-
Solar for our village hall
I have posted before. Still looking into getting solar for our village hall (which has a small existing solar array).
What do you all think about this statement from a solar company who have given us a ‘quote’ but that quote doesn’t include any description of goods or services. Would post it here but can’t currently find it. But what are your thoughts on this statement from them. Sorry about the lines at the side. It’s from an email thread.
The Village Hall used 8885 kw of electricity Nov 24 to Oct 25
We had proposed to fit a 7kw array of Solar Panels top of the original 3.9kw giving you a total of 10.9kw but looking at the graph below – this solar array would generate far to much electricity in the summers months meaning you would be putting most of it back to the grid and getting very little for it.
-
8 Replies
-
A village hall isn’t likely to be drawing 10kW of electricity in the middle of summer so most of the electricity will be exported to the grid. Is there a reason to install the solar if a lot of it will be exported? Do you have a monthly breakdown of the electricity consumption to see what times of year it is used?
By the way the hall used 8885kWh of electricity not 8885kW.
-
Last year a local village hall was pulling just over 40kWh for 3 hrs at a time for 10 panto shows and 7 rehearsals… just for the lights. ~ 2MWh
Moved a lot of it over to LED for this year, should only be 22kWh pull now…
-
-
Did they provide a layout and generation figures for this other than what you have there?
I could be wrong but it suggests a lack of interest in the project from my reading of that.
If you’d like an accurate breakdown of how solar would work for you, along with export figures and ROI I’d be happy to get this across to you.
-
A 2 minute search gives Octopus offering 12p kWh export rate for businesses. Thats not bad and would help offset your winter costs.
Do you know if you are a single phase or a 3 phase supply? If an installer is only used to single phase, you might be daunting them …
There are plenty of installers out there used to 3 phase supplies at commercial premises and big arrays.
-
The quote is garbage, it’s lacking detail like make and model of equipment, g99 permission, bird proofing. You definitely want battery if you want to reduce your energy bill.
-
I assume you want to maximise your payback on investment, so export whatever you can, plus have the wiring configured so usage goes through a village hall owner meter so you can charge customers if the hire fee doesn’t include electricity usage.
-
I am responsible (in part) for a Village Hall which has a solar panel and battery setup.
I found that although the process went through fairly well and follow up support was prompt when I asked, there were a lot of questions I wish I knew I should have asked up front so that I didn’t have to find out the answers after the installation. To that extent I think the installing company was not proactive and being largely ignorant of the fine details of PV systems, we were totally reliant on the installers judgment of our needs (and in fairness, they were in turn reliant on us describing what we wanted accurately)
Because of the funding of the system it was in two parts. A solar panel installation, then an installation of battery over half a year later to maximise use of daytime generation for the evening use.
One aspect of particular concern, which is why I came to this forum to see if others had had answers, was about monitoring the installation. As a trustee I am responsible for proper use of funds and therefore trustees need to know what value the solar system is delivering. Although all it was by same (reputable) installation company it is effectively in two parts: the solar panels go through (manufacturer A) inverter to the distribution panel, the battery goes to second (Manufacturer B) inverter and that connects to distribution panel. (this is an AC coupled hybrid system if I’ve understood the terminology?)
Manufacturer A and B have separate monitoring software so I have to connect to A’s system to see how much solar power is being generated and then to B’s system to see what the battery is doing. And the two cannot coordinate- as far as A is concerned I have PV with everything going to the village hall, and for B I have a battery that is either taking or giving power. (So I cannot control whether battery is filling with ‘free’ PV or mains electricity.)
And so to find out how its performing I have to combine the generation values from the PV side and the battery values from the battery and the readings at the meter to see if it is performing as it should and how our energy costs are affected.
Sorry that comes across as a bit of a long whinge.
If you would like to know any more of our experience in case it might help your own deliberations, please do ask.
-
Hi Graeme,
That sounds like a bit of a nightmare, so thanks for the warnings and a heads up.
The new system will have 1 single app that I can look into, so we should be ok on that front.
The responsibility we feels as trustees when you have to deal with a major infrastructure project is immense.
Thank you for your input.
-
Log in to reply.