Bandersnatch

My electric bill is the lowest I’ve seen since installing solar due to the reduction in the standing charge. January Bill: December Bill:

When I was involved in my fight with MG about being allowed to charge from Solar a couple of years ago PEA had an “EV free second meter” policy where they would install a second meter for free to directly charge your EV. I haven’t had a need to talk to PEA about this since as I opted for charging from solar and getting no warranty on my free wall charger. (My solar didn’t blow up my wall charger)

If you only use one unit you will not be above above 12 kV

I believe above 12 kV is commercial. That’s what I remember when this was discussed in the electrical forum

The last time I paid for a kWh from PEA was during super typhoon Noru in September last year.. Good to hear but I posted this for folks with small solar systems

I posted over on the Alternative/Renewable Energy Forum about combining TOU with a small solar setup. In this scenario you could charge your EV from excess solar in the middle of the day or use TOU overnight.

Some thoughts about inverter settings to make this work. Set battery to only charge from Solar - you don't want to charge your battery from peak rate electricity at 9 in the morning! House consumption: Solar first, then Battery then Utility

My off-grid solar system is expensive due to the amount of battery storage I have. A cheaper option would be solar combined with cheap rate over night electricity (TOU) So now instead of buying enough battery storage to cover usage for all night you just need to cover 9am to 10pm. Maybe 5kW of panels and a 5kWh battery depending on your night time usage. From 10pm you will be using half price electricity. Anybody doing this already?

Tesla arrived in Thailand about 2,000 cars spotted at Laem Chabang Looks like most have gone for the free Black colour.

“BYD the 10,000th car is about to be exported for transport to Thailand. According to the customers who booked the first round, all cars will be received by February for sure. And happy to announce to those interested to own electric car BYD ATTO 3 that we will be officially open for reservation again on 2.2 at the same time at BYD showrooms nationwide. We have 7,000 more quota cars. Ready to be delivered before Songkran holiday for sure.” From byd rêver thailand FB

The Growatts are hybrid off-grid - can take power from the grid but cannot send it back. When I found out that 5kW was the maximum size for the solar rooftop feed-in program if you had single phase I decided to go the self consumption route. I told PEA I was fitting solar and asked them to replace my temporary meter with a "solar meter" that could not turn backwards - they didn't. The meter they fitted didn't turn at all as I was running on solar and the meter reader reported it broken. I went to PEA and they asked to inspect my system. Nobody from Surin PEA could understand my system so the Korat Solar team came down and a did a second inspection and signed off my system. I asked again for a meter that didn't turn backwards but it wasn't fitted. The fifth time my meter was reported broken I had a meeting with the Manager of the meter team who said my solar was turning the meter backwards and it was breaking the meter. I did try and explain that if the meter was turning backwards why was the meter reading always the same. After my solar system was inspected for the third time it was agreed that my meter would be replaced with one that would not turn backwards and a sign would be put on it for the meter reader saying that I had solar and that the meter was not broken - that was over a year ago - still waiting.

Having had off-grid solar for 4 years now in Thailand I would say that there are only 2 seasons as far as solar is concerned: rainy season and dry season. In the video I posted yesterday in this discussion was a drone shot of all my solar panels taken at 7am on the winter solstice last year. All but the west facing panels were in full sun. The easiest way to fit solar is to use your latitude as the angle but if want to change that I would suggest trying to maximize solar gain for the rainy season months.

Solar in the tropics is not the same as solar “back home” I think real examples from Thailand is what you should be looking at. Above is a graph from one of my inverters here in Thailand.

As a matter of interest here is the Global House price for solar from 2018 ????

That has not been my experience with solar here in Thailand - maybe you could share your solar setup here to help explain what you are suggesting.

Yes they do - not ideal but the insulated 200L tank is still warm enough in the morning. Location chosen to be as close as possible to the wet rooms in my house (Kitchen, Laundry, filter/pump room and Bathrooms) which are all located together on the East wall of my house. Facing the solar thermal east would have it facing a wall. My house is in Surin Province which is 15 degrees North. The best compromise angle for winter/summer sun is 15 degrees which is the slope of my roof on all sides.

I've got a video about that ????

New Tesla Showroom in Bangkok Tesla has a place for you to sit in a model Y/3 Performance/LR and ask questions.

PEA was previously offering a service to install a second meter free of charge for EV charging, but that was a few years ago. If I didn't have solar I would install a second Time Of Use meter and charge my EV over night with half price electricity. I think all the companies selling EVs outsource to the same 3 companies to install the wall charger for them - the company I dealt with knew nothing about my EV, nothing about solar and very little about electrics. I have a friend who just purchased an MG ZS EV and is being told he needs to upgrade to 3 phase electrics to get a wall box! He asked to install the box himself and was told that it would invalidate the warranty on the wall box. As I have solar I do not have warranty on the wall box.

A ground rod was installed when my first solar system was fitted. My installer added a second when my system was expanded in 2021. I can’t remember now what the setup was, sorry.

My solar system and house electrics have separate ground rods.

Tesla cuts prices in U.S., Europe, UK, Australia but not yet in Thailand

The last time I drew power from the grid was during Super Typhoon Noru in September last year. 3 hours after I started to use grid power the grid went down for 8 hours.

I pay ฿40 a month to have access to PEA if I need it, but most of the time PEA is switched off at the breaker

I have been planning to do a video on this for some time, but I am not sure how to make it without me just talking over a bunch of numbers on a spreadsheet. First thing to do is to determine what load you need to cover from the batteries. I use a device with CT clamps to monitor power use by the house and a second for my EV charging. An easy example would be assuming a 1kW load all night. (This is just an assumption for example purposes only) Next determine how many hours will the house be running off batteries, this will vary from summer to winter. It is best to ignore the first and last hour of the day that your solar is producing. So let's assume 14 hours need to be covered at 1kW usage i.e. 14kWh. Let's assume you initially plan to buy 2x9kWh lithium batteries =18kWh you would probably think that this would easily cover night time usage of 14kWh First thing to consider is depth of discharge. Lithium is normally good for 80% DOD so your 18kwh is now down to 14.4kWh. However, your inverter may have it's own idea of what the DOD of your batteries should be. The Growatts stop discharging from Li batteries when they get to 22% state of charge (setting #12) 18kWh x 78% = 14.04kWh. Next you have to consider the efficiency of the inverter. There is always some efficiency loss when converting from DC to AC. The Growatts have a peak efficiency of 93% - it may drop lower than this but let's use 93% for now. 14.04kWh x 93% = 13.06kWh Another factor that is often overlooked is that the inverters require power to run and this is not included in the inverting efficiency. The power used by the inverters is not included in the household load calculations. which is measured after power has been sent from the inverters. 60 Watts, so 2 inverters would use 120 Watts per hour x 14 hours =1.68kWh 13.06kWh - 1.68kWh = 11.38kWh useable power from 2x9kWh lithium batteries over 14 hours. So you probably need 3 and not 2 x 9kWh batteries.