Solar Immersion - my experience !

[Worcester]

Additionally they monitor voltage and phase angle so can get true power figures. It's simples when you know how..

 

[Steve_rutland]

Just a little question regarding these Immersun devices. If say I have a 3kw immersion with 1kw available, would I be right in thinking the water wouldn't get as hot or, would it just take longer. In my mind, I'm likening it to a sort of dimmer switch with the bulb only glowing rather than burning brightly.

 

[Warlord2001c]

Just a little question regarding these Immersun devices. If say I have a 3kw immersion with 1kw available, would I be right in thinking the water wouldn't get as hot or, would it just take longer. In my mind, I'm likening it to a sort of dimmer switch with the bulb only glowing rather than burning brightly.

It takes longer but our ImmerSuN is giving us a full tank of very hot water pretty much every day. Average day is around midday when it cuts out as the immersion thermostat hits max temp.

Ours was fitted at the start of March and has given a tank of hot water everyday so far except when the snow covered the panels. Two adults one child and enough hot water at night for a bath and showers in the morning before the ImmerSUN starts heating it all up again.

3kw in 1 hour or 1kw for 3 hours still pretty much the same net effect.

cheers

Andy

 

[Steve_rutland]

Thanks Andy. Am looking at a tank with twin immersions ( both 3kw ) and wasn't sure whether to change them for lower wattage or not but that clears it up.

 

[pwboston]

I have a tank with twin 3kw immersions.

The Immersun heats the top element first to basically make sure you have hot water, then moves over to the bottom one and finishes the tank off.

I have found most days if i didnt have a bath today and just used water for washing up and washing etc, it would only need 2-3kw to heat up the following day. 6kw usually does a full tank. If im at home i am finding it hard to resist having my bath a midday and watching it heat it up again

Sad but true...............

 

[danesol]

My wife has now complained !!!!!


Apparently the water is too hot now...... LOL

Its set to 60 as well............. you cant please them all, but I'm well impressed even when we aren't producing at max

 

[danesol]

Additionally they monitor voltage and phase angle so can get true power figures. It's simples when you know how..

Yes it works that well that its now far more accurate than the Eon Envir' energy monitor ( clamp) I have, so the consumption figure is showing not as it should - I think this is due to both the clamp used by the Eon device as well as the way our PV is wired up to the tails using a Henley Block and not via the CU. I'm trying to locate a decent energy monitor now to keep up with the Solar Immersions calculations as the DNO meter definitely stops dead, but the consumption fig on the Eon meter doesnt sometimes equal the power generated by the SMA inverter - hence displaying there is a mis-reading somewhere from how I understand the situation...... hence my PVO export figure displayed is incorrect !

But this isnt any fault of the Solar Immersion device which is spot on, its merely too accurate against the consumption meter I decided to utilise !

Just need to work out now what I can use any further surplus on using the 2nd relay which comes as standard

 

[danesol]

Here's an example of this as well as it clearly displays how the Solar Immersion 'tracks' your energy generation very closely - the only difference like I said is the Eon monitor's inability to be as accurate as the Solar immersion device;

 

[danesol]

Here's another fine example of great tracking by the Solar Immersion ( ignore the difference as the Eon is not reading correctly and infact the meter is totally stopped dead );

What i want the Eon monitor now to register is what the house is using from both the grid & the PV and NOT what I'm pulling from either or, as like above hardly any electric came from the grid that day ( iirc approx 6kwh ) - it merely as I said showed what the house was using !!!

View attachment 18936

 

[Worcester]

For improved monitoring try either the Eco-Eye Products and Online Store or the Elios4You - Sibert - automated equipment manufacturer and supplier of process consumables

 

[danesol]

For improved monitoring try either the Eco-Eye Products and Online Store or the Elios4You - Sibert - automated equipment manufacturer and supplier of process consumables

I've now got another wireless monitor ( a BG one infact ) and the findings from two different tails (+ and - ) are very interesting using both monitors - they both add up to exactly what the SMA inverter is generating, however I now found a way of measuring more accurately the consumption inhouse now...... I dont now why I didnt do or try this before ( possibly due to thinking it would show or be influenced by generation?) , but if I place the Eon Envir' Monitor CT around the AC fed to the PV System ( remember its connected via a Henley Block ) the measurement is nearly bang on....... weird

 

[danesol]

I've now got another wireless monitor ( a BG one infact ) and the findings from two different tails (+ and - ) are very interesting using both monitors - they both add up to exactly what the SMA inverter is generating, however I now found a way of measuring more accurately the consumption inhouse now...... I dont now why I didnt do or try this before ( possibly due to thinking it would show or be influenced by generation?) , but if I place the Eon Envir' Monitor CT around the AC fed to the PV System ( remember its connected via a Henley Block ) the measurement is nearly bang on....... weird

Yes, as I thought - much better monitoring now and this more or less proves it today after the Monitor CT position change;

 

[Worcester]

@danesol if that output and some of the others on your pvoutput log are accurate then the Solar Immersion isn't doing a very good job of tracking your generation as it appears to swing wildly either side of the actual generation. If that is the case, your energy consumption for yesterday for example is very worrying.

Unless it is caused by the inaccurate monitoring systems. attached below are your charts for yesterday and today and my chart using an immersun with fall over load for today.

The bottom one is monitored using an eco-eye, mine are monitored using accurately calibrated CT's with AC voltage and phase monitoring also OpenEnergyMonitor.org

It may be just the monitoring, if that isn't accurate then unfortunately you don't really know how well it's performing.

Yours Yesterday:

Yours Today:

Mine Yesterday:

Mine Today (Water hot at 9:45 am) roll over to 750 Watt panel radiator:

And other one using an ImmerSun (Water hot at 11:30 am)



The spikes on mine - lots of cups of tea today

 

[danesol]

@danesol if that output and some of the others on your pvoutput log are accurate then the Solar Immersion isn't doing a very good job of tracking your generation as it appears to swing wildly either side of the actual generation. If that is the case, your energy consumption for yesterday for example is very worrying.

Unless it is caused by the inaccurate monitoring systems. attached below are your charts for yesterday and today and my chart using an immersun with fall over load for today.

The bottom one is monitored using an eco-eye, mine are monitored using accurately calibrated CT's with AC voltage and phase monitoring also OpenEnergyMonitor.org

It may be just the monitoring, if that isn't accurate then unfortunately you don't really know how well it's performing.

Yours Yesterday:
View attachment 18999
Yours Today:
View attachment 19000
Mine Yesterday:
View attachment 19001
Mine Today (Water hot at 9:45 am) roll over to 750 Watt panel radiator:
View attachment 19003
And other one using an ImmerSun (Water hot at 11:30 am)
View attachment 19004


The spikes on mine - lots of cups of tea today

Thanks for that - Yes your right, its still a case of inaccurate/bad monitoring by the Eon Envir monitor - it just cant handle the fact that a Henley Block is involved and I notice some of the 5min interval checks are not quite right - I thought I'd cracked it today but as soon as the Inverter is off the CT belonging to the Eon monitor is showing the total wrong value totally, so the Eon CT is back on the tails supplying to the CU???

However im pleased to say that the CT belonging to the Solar Immersion is spot on and the DNO meter has been completely still until the evening from approx' mid morning. I'm taking regular DNO meter readings to substantiate this. Today I would say we have used 99% of all electric generated as we have only drawn 3kwh overnight and then started to draw again early evening, so although consumption is around 20kwh for the whole day - only around 6-7kwh of that is chargeable from the grid.

I was hoping to know the following but it would seem I might have to forkout for a proper system like you suggested before if I want justification that my immersion device is working in my favour and to keep an accurate record of all events;

1. DNO meter naturally provides us with what we are importing from the utility co

2. Solar PV Meter - gives me an accurate reading for generation

3. Eon monitor - was hoping this could give me a true record of what we are actually using within the home, whether that was from the PV system and/or as top up from the grid but this seems impossible with this Eon unfortunately.

 

[Worcester]

The EOn monitor (provided by CurrentCost) is notoriosly inaccurate - I was even sent a development system by them and we couldn't get that to work accurately!! Would be out by 25% either way totally inconsistently.

I've got a cupboard full of useless 'free' energy monitors from all sorts of suppliers as I searched for a good one

As each CT has been accuratley calibrated, and it monitors the AC voltage and phase angle, my system is within 1% accurate. For instance I've got multiple CT's monitoring the same thing in different places, so it's easy to cross check - e.g. 1 on the Generation (A), 1 on the Consumption (B) and 1 on the DNO supply (C) , my live monitioring system is updated every 6 seconds also calculates B-A and compares it with C, so flagging up if there are any errors - the CT's are also directional (the Current Cost ones arent from what I remember) so I get + and - readings for import/export. My monitor also has nice glowy LCD's that vary from Bright Green (exporting lots) to Bright Red (importing lots ) so a simple glance show the current state of generation and consumption.


The problem with 1 and 2 of yours is that they are historical energy meters as opposed to current power meters, amd whilst they are very accurate they will always be out of date by the time you can read them, and they don;t tell you how much of what you've generated you've consumed (you'd need to install either an export meter or total consumption meter for that), and as pointed out above 3 - the Eon monitor is an interesting tool for educating consumers about how much power / energy they are using, that is all it was ever designed for.

 

[danesol]

The BG monitor i've just acquired appears to be the same, but as I said previously when they are both on different tails of the Henley Block - they appear when added together to give precisely the right figure - however I cant export this to PVO :banghead:

So its a case of either getting a suitable monitor of the quality you have or just not bother :shades_smile: but as a techie I doubt I will be able to do that !! LOL

 

[Warlord2001c]

I use the eco eye smart PV product as Worcester says above. Running it through COSM to upload into PVO. Recently verified the inverter outputs to the historic data from The Trax software that comes with the smart PV monitor and calibrated out the small variance in totals inverter vs monitor using the PVO formula option.

since doing that three weeks ago the monitor has been 100% accurate to one decimal place for kWh generation so very good IMHO.



My favourite PVO graph so far for obvious reasons and a great example of showing the ImmerSUN tracking the generation. :clap:

 

[danesol]

UPDATE:- Unbelievable for MAY, especially after generation was exceptional for May last year, but I have to report that our particular setup in the NW has had a few days lately where our system just hasnt been able to supply on the whole, enough free electric even to the normal house requirement/useage, so the immersion device hasnt been effective in real terms for those particular days, as it only works with surplus - however that isnt the fault of the device and the HWC has been heated (topped up ) mainly by GAS on those days, however the Solar Immersion has still lived up to expectation where possible, as its continued to use at any point any surplus normally going to the grid as export, keeping export to the grid as close to NIL as possible and this is confirmed by DNO meter readings.

Every little bit helps I suppose......... but substantiates that you really need a backup system on bad weather days IMO

 

[thushar]

SolarImmersion (SolarImmersion - Surplus Solar Energy Water Heater | ) now at special offer - Price reduced to £229 (was £249)

 

[contact]

Hi everyone,
I've been following this thread with interest as I intend to install a solar immersion (or similar) in the next few weeks. So, just a few questions:-
1. is Solar Immersion a good one to get, or are there better/more reliable ones around now (and if so - how much?)
2. is the discount coupon still valid with the reduced price if £229, or am I just being cheeky here?
3. about how long does it take to install the Solar Immersion?
4. what do people connect as a secondary device - I was thinking perhaps a storage radiator in the hallway for background heating in winter, but I wouldn't need that in summer when there's likely to be a greater surplus. Any suggestions?

I appreciate there are a lot of questions here, but any snippets of information members may be able to offer would be greatly appreciated (i.e. I'm not expecting full answers to every question - just whatever you can offer)

K