JBChiangRai

In my last house I paid 130k for 22 panels and a 6Kw grid-tied inverter, I averaged 29 units a day at 4 baht per unit which is 41,000 baht per year, 3 years is 120,000 baht, I could have installed it for less with what I learned during the process.

With an ROI of up to 33%, not fitting Grid-Tied solar power is plain stupid. As the country transitions to EV's, PEA need all the help they can get from us with our tiny little installations.

A couple of my friends have been caught by the meter reader spinning their meters backwards, one of the apologised profusely and said it was set up incorrectly, the other got an estimated bill and it was corrected again the following month. But no huge problems.

They do but the equipment has to be approved, installed by an approved installer who usually charge a fortune and the paperwork is typically onerous so "palms have to be greased" at more cost. Then they buy back your surplus power at half the price they charge you for their power.

It's not so much "legal" as "naughty". Unless you have permission, you are not supposed to feed back surplus power into the PEA grid. Getting permission is like having orders signed in triplicate, sent in, sent back, queried, lost, found, subjected to public inquiry, lost again, and finally buried in soft peat for three months and recycled as firelighters.

My daughter received her MG EP+ last October after a 6 month wait. I liked it so much I ordered one, I popped into the local MG dealer yesterday to check how much longer it would be and was told another 3 months, but I could have the new MG4 in blue "X" spec straight away. I switched my order to that and get it on Tuesday morning. I still can't help wondering if I have done the right thing, the EP+ is almost 200,000 baht cheaper, so cheap it's actually ridiculous. I can understand MG shipping the EP+ so slowly, they can't be making anywhere near the same margin on it.

You are not breaking any law (in the legal sense) exporting to PEA, you are only breaking their rules, it's no big deal, they are probably happy now that they understand why your consumption has dropped. Funny story, I checked our meter at 8:00 on the day they come to read our meter, we had used -5 units, I quickly plugged my EV in to charge and consume at least 5 units as quickly as possible. I checked again at 8:30 and they had already read the meter, paper bill on the gatepost, same reading as the month before, 0 units consumed and 26.34 baht standing charge only. They have never come before 9:30 and it's sometimes as late as 14:00. That will teach me to get complacent. They will come 3 days earlier this month because the month has only 28 days.

I wouldn't be too worried about PEA visiting, we had them come here when we kept blowing the fuse at the transformer, they know we have a large solar installation and they haven't done anything to us except split our 6 house development across 3 phases instead of all on one phase.

The nature of filters in water machines, especially RO filters, is that as time goes on their ability to filter out impurities improves, whilst at the same time the flow rate through the filter decreases as it gets more clogged up. At some point, the flow rate is so poor that it's more economical to change the filter. The only filter type I would trust for drinking water is RO (reverse osmosis).

Nonsense

I don't have a diagram, but I will explain it. I have 3 MUST 6Kw Grid-Tied inverters with 7.2Kw of PV on each, these connect direct to PEA. I have 3 of MUST 5.5Kw Hybrid inverters (with parallel cables) with no PV but 28.8KwHrs of LifePo4 batteries attached (48v), the inverters are set to UPS mode and to charge the batteries when needed from their internal chargers direct from PEA. The Hybrid inverters have their inputs connected to PEA and their outputs connected (through an Automatic Voltage Regulator AVR) to the house's Distribution panels (one upstairs and one downstairs). The Hybrid inverters run in bypass mode with PEA power available and just connect the inputs to the outputs automatically, in the event we lose PEA power, they immediately kick-in to generate upto 16.5Kw of power to the house and when the power comes back again they switch to bypass mode and recharge the batteries. Unless you hear them kick-in, you can't tell when we have a power cut. Initially I thought I could do it all with the 3 Hybrid inverters, but I found the export function to be really poor, they would export one at a time, no more than 1 Kw, and after 15 minutes of one inverter exporting with it's fans running noisily, the next one would start and the prior one would stop. So I had 22Kw of panels mostly being wasted, that's when I added the Grid-Tied inverters. My Grid-Tied inverters are naturally cooled without fans, so in normal use the whole installation is silent, when we have a power cut, the Hybrid inverters are noisy as the fans kick in. I had to add the AVR because we have a lift between floors and in the evening as my neighbours were running their air conditioning, the voltage would drop to a level that the lift would error and fail. The room I have the inverters and batteries in is air conditioned 24/7, it serves multiple purposes, it's the power room, it's a wine cellar and it contains my computer servers. We are probably generating around 1,800 to 2,000 KwHr's a month and mostly out PEA bill is about 100-200 baht.

Yes, that is exactly what I have done.

You won't get 100% efficiency, I have 21.6Kw in panels and 18Kw in inverters, I could hit 17Kw maximum power at installation but 20 months later I'm down to 15Kw (It's been like that for about a year).

I'm not sure about systems charging batteries, but if you are Grid-Tied, you can exceed the maximum power in watts of the inverter, but not the VoC. Exceeding the input power will just flatten the curve and give you more output outside peak sunlight hours (11:00-13:00) and also on poor sunlight days. Your PV will derate by about 15-20% in the first 18 months, certainly mine have, they are mono-crystalline which are supposed to be better than Poly.

Illegal? I don't think it's illegal as in "breaking a law", for sure it's against PEA rules because although my equipment is on their approved list, I just use a lot more of it than they like and I had my sparks install it instead of one of their approved installers. Most Grid-Tied installations are like that. I can think of 6 of my friends off the top of my head who all do the same and I don't know anyone who has an approved installation. We are all going to end up with one-way meters at some point. In Chiang Rai all new meter installations appear to be one-way electronic types, if they replace mine I would be no worse off than not exporting from the outset, I'm not so sure I would want to cycle my batteries though, I would need to do the sums on the cost of replacing them vs. the cost saving of cycling them. I am 40% of the way to generating an ROI on my installation. One of my friends also has a Hybrid system, one of his two batteries failed after 2 years, the supplier isn't interested in honouring the warranty. I definitely wouldn't go Hybrid again.

There are lots of complaints in Europe, USA & China that Tesla asked customers to take early deliveries of their cars just before dropping the prices. If they took orders for 5,000 here at launch, for sure they will want to deliver those before harmonising their price reductions. The Model 3 Performance is 50% more here than it is in China which is madness with the FTA.

I think a lot depends on how you use your power. The cheapest battery you will ever get is the PEA Grid if you go Grid-Tied. My battery is only used for power cuts and the other thing about batteries here is the warranty. I made my own and I'd rather buy a diesel generator than strip the whole thing down if a cell fails. How good is the warranty on your battery? Do you really trust them? Is it a household name? Supplied by a global household name who will stand behind their warranty? The batteries are usually the most expensive part of a system, if you're cycling them every day they won't last more than 7-8 years. I spin my meter back 30-50 KwHrs every daytime and draw it back every nighttime. I got my battery cheap from a now deceased friend though his Chinese wife. I paid 80k THB for 28.8 KwHrs, I would need double that if not Grid-Tied.

I suspect Tesla are going to make the deliveries of cars recently ordered here in Thailand, and then immediately lower the price to match the reductions made in the rest of the world.

What you are experiencing at 11am is kind of why I added in Grid-Tied inverters, I didn't want the power of the sun going to waste, I wanted to squeeze as much efficiency as I could out of my system. I have mono-crystalline panels and decided to use the extra power I was generating in running all the air-cons and keeping the whole house cool, even have air conditioning in the entrance hallway and the garage to keep my BEV cool.

email sent

Your brain is leaking, get a brain transplant

Lots of power and smooth is relative, my BEV produces lots more power (680bhp) and is totally silent (you can’t get smoother than that), can charge in as long as it takes you to have a coffee. It’s far superior to any ICE car. Once you have had a BEV car, there’s no going back.

I did something similar, 54 panels of 400w, 3 of MUST 5.5Kw Hybrid inverters, 28.8KwHrs of LiFePo4 ESS, the inverters didn't export properly so I added 3 of MUST 6Kw Grid-Tied inverters and moved all the panels over to that and reconfigured the Hybrid inverters as whole house UPS. Generally, we are producing between 55 and 85KwHr’s per day (more when I charge the car). My total cost was a tad under 500k baht. Lessons I learned, MUST Hybrid inverters don’t like exporting, MUST Grid-Tied inverters can have their settings altered to push more power out by increasing the upper voltage cut off. If I was to do it again, I would have gone Grid-Tied only with a backup diesel generator, either 2 of 6Kw inverters or 3 phase 15Kw inverter and saved half the cost. I wouldn’t buy any export capable inverter unless I could tweak the export settings.

You can check your supply by buying a plug in meter (a couple of hundred baht on Lazada), then drawing a lot of power and see how much the voltage drops. If you have instantaeous showers, turn them on, air-conditioning on coldest etc, you can keep a rough tally of the load, air conditioning is roughly 1 kw per 10,000 BTU, electric oven 2.3Kw microwave & kettle 1.5kw. If you can draw 5 or 6 kw without the voltage dropping too low, you're probably ok. Simply changing the meter for a 30/100 amp unit won't increase the strength of your supply, however, if PEA are doing their job properly, they should refuse to supply that meter if the supply is weak, but I wouldn't bet on it. 9 years ago they refused me a 30/100 meter but after another 5 large villas were built using the same phase, they gave a Thai guy with a smaller mew house said meter on the same phase. An additional TOU meter makes a lot of sense if you strong power, don't have solar, and only charge your car overnight, as does installing a 6Kw grid-tied solar system and charging when the sun is out whether your power is weak or strong. If you have weak power, charge your car slowly with a granny or switchable charger. Whatever you do, you're probably going to want a 40 amp breaker fitting for your charger, I prefer to have blue 32 amp plugs and sockets between the breaker and charger, the charger is then not a permanent installation and any electrician will fit it, you can even buy the switchable chargers pre-fitted with a blue 32 amp plug, I bought 2 of them.

It all depends on how strong your supply is, even upgrading to a 30/100 meter will also depend on this. Some companies won't fit wall chargers on a 15/45 amp supply. My advice would be to get an electrician to fit an industrial 32 amp blue socket where you want the charger (40 amp circuit breaker) and fit the wall charger yourself with a 32 amp blue plug. Don't use a 32 amp citcuit breaker on a 7kw charger, it will trip after an hour. You can draw about 80amps continuously on a 15/45 meter, but it's only calibrated for between 15 & 45 amps and will blow the internal fuse at about 100-120 amps. I also have a 15/45 amp meter in Chiang Rai but we are on a weak supply and I get a substantial voltage drop if I draw 5 or 6Kw, typically down to 180v, but I also have solar and if the sun is shining then I have little problem. We are 200-300 metres from the transformer which is fused at 100 amps per phase. We used to have the entire development of 6 large villas all on one phase. One night we blew the fuse at the transformer, PEA sent out a truck and they sat there replacing fuses every 15 minutes so they brought 3 phase here and now we only have 2 houses per phase. We still have problems sometimes on very hot evenings. They said they would fit a larger transformer, but we're still waiting.