I’ve got a philosophy exam on Wednesday, so obviously I spent half of yesterday getting my car serviced and through its MOT (new tyre and wiper blades required). Today’s method of scuppering my revision was to have 6 solar panels fitted to my roof. Luckily the cat woke me at 07:00 so I was already up by the time the scaffolders arrived at 08:00 with the installers arriving at 09:15 but unable to start until the scaffolding was finished.

The installers consisted of Basil (sparky) and Dean (builder & joiner), a missed opportunity for Basil to rename himself Pearl there. They were all very polite and mostly neat and tidy (consuming reasonable quantities of hot beverage and biscuits) and were out the door before 18:00.

Some minor problems with the installation when Dean wasn’t sure all 6 panels would fit, but once he was up on the roof it was clear that they all would, though my roof (as with all others in this street) was bowed beyond what he could correct with his brackets so there is a slight tilt in them. Slightly larger issues with the Owl intuition heating system which isn’t anything to do with the PV but a method of controlling the heating by taking external temperature information from local weather stations to determine when the heating should be turned off and on to maintain the desired temperatures (with it being able to control it all remotely via apps as well as having “holiday” settings). The set up for these little wireless devices seemed tortuously complicated and once we found a customer service number the tech on the end agreed and will be taking it up with the shop floor to make it simpler (it didn’t help that the installation booklet didn’t contain the right information).

All in all I had 6 SunPower panels fitted for a 1.96kw system (all that will fit on my roof), with an inverter in the loft, a voltage optimiser fitted to reduce the overall electricity used, a second meter to record what is being generated, and the Owl intuition system. I should get the paperwork back in a few days to send off to my provider to start getting my government payments (they pay you for 50% of what you generate, then you can sell back what you don’t use as well).

I can monitor everything online and suspect that I might get addicted to checking out what I have used, what I have generated, what temperature the house has been at what time, etc. It’s currently 18:25 and raining here and I’m generating 241W.