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Plug-in solar panels (no electrician needed) have just become legal in the UK and will go on sale soon. Helios estimates how much electricity a typical installation could generate at a given address and what that's worth against your tariff.
It uses UK government LIDAR data to reflect the actual skyline, so it knows whether there's a building or a hill blocking the sun.
Caveats: - Outside LIDAR coverage (most of Scotland and Wales) it falls back to a synthetic horizon (less accurate). - Trees and recent developments (post-2022 or so) may not be in the data, and some address placements could be off (geocoding via OSM).
Feedback on the shading model especially welcome.
Discussion (30 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews
I'm wondering if it should fall back to a more general shading approach when no OSM building footprint is available, to avoid false precision? My street has a gap in the houses on the other side from mine, so picking the right location matters for the calculation.
You could also try Inspire Index polygons instead of OSM? These correspond to actual lease/freehold boundaries.
This is my issue with this sort of thing. Am I going to have this kit in 7 years? Or would I upgrade to better stuff at the technology improves?
Panel lifetime is very high. The scope for efficiency improvement is not huge (unless there is a cost breakthrough in multi band photon capture). It's not a car, phone, or computer. It's more like the rest of the house electric infrastructure.
I had my rooftop solar over 10 years ago and basically intend to leave it until some maintenance issue forces action.
(Also, the kit secondhand value is hard to determine but far from zero; 30-50% maybe?)
If you’re financing the system you have no big cash outlay, but returns are further out, possibly never when accounting for the useful like of the system.
With cash up front all the returns are yours, but they are much lower than what that cash would net you in an average investment.
The financial math on small solar systems can be complex. If the system is sufficient to provide power to major appliances in a power outage (assuming you have a power outage risk in your area), it can make more sense to tie money up in these systems.
I don't see what your issue is.
The panels have a ~25 year warranty though [2] (at which point, they should still produce ~80% of rated output), so it’s entirely possible to just leave them in place. At a certain age (~55-60), these are the last PV panels you’ll need to buy, as they’ll potentially outlive you (assuming developed country life expectancy).
[1] https://magnifina.com/articles/rooftop-solar-yield/
[2] https://www.energysage.com/solar/solar-panel-warranties/
I'd like it if it would actually show me how much sun it thinks I'd get at the postcode I put in. I've got about a third of an acre of garden in a 6 acre field to play with, before I start having to dig up roads. I can afford to be quite free and easy with placement ;-)
Very interesting stuff and quite a large undertaking! I'm often impressed by the quality of the UK's open data.
The ordnance survey not being open data is a bad look though.
Would be nice to add this as an extra data point when comparing. Are you open to collaborating at all?
Kits in Germany are 300€ without a battery.
Please consider making the source code available. I’d love to make something similar for your friends across the pond (in Canada).
"Caveats: - Outside LIDAR coverage (most of Scotland and Wales) it falls back to a synthetic horizon (less accurate)"
So, "any address in the most of the southern half of Britain"?
Also do you actually need a balcony or can you hang these out of a window somehow? Very few houses in the UK have balconies.