Smart Home Blog

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Spring has arrived! 🌞 The Solcast forecast for the coming week looks really good. Daily generation is now into the 30's and may even hit 40+kWh.

The Solcast forecast proved to be very accurate with 36.4kWh generated today.

Of the 36.4kWh generated, we exported 32.3kWh at 15p/kWh (£4.85p). We fully charge the Tesla Powerwall overnight at 7p/kWh and you can also see that we charged our EV in the cheap rate period of our Intelligent Octopus Go tariff.

A great start to the month, with 208.4kWh generated in the first six days! That's an average of 34.7kWh per day. We have also exported 192.1kWh of this, earning £28.82 at 15p/kWh.

It has started! Our smart home extension is underway 😎 The old conservatory dwarf wall and base has been broken up and removed. Our driveway is currently full, with a pile of rubble that gets taken away on Monday.

It has been 102 days since or smart home solar installation project reached 15MWh of solar energy generation and today we finally hit 16MWh (16,000kWh). This is 871 days since our smart home solar installation project was started on the 18^th October 2022. 17MWh will arrive much more quickly now that we are into Spring

The amazing sunny start to this March continues🌞 In the first nine days, we have generated 309.3kWh and exported 283kWh of this at 15p/kWh (£42.45). We have averaged 34.4kWh per day with a low of 29.9kWh and a high of 37.4kWh.

We have stopped digging expensive holes in the ground and we now have foundations for our smart home extension 😎 Today was a bit mad with a concrete mixer, mini digger, two mini dumper trumps and a massive grab lorry outside at the same time. The concrete for the foundations was carried down the side of our house in the two mini dumpers and it took a long time to transfer it all.

Our biggest challenge so far has been having space to park the CUPRA Born on the drive so that we are close enough to our Zappi smart EV charger to charge it. The drive has been completely filled with rubble for a lot of the time. With the foundations in, this should be less of an issue going forward. Our builders have covered most of our drive with protective wooden sheets but, we know that after 20+ years it will need to be resurfaced once the extension build is complete.

Paid the deposit on for our extension in-roof solar installation today. I have used a different company for this installation, simply because my previous installer was not very responsive and just didn't give me the same level of confidence this time 🙁

The Tesla app reported generation of 6.1kW today and the MyEnergi app was showing 6.2kW. This is the highest I've ever seen in over 2½ years. My Enphase microinverters are only rated for 6.1kW continuous output.

The highest generation of this year and the first time we have made it into the 40's with 42.5kWh today. We exported 39.4kWh.

We have now generated over 820kWh this month so far! The highest I'd seen in March up till now is 515kWh and the average up until now has been 479kWh for March.

We have also exported (718kWh at 15p/kWh), which is more than we have imported (703kWh at 7p/kWh) into our home and CUPRA Born (359kWh into the EV). So we have been paid to run our home and EV this month 😎

This is what the partial solar eclipse did to our solar energy generation today.

WOW! Our March generation ended up at 909kWh! 789kWh were exported to the grid at 15p/kWh, earning us £118.35. 🤯

Octopus Energy have notified me of their prices increases, coming into effect on the 1^st of April. The peak rate goes up but this doesn't really affect me as I don't use any peak rate electricity. The standing charge is coming down and the off-peak rate is remaining at 7p/kWh. Overall I should be a bit better off 😎