I’ve dropped a few posts here in the past about PV systems and how insanely sexy and badass this tech is. 🔥☀️
Today the counter in the app finally crossed the €5,000 yield mark. 💰
💡 A quick explanation for the seemingly insane electricity consumption:
If anyone is wondering why our electricity consumption looks somewhat ridiculous compared to the average family: we heat the house with a heat pump in winter and produce hot water twice a day. 😄
So the “classic” electricity consumption – all the normal household stuff – is actually considerably lower than the total number might suggest.
Our PV system is now exactly 2 years, 2 months and 30 days old (to the day).
Those €5,000 in savings are calculated from two pots:
- Feed-in tariff – the energy we push into the grid and get paid for when production exceeds consumption + battery capacity.
- Self-consumed energy – the kWh we didn’t have to buy from the grid because we used them straight from the roof.
The system has my electricity tariff (price per kWh) stored, so the math is solid. 📊
Everything I said in earlier posts still holds true, with a few nerdy refinements:
- Best practice: run high-load appliances (dishwasher, washing machine, etc.) exactly when you have surplus generation. ⚡
- The more you can shift load into surplus windows, the higher your self-consumption rate and overall efficiency.
- Once an EV (or two) enters the picture and I can dump “free” solar kWh into the car, the ROI on the PV system accelerates hard.(This is also a gentle hint to my wife that we urgently need an air conditioner for summer – we’re currently overproducing and dumping power into the grid for peanuts.) 😎❄️
- Self-consumption always wins. Feeding in at ~7 ct/kWh is cute, but buying the same kWh from the grid costs ~35 ct. So yeah… maybe don’t force the washing machine to run at night just because the tariff is cheap. 😄
Hardware status:
Fronius inverter + BYD 10 kWh battery have been rock-solid so far. Only occasional firmware updates, which I flash myself. The BYD is completely silent at night, and once the 10 kWh pack is fully charged it carries us through the entire night in full autonomy mode. 🔋🌙
Might be worth taking a closer look at BYD EVs… if their cars are half as good as their home storage, we’d be in for a treat. 🚗⚡
With the live savings counter I can already model the amortization curve pretty accurately. The only variables left are: when the first (or second) EV shows up and how our overall load profile evolves from there. 📈
P.S. I once dropped a link here to a backup upgrade for the PV system that lets it keep generating power even during a full grid outage. Classic plot twist: since we installed the system, there hasn’t been a single blackout to actually put it to the test. 😅🔌
