Having solar panels on our properties allows us to generate electricity when the British weather cooperates, of course! How we use that electricity depends on our needs and what we can afford to optimize. While batteries are an excellent way to store and use solar energy efficiently, they can be expensive, making them inaccessible to many.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For those without battery storage, making the most of solar energy means using appliances at the right time or selling excess electricity back to the grid. For example, if we generate 1.6 kW per hour on a sunny day and run a 1.4 kW washing machine, we get a free wash, avoiding the import cost of around 34p per kWh. If we don\u2019t use the energy and instead sell it back via the Smart Export Guarantee (SEG), we might only receive 15p per kWh. That means using our own power saves us 19p per kWh.
Since it\u2019s not always feasible to perfectly match generation and usage, finding the right balance between importing and exporting electricity is key to maximizing savings and efficiency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Finding the best solar tariffs (Smart Export Guarantee<\/a> or SEG tariffs<\/a>) for exporting electricity can be a bit of a minefield.\u00a0 Octopus<\/a>, Good Energy<\/a>, OVO Energy<\/a>, E.ON<\/a>, British Gas<\/a>\u00a0all have their own tariffs based on their export rates of price per kilowatt-hour (p\/kWh). Some offer incentives for using energy at certain times during the day, so working out what the “sell value” is compared to the “use value” can be different with each supplier and can either be of benefit or a drawback. Prices do change, so it’s worth doing research. Citizens advice has a great calculator to work out energy use of household appliances.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Store or use, the supplier will pay less for the power return. Having solar panels on our properties allows us to generate electricity when the British weather cooperates, of course! How we use that electricity depends on our needs and what we can afford to optimize. While batteries are an excellent way to store and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1297,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1367","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-efficiency","category-new-technologies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mywarmhome.co.uk\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1367","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mywarmhome.co.uk\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mywarmhome.co.uk\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mywarmhome.co.uk\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mywarmhome.co.uk\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1367"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mywarmhome.co.uk\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1367\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2734,"href":"https:\/\/mywarmhome.co.uk\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1367\/revisions\/2734"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mywarmhome.co.uk\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mywarmhome.co.uk\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mywarmhome.co.uk\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mywarmhome.co.uk\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}