Having solar panels fitted in January 2011, an electric car for the past five
years and home storage batteries since last November you are entitled to
conclude that I am an eco-zealot, but you would be
wrong. I wouldn’t go as far as saying I couldn’t care less about green
politics but some of it is I believe to be utterly stupid. I went down the ‘green’ route to
save money and in that regard the solar panels have been a spectacular success.
The subsidy paid to me by people who can very often ill afford
it is a little over
£2,000 a year even if I use all the electricity myself, and usually I do. (The
subsidy is inflation linked until 2036 but less generous for new installations.)
The electric car came about because my son who is a consultant to the industry, told me that
hybrids were a big waste of money, at the time anyway, but electrics were fun to
drive. He was right and I wouldn’t want to go back. Thanks to doing no more than
6,000 miles a year and a bit of sunshine it doesn’t really have any fuel
costs, maybe a tenner a year; but is it cheap to run? I’m afraid not. Despite having a
full licence for more than 60 years, always keeping the thing in a locked garage
and never ever having to make an insurance claim, this year’s insurance quotes
ranged from £880 (LV) to £2,157, Aviva.
Servicing and MOT works out at around £200 a year so that’s getting on for 20
pence a mile. More than twice the rate for my old Kia Picanto. So maybe
the electric won’t last for ever after all.
The home batteries were supposed to save money too with a possible break even point
of four to five years but I learned the hard way that cheap Chinese inverters
are a pain in the proverbial and if you expect support from the importer, forget
it. The comms on mine never worked at all so most nights I would be out in the
garage fiddling with buttons adjusting for the next day’s weather forecast and
likely electrical load.
A Dutch unit was far better, worked pretty much straight away but twice the
price. It will never earn its money back but at least the frustration has gone away.
With the sunshine levels declining I gave it a short off-peak booster charge
a couple of weeks ago and not for the first time it worked perfectly, but last night no such luck.
I awoke to find it had charged as instructed but had not switched back to
discharging to the house load. I looked for an on-line solution which led to me
charging the batteries to 100% on peak rate electricity. More than five quid’s worth, but no good.
After farting around all day I found something deep inside the menu structure
which had set the inverter to not having a grid meter - all by itself. Without metering the grid
the inverter does not see a house load so doesn’ְt see the need to discharge.
Flicked it back over and all was well.
Our idiotic government thinks that every one of us is a techno-nerd willing to
monitor various apps all day and capable of sorting out such problems without
calling in the expensive ‘experts’.
The aforesaid son who among other things checks out the software that runs
self-driving cars says he really cannot be bothered. He’d rather spend his time earning his
fees than spend it trying to knock a few quid off his fuel bills.
I suspect he has a good point.