Welcome to the first entry of our blog!
After a few years of discussing how we wanted to proceed, we are finally getting around starting the project.
Last month we installed 30 solar panels and 27 KWh of battery as a source of renewable energy. In this blog we will describe the steps we take, and how the system performs. We will also describe the tools we are using to readout and control the elements of our system
Above is a shot of some of the monitoring of the performance of the system which our Home Assistant setup provides.
The dashed line is the expected production which is forecast by Solcast (https://solcast.com) and brought into Home Assistant through a HACS integration. I’ll add some entries about how this is setup in the coming days.
First steps
This first entry is just a placeholder to mark the start of our journey. We were forced to start planning when our 30 year old ducted gas heating system died at the end of last winter. We had a few months to plan what our goals were, and what we wanted to install.
The first job was to install solar panels and a battery. This took place in March 2026. We wanted to understand the size and capability of this system and move to renewables, but also this made sense in terms of the order of the work we need to do to install everything. There is a blog entry on sizing the solar system (Solar system size) giving some background on our choice.
Still to come
The next steps are improving the insulation in the ceiling. We will then be installing a reverse cycle forced air system for heating and cooling. This system will be zoned, and we will be learning how to operate it to get best performance and comfort.
After the HVAC, we will install a heat pump hot water system, and the final piece of the works will be replacing the gas hobs in the kitchen.
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