Solar with smarts: Part 1
Like many Australians and as publishers of green magazine our family has been itching to rely less on grid electricity and shrink our electricity bills. We’re excited to see advancements in renewable energy technology and the plethora of new products for the “smart home”. Now, we are fortunate to use some of the latest systems to discover what solar technology is really capable of in our own home. We have officially started our personal energy experiment. Read on for a full report on our experience so far.
First and foremost, we had to come to grips with our family’s energy consumption to determine the size of our system. We’re a family of four plus three productive hens and typically consume 10 kWh of electricity per day. Based on this information, our solar system is a 12 panel REC Group PV array with a total of 3.4 kilowatts of electricity generation. We were thrilled to see our panels producing straight away on day one. Before installation was complete, they were generating more energy than we were using in the house in the early afternoon on an overcast day. On an average day, our system will generate 13 kilowatt hours. On a sunny summer’s day, we could achieve a PB of up to 24 kilowatt hours.
We have partnered with Enphase Energy who have developed a fully integrated Home Energy Solution which produces, stores, monitors, controls and analyses our home energy use. They are proudly and passionately helping to bring solar technology to homes and offices all across the globe. In fact, they’ve installed 580,000 global systems to date. For our home, Enphase has supplied our battery storage system which comprises of two 1.2 kilowatt hour Enphase AC Batteries, in addition to their Envoy-S Metered communications gateway. Envoy is the brain behind the system and works to control usage to and from the grid by collecting data from the micro inverters at each solar panel.
The innovation doesn’t stop there. Enphase’s MyEnlighten software is an online platform that lets the homeowner check in on their consumption in real time. From your car, from your office or from your favourite seat at a café, you can see how much energy your home is consuming, producing and exporting from your mobile phone or laptop. This information is all presented via user-friendly infographics. Enphase’s data driven intelligence has helped us to understand our energy consumption and identify how our own behaviour and usage can be improved. We soon discovered it is best to run the washing machine during the late morning and early afternoon and still enable the batteries to be fully charged for evening use. Living sustainably is a constant journey of self-improvement, and now we have the tools to measure it.
To make our home as smart as can be, BMW have provided an i3 electric vehicle to trial in conjunction with the solar system . Winner of the Best Green Car for 2016, this little beauty is driven by a fully emission-free motor. BMW are putting the environment first in every element of this car; even the interiors are made of recycled or sustainable materials. The i3 has a range of 220km and requires 5 kWh of energy for a 30 km trip and is charged at home using a Wallbox or charging cable. Typically we have been using the car to drive around the city and so we have just topped up the battery as it is used from the 15A Wallbox. We tested the i3, taking it further afield on a 90 km trip out of town on a full battery. We successfully fully charged it overnight in 8 hours via a standard powerpoint.
Cost efficiency is a priority for all homes, ours included. The payback period for installing a similar system to ours including solar panels, micro inverters, battery storage and installation is eight years. It is predicted that the payback period will become considerably less as the cost of batteries reduce over the next few years together with the forecast rise in energy charges.
We are pleased to report that we’re off to a flying start with our smart home. Watch a film of a day in our lives using solar and click here for the latest update on energy production and consumption.
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