Your Neighbour's Solar Is Your Problem Now

I found the content of the video interesting but the onslaught of AI slop was very distracting.

Oh no, the electric companies are going to have to do what we pay them for

About 18 years ago I built a 2 kilowatt off grid system. Like a canal boat set up but bigger. Worked great until the caravan batteries dead. Then I just used 4 mini grid tied inverters. 24 volt system. Been working great for 15 years. Not legal yet. Not that I care lol. I also fitted a Solar Immersion Diverter so I have hot water all year round as the wood burner takes over in the cold. I designed it so no smart phones or crap programming that stops it working. The wood burner is controlled by a Raspberry Pi that I also programmed and wired up. :) Oh dear. The wonders of being single.

Gordon, thank you so much for going into this subject and sharing it. We have had a very similar problem. A neighbour (on the same grid phase as us) recently installed a large solar system and this has pushed our grid voltage higher. We regularly now see 250-252 V and this has caused our solar system to throttle. On a sunny day our SoplarEdge 6kW inverter would bounce between 1 and 3.5kW when the grid supply to us went over 249V. My neighbour's new Fox ESS system meanwhile was happily sitting at its max output. Our system is 3 years old and this did not fit with our historic output data. I went to the DNO who quite rightly said it was within their regulatory range, so nothing they could do. My installer tried to talk to SolarEdge who said there was nothing wrong. However, I put a case in with SolarEdge and after a few weeks they did some remote settings changes. My system is now more voltage tolerant and I am again getting 6kW from my inverter at 250V. Before I was not seeing more then 4kW continuously. If anyone has this sort of issue, please push hard for a resolution, don't just accept a diminished output - there may be something that can be done!

I know it isn't my neighbours fault..... It's 100% the fault of the DNOs (2 of which are in sole ownership of billionaires, the remainder are still profit making multinationals) for taking all the money.... and failing to predict and invest in suitable infrastructure. "Professional" electricians need to step up to the responsibility that comes with their self appointed status and advocate on behalf of the public (customers) they serve. Don't be part of the divide and conquer model of pushing blame at the common man, to protect the megarich that have been profiteering on the back of "public services".

Absurd blaning solar for state of Uk electric network and management.

I have my hypervolt charger trip out regularly, boiling the kettle gets enough voltage drop if I need to force a charge when its locked out. Its worst when the suns out and local solar is generating, but even at night when demand falls the supply regularly rises above 253V. Contacted the DNO and they sent people out to investigate. Thankfully when they turned up I was experiencing an overvoltage at that moment, and when they put their meter on my supply they said "oh, it is high isn't it, we don't even need to put a monitor on your supply. We'll have to tap down the transformer".... Several weeks later and I'm still waiting for them to do it.... At least they have admitted there is an issue. The electrician who fitted the charger was telling me overvoltage is going to be a big issue, a lot of jobs he goes to the mains supply is right on the upper allowable limit or above.

One of the benefits of a 3 phase supply as we have in Germany is that we can split the devices over the phases. The UK does have a rather strange setup. Earth rods at the premises are starting to appear in the UK, here they have been mandatory for decades. Same for RCDs, type AC have been verboten for yonks.

Thanks for this, as an end user understanding the challenges Electricians and the DNO face will help avoid ignorant questions.

Ah. You also watched Britain's electricity network programme where we have to import energy from France at 7.30pm when the whole nation puts the kettle on after East Enders. The ghost traffic jams episode was a good one too. Thanks for sharing. Nice hair! 😄

In my village in Wales, the mains voltage rarely goes below 250v. Most of the time it is 255 to 261v or more on some occasions. A large proportion of the homes including mine have solar panels. I complained to SPnetworks several times and they come round and test it. They just say the supply is within permitted limits and that it is everyone’s solar that is pushing it up. I’ve had several appliances suddenly fail recently which I’m convinced is due to over voltages. As more and more people have installed solar in the area, the power company has not reduced the voltage to prevent this increasing issue. I don’t have an EV but monitor my power usage etc with a Shelly device

Very good…and clear. Congratulations on explaining the issue to the layman

Thats a winner Gordon. Keep this as a sticky for all humanity.

Just charge both EVs at the same time if you have 2

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Thankyou for a really clear explanation 👍

Same setup as you - solar, battery and EVC on my outbuildings. Same problem with EVC resetting up to 6 times a day but so far no trips at night. DNO has been out but no problem found/accepted. I'm on underground supply in an urban area. The lowest voltage I ever see off the grid is well over 240v. Octopus often gives me 'unable to control your charge' but so far it has always charged overnight at some point or other. Good video - to highlight this big problem.

Hello , Tap changer. I asked the DNO to reduce the voltage as it was consistently too high. In the winter, and no sun, with everyone using power it was still pretty high. They altered the tapping on our transformer and all is now well. I think they have a legal obligation to provide the voltage in specification. This is also lower than it used to be because of Economic Community harmonization a few years ago. (Though they did fudge this a bit by clever tolerancing of the voltage.) We do have a lot more solar on our connection to the transformer now, but some of this is set ups that includes batteries so some of the solar generation goes there rather than onto the grid. Eddis and the like also help to reduce export a bit. KR Ray

Surely there should be a voltage limit that solar systems aren’t allowed to export above — 246V or something — to keep local grid in range

and yet smart devices with built in inverters can manage it to not feed back to the system. Keeping it all self contained to the home and capping out at 800W.