Michael's home

This was not a standard domestic solar installation. Michael had land and wanted to use it, and the project took around twelve months of planning before a single panel went up, including securing planning permission for a purpose-built ground-mounted array on his own ground.

No ladders on this one. The work went into the ground rather than onto a roof. There was extensive groundworks, including a 120 metre cable run trenched across the field, and a purpose-built hut put up to house the inverter and the batteries.

The array is 24 AIKO Neostar 510W modules on ground-mounted frames, 12.2 kWp in total. A 10kW Sigenergy SigenStor hybrid inverter and two 8.76 kWh Sigenergy batteries sit in the hut, giving 17.5 kWh of storage.

The system is deliberately bigger than the house needs. Michael uses around 6,000 kWh a year and the array is forecast to generate 13,684 kWh. That was the point of it.

He wanted to make the most of the space he had and turn the surplus into something useful, exporting back to the grid on a smart tariff rather than sizing the system around the existing bill.

The battery is what makes that work. It stores energy for when it is wanted, and time-of-use tariffs mean it can charge when electricity is cheap and export when it is worth more. A lot of planning and plenty of trenching, and a good example of designing a system around how somebody actually wants to use, store and trade energy.