energy & micro generation manageer

[solaro]

Anyone out there had any experience or knowledge of a piece of kit by a company called Cool Power, unit name EMMA.

The Emma monitors PV output, feeds into the house circuit, any spare after household demands is then fed into immersion heater circuit. This may only be say 1kw but it will not allow draw down from the grid unless programmed in.So whatever is seen as surplus from 0 to total output (up 3kw on most I/H) is used until stat. cuts out.

This allows maximum usage of generated PV. and minimises draw of dirty energy from grid.

Cost £1500 and as yet only about 70 out there so somewhat unproven tech.  

[ericw]

There is a thread somewhere in the forum describing a Home Brew version of this type of thing for less than 1/10 of that cost.
I believe 'Alan' posted it so he might be able to locate it.

[skyewright]

Anyone out there had any experience or knowledge of a piece of kit by a company called Cool Power, unit name EMMA.

Not practical experience, but one of the companies that is quoting on a PV installation suggested the device. When I took a look I felt that in our case at least it was not worthwhile. Some of the percentages mentioned on the web site make very big assumptions about the amount of energy being generated and the scope for using it in a dump load.

e.g. comments like "With the new UK Feed In Tariff EMMA increases the value of over half of the output of your micro-generator by more than 100% and in many cases by more than 300%. Typical return on your investment is 30%." and "If you don't use EMMA over 50% of the output from your micro-generator will be exported because of the mismatch between output (which is determined by nature) and demand (which is determined by you)." (both from this page.

How many people here are really exporting >50% of their micro-generation and have water heating needs that would absorb all that excess?

Certainly not us.

However your mileage may vary, as they say...

[skyewright]

And here's another comment from their website that came to mind but that I couldn't find earlier.

1. 40% of the average energy use in a domestic dwelling is hot water production

That is from this page.

Mmmmm. Seems like our household is distinctly non-average.  

[knighty]

I guess if you're paying 12p/kw for power, and exporting at 3p/kw

(ignoring losses) you could save yourself 9p/kw by using the power to heat water.... if your hot water is heated by electricity anyway....
(it'll be less if you have gas heating)

£1500 / 9p = 16,666

so you need to use 16,666kw that would have otherwise been exported to break even ?

even worse when you factor in losses etc...


doesn't really look worth it to me at £1500, maybe at £150, but not £1500

[Baz]

1500 extra will take a long time to pay off. Given that water could be heated at night at 5p of which 3p would be paid by the export payback you are only saving 2p per kwh. Say you need 10 kwh per day for water heating saving 20p per day your 1500 takes 7500 days to pay off. That's 20 years but the device will die after 10.

[skyewright]

There is a thread somewhere in the forum describing a Home Brew version of this type of thing for less than 1/10 of that cost.
I believe 'Alan' posted it so he might be able to locate it.

I think I found that here:
http://www.navitron.org.uk/forum/index.php/topic,10296.msg112147.html#msg112147

[guydewdney]

or this one

http://www.navitron.org.uk/forum/index.php/topic,9072.0.html

[roscoe]

Now if you could make it run in reverse.....

ie thermal excess heat into the grid then I'd be more interested

[solaro]

Thanks Skyewright,Iv,e followed the link to post by Alan March 2010 and it is exactly what I was looking for,problem is no electronic/electrical skills makes self build a no go.
Any suggestion where I could have one made up.
With PV booming I would have thought a device like this wouldbe very marketable.
When I first mentioned this many people though I was tring to use a PV system just to heat water they couldn,t seem to understand it was only using suplus PV instead of sending it to grid.
 

Ron

[Alan]

Apologises. For not responding to recent E mails / posts. I have only managed one day off this year. And not many days at week ends. ( Me sad person that seems to get preoccupied with work. ) 96 hour days not working. ( Generally Happy person though ) and Months go by ) Will get back to Gizmoid controller at some time in the future.
 
Regards

Alan