The problem with my nuclear when mixed with renewables is that they take too long to turn on and off (think 12-24h), so they are not great complement solar and wind.

They are also very expensive, and take years to build, and decades to recoup the investment. Renewables are a lot cheaper, and can be built straight away, making their investments a lot less risky. They are also evolving faster than nuclear, snd becoming cheaper.

They are, S of today the cheaper power source in most of planet. It is expected that in a couple of years they won’t just be the cheapest, but they will be so cheap it will make economic sense to dismantle other powers plants and build solar/wind+ battery than to keep gas running.

Get a larger battery.

By far the lion share if the savings come from internal usage. Export payments are 20% of so of electricity costs, so you want to be using what you generated.

I have a 5.4kW array, and a 8.8kWh battery. 15% of the battery has to be reserved, so actual capacity is lower.

We basically live off grid for 6-7 months, but winter production is so low (aprox 20% of summer ) that it’s hard to even fill up the battery.

But a larger battery would help for those spring and autumn months when some days are good, some are bad.

For reference, comercial installation have a 4:1 ratio of battery capacity to production. In my case that would be 20kWh! Or 5 days of average consumption.

One final thing to say is that our battery system is capped to 3kW. So even when full, if we ask more electricity than that at any point we would be importing.

What this means is that going gas free is harder, as some appliances (hob, kettle) consume a lot.

Very interesting. Thanks for sharing. Funny enough, the article mentions 54 billion of investment on the national grid is needed over the next 10 years, and hinkley point currently costs 31!

Also consider how much renewables that investment could buy; its not just 31billon of today money that will start to see some benefit 20 years after it was started.