Solar Panels Query

[River Song]

Hi Guys

Firstly a minor disclosure. I live and work in a village where my house is provided for me as part of the job. (This has upsides and downsides which I won't go into here).

My employer and owner of the property, has recently paid for loft insulation and cavity wall insulation at her expense.

She is now going to put sikar oanels on the roof, again at her own expense and is allowing me to obviously use the generated electricity free of charge. Any money generated from the kit goes to her.

Fair enough. My question is what kind of technology/switchgear will be installed apart from the solar panels themselves and do you think I could take a link off the kit to chage some batteries? How?

Thanks people

[BeardyMan]

Depends on the system she's gone for. I presume (probably incorrectly) that it's going to be a tied into the national grid? So it'll power your house and the excess gets sold back to the electricity company.

What type of batteries would you be looking to charge? If normal ones just get a few of the decent battery chargers and run from the wall socket as per usual. AFAIK you should be able to isolate your property from the grid in a SHTF scenario, so you'll still have power (when the sun's shining)

If you want a rechargeable battery bank (leisure batteries for go off grid) then you're going to need to tap into the system. Remove the link from the internal system to the grid, put your charge controller there and hook that up to your battery bank. I'd buy the bits now (they're not extortionate) for use at a later date. I wouldn't want to get myself hoofed out of my home for making unauthorised changes to the brand new PV system

[Tigs]

depends if they are fitting a system that gives extra electricity to a power company too, some of these systems are free but have no battery back so you only get free electricity while its being produced

[Lightspeed]

Lucky you RS!

BM is right these systems are normally tied into the grid and waork as he describes.

Nix is our resident expert on the sort of installation you would like. Hopefully he'll pick up on this thread ad let you know exactly what needs to be done.

Good luck

[Geordie_Rob]

I'd go with BM for now. Normal car battery charger with a 3 pin plug. After any event, bugger knows I'm afraid.

[Highlander]

[I-K-E]

for post SHTF I'm assuming that you will need a suitable charge controller that will connect to the solar panels and the charge the battery bank

if you look at the camping type solar setups that all that they do you would just need to up scale according to the solar setup on the roof

[BeardyMan]

[Nix]

[River Song]

Nix

Thanks for the response. They haven't installed yet.
All I know is that my employer is putting into my house (owned by her).
PV on south facing bit of roof and somehow tied into the grid.
Supposed to mean that I get some cheaper electricity and she gets
something from generating and sellback.

That much I understand. Obviously I would like to get some prepping use out of it was well.

As soon as I have got some indication of what is what --- I will repost

Cheers
RS