Anomnomnomaly BSC SSC<p><a href="https://beige.party/tags/SolarUpdate" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>SolarUpdate</span></a> time again.</p><p>Another not so great month, but a little better than June (which was awful)... yet slightly better than July 2024 (which was also awful)</p><p>Figures are not 100% as the data logging can be from 0-5% out. But it's within a margin of error mostly.</p><p>Generation 524kwh, that's up 18kwh over June, up 54kwh over July 2024... and yet isn't even as good as the generation for April this year... middle of summer and the weather is worse than the start of spring.</p><p>You can see in the yearly graph (image 2) how good the first 5 months of the year were. Then it drops of massively. June 'should' be the highest generation month of the year and yet it's actually only the 4th highest. That's never happened before. It's always been 1st or 2nd... with May beating it in 2023 and 2025.</p><p>That said... we were still effectively off grid for the majority of the month. Only 5 days in the whole month that we imported in excess of 1kwh.</p><p>So we only imported around 26kwh of electric the entire month, whilst exporting 106kwh. Including all daily charges and gas use, subtracting what we earned for export. The bill was £27.04, which meant we increased the credit on the account by a further £72.96 to £862.73. That's just about enough credit to cover the entirety of the winter bills from Nov-Feb (avg between £800-950 for those 4 months).</p><p>As usual the energy company cannot comprehend how solar and batteries work... and think that we should be paying £4.73 a month... whilst predicting that those Nov-Feb bills will be upto £100 lower than they have been every year previously because those Mar-Oct bills are lower thanks to free electric... also thanks to... oh.. I don't know... WARMER weather... we use less gas because the central heating isn't used between May-Sept and only use gas for hot water.</p><p>tl:dr crappy month compared to normal, but crappy is still good and electric was still mostly free.</p><p><a href="https://beige.party/tags/Solar" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Solar</span></a> <br><a href="https://beige.party/tags/Battery" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Battery</span></a> <br><a href="https://beige.party/tags/GoingGreen" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>GoingGreen</span></a></p>
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#SolarUpdate A quickie before bed... oooer 
3 weeks into May... here's the data
10.5kwh of electric imported (£15.82 inc standing order fees)
264.3kwh of electric exported (£36.95 earned)
£9.53 of gas used (inc standing charges)
Current bill +£11.60 credit
529kwh generated in total (May 2024 was 485kwh, May 2023 was 668kwh)
170kwh used directly,
118kwh sent to the battery
246kwh sent back to the grid
Daily avg 25.2kwh
It's been an exceptional month so far, and whilst rain is forecast for the end of the week, it's scattered showers rather than dark clouds and heavy rain. So solar forecast is still looking reasonable for the next week.
Instead of it predicting 207kwh of generation for the last 7 days, it's predicting 130kwh, with an avg of a 50-60% chance of rain each day from Saturday onwards. Which is still a daily avg of 18.5kwh and would only bring the daily total to the 28th down to 23.5kwh a day.
It would also mean (if it's accurate) that we'd equal, if not beat the previous record of total generation in a single month... Which was also May 2023 (668kwh).
Only 10 days left in the month... will we break records or won't we... Tune in and find out.
#SolarUpdate so far this month we’ve generated 330KW, fed 44KW of that into the grid (and taken 14KW from it, by accident, my bad) and 43KW into the car. Today we’re out and most of the 25KW we generate (after putting 5KW into the house battery) will go to grid, offsetting our standing charge.
House came with the solar panels, we installed the battery last March, at the moment it’ll pay back in about 10 years.
#SolarUpdate 2 weeks into May and here's the data.
347kwh of electricity generated
158kwh of electric exported back to the grid
8.5kwh of electric imported
So after 14 days, we've spent about £11.30 on electric (inc standing charges)
We've earned £23.70 from exporting.
We've also spent about £6.30 on gas (inc standing charges)
So our bill for the first 2 weeks of May is about £17.60 and we've earned about £23.70.
Which means so far this month, we are about £6 in profit.
We still paid the £100 direct debit the other day, so the credit on the account is currently up by £106.
The best day so far this month was 27.71kwh of generation, we've had an average of 24.7kwh of electric per day.
The lowest day was 12kwh and that's the only day so far this month below 22kwh.
The best ever day we've had was may 2023, when we generated 29.7kwh.
Forecast for the next 7 days is more of the same... 192kwh of solar generation is being predicted for the next 7 days.
At this rate, we'll surpass last years 555kwh for May with 9 days left in the month, and current predictions for the month are over 700kwh.
We use around the 390-450kwh mark each month... lower over warmer months as we use sunshine to dry clothes rather than the tumble dryer. So if we hit 700kwh generation, at least 300+ of that will be exported for around £45+
#SolarUpdate As we move into the more sunny and productive part of the year. I do more regular updates on the system.
So after 1 week of May, here's a few stats.
179kwh of solar generation
87kwh of solar export.
3.7kwh of import
Avg daily generation 25.5kwh
Avg daily use in the home 13kwh
Avg daily export 12.4kwh
When you factor in the daily charges for electric, the current energy bill for electric is about £6. If you add on the gas charges since we turned of the heating at the end of April, it's a total of £9
The earnings from the export £13
So after the first week of May, we are roughly £4 in profit for the month.
Interesting bit of info I just spotted in the data.
Since Feb 1st 2025, we have spent 46 days effectively off-grid. So far this year.
Off-grid is when we import less than 1kwh of electric in a day. There's always a little trickle here and there as the inverter and battery can take 5-10s to adjust to changes in the load on the system.
So 46 days off grid, and 46 days where we imported more than 1kwh each day.
We've imported 299kwh in that period, and 197kwh of it was in Feb.
That's an avg of 3.1kwh per day over 92 days.
For comparison... in the whole 2024, we spent 123 days off grid, and only 21 days of that in the exact same Feb-April period.
We're up more than 50% on last year.
This is where I sarcastically say... Yay, global warming... 
#SolarUpdate It's a new record.... No, not the solar generation.
But the new 'recommended' direct debit amount from Octopus as they realise after nearly 2yrs that the solar and battery system means lower bills.
But then they go bonkers and estimate the June/July bills as £1 (last year was £32 & £14) and they think the August bill will be £10 (last year was £34)
But then the drastically under estimate the winter bills too... which can easily top £200 when there's almost no sun and it's fucking cold.
So... they think, in order to avoid them owing us money in 12 months... we should be paying £27.73 a month.
That's down from £40 last month and £43 a couple of weeks earlier that that.
No thanks... I'll leave it at £100 a month, that way I can predict my budget each month and maybe build up enough credit that I can actually have a direct debit of £1 a month for a whole year.
Based on their ridiculous estimates... keeping it £100 a month will mean we've got a £1200 credit by Nov... The Nov-Feb bills avg around £750-850 alone.
#SolarUpdate time again.
It's been a very good month once more, well above the avg of the previous two years.
So a few figures first (previous years in brackets).
Solar Generation: 537kwh (2023: 468kwh & 2024: 425kwh)... That's really high for April, and for more context. In June 2024, we only generated 555kwh and 626kwh in 2023. 537kwh would be a very acceptable monthly figure for Jun-Aug
Export: 138kwh (2023: 163kwh(with smaller battery storage) & 2024: 98kwh (with larger storage)
We earned aprox £20 from export, which was deducted from the bill. So the bill for Gas & Electric inc all charges was £51.
In 2024, the April bill was £104, I don't have the bill from 2023 as we switched providers in Sept that year, so I'd have to hunt through emails from 2 years ago to try and find it... TBH, can't be arsed. 
We used 425kwh of electric on the house and imported 51kwh.
We also used the conservatory as a heater on the sunny days. Just opening the doors from the house to it, meant we didn't need heating for most of the month. In fact, we only spent £1.50 a day on gas 5 times, and only went over £2 a day twice. So our whole heating bill was about £34
We earned more in exported, than we spent on importing electric... but the daily standing charges made up 2/3 of the whole electric bill... and because of the export, the electric bill was around £17 for the month and around £34 for gas.
That's about a 50% saving on last years bill alone... the best one yet this year. We've seen 30-40% reductions on last years bill in previous months.
Can this weather last, or will we have a wet summer... No idea. But if it does, we could have a record year for generation. We need to beat around 4100kwh to do that. After the first 4 months, we've generated 1363kwh. We're still 7 weeks away from summer (4 if you count 1st June as the start rather than the equinox on the 21st).
A side effect of such a high generation, we've increased the credit on the energy account by a further £49 this month. They were predicting a £102 bill a few weeks ago, they lowered it to a £62 estimate a week or so back.
Interestingly, they're no estimating the May bill as £27... I'll be turning of the heating now for the summer.
#SolarUpdate a quick one as it's almost the end of the month.
Energy bill for the last month just dropped.
£51 for gas & electric, it was actually £70, but we earned £19 from solar export.
Octopus last month were predicting a £104 bill, but after I had a moan at them for wanting to up my DD to £130 after switching to a fixed rate tariff to avoid the price rises... they've redone their predictions to such a ridiculous degree that they think June-July bills will be £1 (last year they were £32 & £14). Which would have meant us paying £910 in monthly payments from April to Sept on expected bills of around £400 (based on last year). But we've actually been around £30-40 lower than their predictions and last years bills too because the weather has been milder this winter and a much warmer spring.
It also means they've predicted the April bill at £63 now, whilst the May bill they're saying will be £27... We continue to pay £100 a month and are expecting to have around an £800-900 credit come winter. Which is great because 80% of our yearly bills is from Nov-Feb when it's colder and we generate very little solar.
They're also suggesting we lower out monthly payments to £40... No thanks. If we do that we'll have to raise them to around £150-200 in the middle of winter... and I'd much rather keep them at £100 because I can afford that just fine, whilst a sudden increase of 50-100% would cause issues. I like working fewer hours and do not want to be pushed into increasing them to afford bills... Work to live, not live to work. I want to retire at 55 if I can, not go back to working full time and unable to enjoy the countryside, sea and mountains around me.
A very quick #SolarUpdate for the first week of April.
We've had 7 days of lovely sunny weather, very unusual for this time of year, and another 5 days of it predicted until the weekend.
How does that affect the running of the house?
So far, we've spent
£6.49 on electric inc standing charges
£7.06 on gas inc standing charges
We've earned
£9.12 from exporting electric
Which gives us a balance of £4.43
The standing charges alone for that week are £6.65
So we've covered all of our gas & electric use and a third of the standing charges so far.
The weather won't last... But it's reminder that a little bit of sunshine can do wonders, not only for your mental health and well being, but for reducing your reliance on energy. We've been using the conservatory (it has a laminate roof) as a heater for the house. It gets so hot in there, even in colder weather, that you can open the doors and let that warmth into the house, avoiding the need to have the heating on at all during the day.
My energy provider continues to be idiotic.
I actually had a moan at them last week because they recommended upping my monthly payment to £130 from it's current £100 after I switched to a fixed tariff to avoid the price rises from the 1st April.
They estimated my bills for the next 7 months at around £700, when based on the last 2yrs data... they would be in the £400 range and wanted us to make just over £900 in payments.
As we had £655 credit on the account already, this would have given us a credit in the region of £900-1000
So I told them off, gave them far more accurate figures (it's not like they don't have access to the smart meters and can actually see this for themselves).
They agreed to leave the payments at £100 which will not only gives us a healthy credit to protect from sudden larger bills next winter... But leaves the total monthly budget for the whole house, at a set level without any surprises.
So what do I find today... They've 'adjusted' their predictions to an even more ridiculous level, this time swinging so far under... that they're recommending the monthly payment (for gas & electric) should be £45.36... or a 55% reduction just a couple of weeks after recommending a 30% INCREASE.
Utterly stupid.
But not only that, some of the predictions they're making for bills are so stupid and so out of touch that they're laughable.
Like predicting we will use ZERO amount of gas for April through August, when we will still be using gas for hot water.
Predicting the total bills for June & July as £7... not a typo. Given the standing charges alone are about £30 a month and the most we've ever earned from solar export was £27 in a single month.
So here's their predictions with the last 12 months of actual bills in brackets.
March £118 (2 days ago it was £168, actual bill was £94)
April £67 (last year was £104)
May £30 (last year was £42
June £5 (last year £13
July £2 (last year £32)
Aug £14 (last year £34)
Sept £38 (last year £50)
Oct £89 (last year £108)
Nov £134 (last year £192)
Dec £174 (last year £207)
Jan £184 (this year £223)
Feb £152 (this year £185)
So, they think that 2 weeks after predicting our bills at around £700 between March-Sept and asking for £900 in payments for that period... We will now have bills totalling... £274 and they want payments of £371.86 (6x £45.36 as March already paid @ £100)
When the actual bills last year were about £380 for the same period and we'd paid £700 in monthly bills (we build up summer credit because we easily have £200 a month bills from Nov-Feb due to heating and less sunlight).
They have over 2yrs of data with the solar system in place and still don't have a clue that the actual import of energy is between 1800-2000kwh a year and now they seem to be assuming it's going to be around 1400kwh.
Thankfully, they're only recommending lowering the payments at this time.
But FFS, how can they go from recommending £130 2 weeks ago to recommending £45 now... If they're using some kind of AI to do these predictions... it just further proves how shite they are.
#SolarUpdate It's an early one this month because I'll be busy for the next few days with work and DIY (plastering)
But the bill just dropped for March, and due to Feb being a short month it's only 28days billing (billing cycle is usually 29th of each month).
It's been an amazing month for solar generation. Unusually sunny weather, and most rain has been either overnight or in the mornings & evenings. Leaving the majority of the days sunny and clearish.
With the weather being clear and sunny today and reasonably good tomorrow. It's predicting around 32kwh of generation for the last 2 days of the month. So I'll be adding that to the figures, it will be within a couple of % of actual data (and the data is always 1-2% out anyway)
So, let's compare March to the previous 2yrs first.
2023 - 279kwh generation (avg 9kwh/day)
2024 - 309kwh generation (avg 9.9kwh/day)
2025 - 435kwh generation (avg 14kwh/day)
I'm honestly stunned by that last figure. 435kwh of solar generation in March.... Errm... thanks global warning 
That's a whopping 126kwh higher than last year and 156kwh more than 2023.
Of that we exported about 66kwh and earned £9.85.
Due to the sunny weather, we were able to use the conservatory as a heater. It's old and tired with a laminate roof. It's like an oven when the sun is out and as such, kinda unbearable to sit in during the summer (we're going to replace it next year with a proper room). So, we open the doors to the conservatory and let the heat into the house, which means we don't need the heating on at all during the day, even when it's cold outside. This reduces the gas bill too.
Now comes the fun part.
Octopus, estimated our bill for March at £168
Our actual bill after adding the £9.85 export credit was £94
I'd been predicting a bill around £120-130 (before export credit).
We spent just £33.98 on electric, of which £19 was the daily standing charge.
We spent £69 on gas, of which £9 was daily standing charge.
So we generated about 40% more electric than last year and reduced the bill (from the estimated £168) by 43%.
We've spent 17 days effectively off-grid (where we import less than 1kwh of electric in a day) this month.
We'll have another full battery today and tomorrow, and with the weather for the coming week looking good... The first week of April will most likely be spent pretty much off-grid too.
With total consumption for the month looking to be in the region of 405kwh and total import (according to energy provider) of 63kwh and export of 66kwh... we almost had a net zero month (£13 spent on electric vs almost £10 earned).
If you'd like an example of how much we in the UK are being screwed on energy prices. You only have to look at the daily 'standing charge' we pay for utilities.
It's currently 65p per day for electric and 30p per day for gas.
It's going up in April to 68p and 32p on top of rises per kwh of use.
It's not that bad you might say... But here's 2 charts, for the exact same period.
Chart one is the total electric used inc the daily standing charge for the first 3 weeks of March.
The second chart is just the cost of the electric.
The difference is about 138%
Less than £10 for electric, and almost £14 for standing charges.
#SolarUpdate It's been a pretty good start to March for solar. First 10 days data showing around 140kwh of generation and just 26kwh of electric import (energy provider data says 28.7kwh).
If you extrapolate that into approximate data for the month. It could be in the region of more than 400kwh for the month (2023 was 279kwh and 2024 was 309kwh)... So I expect some more inclement weather to arrive in the latter half of the month to balance that out.
But considering that Feb generation was 28% higher than 2024 (no complete data for 2023), I'm optimistic it's be in the 330-350kwh range.
With extra sunny and clear skies of late, it's also meant it's much colder. No cloud to help trap heat. So gas use is not declining as usual and is on par with Feb, when I'd expect to see a 10-20% drop.
So when the sun is out, I try and open the conservatory door to let the warmer air into the lounge/dining room where the thermostat is. Which means I can avoid the heating coming on as much between 11-3pm when the sun is shining most on the conservatory. That in the last few days has reduced the gas use each day from £3 to around £2 for the last 4 days.
If this continues in a similar fashion for the whole of march, the combined bill is going to be in the £120-140 range, my provider is 'predicting' a £175 bill.
But this years bills have been lower than last year by an avg of £30-40 per month in Jan-Feb (the winter Nov-Dec bills have been almost identical).