Save yourself £10,000 by building your own Solar Array  

In Australia it is illegal to do any 240VAC wiring yourself, regardless of whether you are off-grid or not. The DC side of it is a bit of a grey area, with the Australia/New Zealand standards for installation having to be rigidly adhered to. I had a bit of a let-off. Many years ago I worked for a government body that owned and operated mission critical gas transmission pipelines that traversed remote areas. We were not able to undertake work on LV equipment that operated above 50V and this often necessitated an electrician being called out for really minor stuff. In the end our bosses got a ruling from the regulator that basically said that we were allowed to work on fixed wired circuits and equipment up to 250V provided it was "within our level of competency". I have kept that ruling in a safe place ever since. This meant I was able to install my own solar gear as I have had years of requisite experience, gained from previous employment, and was competent to do it. One thing I am able to do is read and interpret procedures, manuals and AS/NZ Standards. I was careful to get all 240VAC work done by licensed electricians, just to be sure that I couldn't get denied an insurance claim at some time down the track. I was able to buy 92 x 330W LG Neon 2 Black solar panels for AUD $5k (about 2.5k of your quid), that were only 2 years old and had transferrable warranty. I sold 40 of them and the 27kW 3-phase inverter that came with the deal (my house is only single-phase and upgrading wasn't worth the expense) and got more than half of the $5k back. I installed 15.1kW of the panels and have some spares, I used all Victron gear (3 x 5KVA inverters in parallel, 4 x 5kW MPPT regs) 10 x Pylontech US3000C batteries. It did cost a fair bit but saved at least AUD $20k on labour and I'm 100% off-grid. I subsequently purchased an EV which now costs me nothing to run. My payback time is now 8.5 years (not counting the purchase price of the EV - my old gas guzzler was 12 years old and needed replacing anyway, so I don't factor the EV in to my total system cost.) The best thing is that, where we are, the grid is notoriously unreliable and now I have 100% reliable power. Being off-grid, I can only generate as much as I consume so, the system is almost idle a lot of the time, but my peak daily consumption has been 72kWh on a day when we had every air conditioner running and we charged the EV.

Thank you. Your video might just get me off my ar*e, and actually do this, rather than planning it forever. Any thoughts on converting an old EV battery, to use for home?

I have a place and my electricity meter is located in someone elses property, this person is refusing to give acess to take meter readings and also refusing acess to the supplier to update the meter, i do have a warning that if acess is not granted they will cut the electricity soon. The only think i can do is taking the person to court to give acess or at least to move the meters out but this will incur at least 5000pounds if not more. I am thinking in getting a diy solar install and don't spend any money in the above. The place is located in a very sunny weather all year . Should i do it?

I have 600w solar panels one 400w 2x100w with a micro inverter 700w grid tie,do i need any permission? In uk

You mentioned £1700 total cost. Is that one very expensive battery? Or a slip of the toung? Interesting video btw.

Working well just wait until June you will be racking it in

not doing isolators, dc cable, solar mounts. the fact that a little knowledge is dangerous, but well done you still are breathing. just back from an install on a roof 5kw + 8kwh battery, in roof solar panels VAT free 7.8K installed, customer happy 9.5 year payback 12 yrs warranty on battery. and tomorrows forecast will be 30kwh production.

Off-Grid and very happy, all done myself. I compare energy company bosses to street drug pushers, they are so bent and corrupt.

How does n98 permission with DIY?

Really interesting and thanks for sharing. I've been looking at this for a while. The only fly in the ointment was you saying that, "today I've probably generated about 10 kWh" Our Util supplier charges us £0.29 per kWh. So you saved £2.90. I know every penny counts and they mount up, but £2.90 saved seems such a small amount, and THAT depends upon the sun as well. I live near cloudy Aberdeen!

Where did you put them? Not DIY on your own roof?