Homeowner Blog

How is COVID-19 impacting our energy demand?

The world is currently going through unprecedented times, with the majority of the population confined to their own homes, practicing social distancing to help curb the spread of COVID-19. This has had a significant impact on our day to day lives, with most working from home, and as a result there has been an increase in daytime energy usage. In a study by Octopus Energy, almost a third of households have noticeably changed their usage patterns, with a daytime electricity usage increase of up to 32%, resulting in an average electricity bill rise of £1.34 - £2.85 per week.

While there has been an increase in domestic energy usage, the national energy demand has decreased due to the number of industries and factories temporarily closing their doors to comply with the government’s regulations. The UK’s total energy requirement is down by about 20%, with the electricity demand on the first day of lockdown (24^th March 2020) showing a decrease of about 8% from the monthly average.

In light of the recent news, the idea of being grid independent with your own power cut protection has become a lot more attractive. 

We have had a number of customers interested in upgrading their solar PV or battery systems to protect them from power cuts. As we mentioned in a previous blog, a solar PV system alone will not protect you from an outage. With no batteries, if the power goes out, your PV system will switch off. This is a safety mechanism so that you do not discharge any excess PV energy to the grid and seriously injure someone if they are working to repair the grid near your house!

Even if you have a battery, some of them will not be able to island your property from the grid, which is the crucial step needed to have a backup system. Batteries need to follow strict DNO regulations to operate during a power outage as well, and will always need prior grid permission before installing.

We’d like to reassure you that we are determined to serve our customers and continue driving the switch to renewable energy during the COVID-19 outbreak.

We are following government advice to keep our staff and customers safe, and will update you on any changes to our operations.

Over the past year there have been a couple of fairly large changes which have impacted the payback period of a solar PV installation. Firstly the Feed-in Tariff (FiT) closed for new applicants at the end of March 2019 and then the Smart Export Guarantee (SEG) was brought into effect at the start of this year.

Many of our customers are keen to use as much of the solar energy that their home generates as possible in the home. Not only will this reduce bills, it will also increase energy independence.

Image: Ofgem.

What is DNO permission and when do you need it?

The DNO or distribution network operator is the company responsible for distributing electricity from the National Grid to your home or business. In the UK there are 14 different district networks or DNO regions which are owned by six groups. For our installation zone, the distribution network operators which we are concerned by are Scottish & Southern Electricity (SSE), UK Power Networks (UKPN), and Western Power Distribution (WPD).

At the end of January, thousands of homes local to us across Reading, Bracknell and Basingstoke suffered power outages for an average of 3 hours. This past week, Storm Ciara denied over 500,000 of us access to electricity. And last August the country was hit by the worst blackout in a decade, affecting hospitals, trains and over a million people. 

This week saw the government bring forward the ban on new petrol and diesel cars to 2035.

One of the most pressing challenges in encouraging people to switch to electric cars is building an extensive charging network. Most people charge at home, but there is always going to be a time when you need to top up on the go. A novel solution is to bolster the number of available chargers by opening up privately owned points for public use - peer-to-peer (P2P) electric vehicle charging.

Another year has gone by with Tesla roof tiles as popular as ever in the public imagination, yet still mostly intangible. But that could all be about to change. Tesla has announced Solar Roof, the latest iteration of his solar tiles with promises of improved technology and scalability. The company is aiming to ramp up to 1,000 installations a week in America, so what can we expect?

The inverter is the heart of a PV system. It’s the crucial interface between your solar panels and the rest of the home, batteries or national grid. Aside from converting DC solar power into usable AC, it houses many of the system’s safety features and performance monitoring.

Given it’s such an important component, let’s talk about how to choose a solar inverter. What do you have to consider, and which is the best model?