matters
without it i would have been very
tempted to switch to the octopus agile
tariff where you have no control over
the electricity price that you're paying
per kilowatt hour during the day but the
advantage of that is the export rates
that you're able to sell it back uh to
the grid at are so much higher for
example my export rate is fixed at 4.1
pence but with the agile tariff you
could be
you can be being paid by your supplier
anything between 30 and 40 pence per
kilowatt hour some on my discord forum
for example has had negative bills as a
result of this but i can't do that
because of with my ev
because when i've got a chunky 78
kilowatt hour battery to charge
i'm almost invariably going to be
dipping into the daily kilowatt hour
price which is going to be expensive and
the other point to make here is if you
want to export to the grid you have to
negotiate and export tariff in addition
to that import tower if you've already
got say for example the octopus go
tariff i've got is not compatible with
the agile tariff because of course i
would be having my cake and eat it if i
was able to sell at super high rates
whilst benefiting from that cheap
electricity at night and electricity
supplies aren't that stupid but at least
we'd go i'm able to take advantage of
that 7.1 i think it is i know i said 7.5
at the start this video pence per
kilowatt hour electricity have for four
hours at night and i'm charging
everything from the ev to the dishwasher
um washing machine tumble dryer and of
course the hot tub using that cheap
nightly rate so all in all this whole
process um and being super aware now of
my electricity consumption is bound to
impact on my electricity bills and i
look forward to giving you another
update in 12 months time and also don't
forget prices are going up again sadly
in october which might also be a
motivating factor for you to decide
whether you want to take the plunger and
install one of these kits i hopefully
better give you more information in the
next update but suffice to say they used
to quite a 10 year payback on solar but
now with the sky high that price of
electricity you're looking at something
closer to four to five years i'm told so
what's all this we shot malarkey i hear
you ask well it's a difficult one for me
to pitch this because if you watch my
channel regularly you'll know i only
post about stuff that i feel
passionately about and believe in so
please hear me out on this one uh we
shopping got me involved a few months
ago as a founder influencer it's only
recently launched and what's quite cool
about the platform is you get shares
when you buy stuff they're giving away
90 of the
company to people who shop on it they've
signed up pretty much all the major
retailers you can think of and what i
like about it personally is since
experimenting with it since launch i
bought everything from dishwasher
tablets through to nail guns and it's
completely removed my reliance or you
could say addiction to amazon and now
i'm supporting a lot of uk retailers
that we tended to forget were out there
before amazon came along you get 20 of
the value of what you buy and share and
if you post about stuff that people then
buy themselves
you get 10 of that value and if you
bring people onto the platform you get
one of what they spend and on signing up
and you do that by downloading the app
in the usual way and then you put in my
username charlie white because you can't
just sign in randomly you can have a
look at my profile i've got a load of
wish lists that mirror the store i've
got on amazon and also posts on
everything that i've bought little video
clips it's explaining why i like stuff
so it's a bit like exclusive content
you'd get from me on patreon but the
benefit for you is you get shares every
time you buy now the reason i'm a bit
late to pushes as a hard sell to you on
my cherished videos is i don't know
what's going to happen to the platform
how well it's going to be taken up by
the british public you have to hold on
to your shares for 12 months before you
can sell them they're going to list the
company on nasdaq if all things go well
but the way i'm looking at it at the
moment is i'm buying stuff i'd be buying
anyway it's not costing me any more i'm
supporting british retailers and i'm
getting a lovely little potential nest
egg of shares in the process have a play
around with it and let me know what you
think so that's it for today i hope you
found this useful if you are new to my
channel it means so much to me to have
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