Thanks for posting those interesting replies Steve, it's great to get feedback from actual users, thanks. To complete the picture of your setup could you maybe give feedback on you system for operating in say January, viz:
1 Do you heat all 5 bedrooms.
2 What temperature do you consider personally to be comfortable, 19, 20, 21 everyone is different.
3 Do you operate a zoned heating system and if so is there any heating inertia, I note it is a traditional wet system.
4 How effective is your solar in January.
5 Do you think a car with V2H feeding your home battery would be complimentary to your winter heating.
6 Do you have a backup system installed for power cuts.
Sorry for all the questions but they would give a more complete "worst case" for a winter month, thanks.
1. No, very rarely, even when we have the kids at home (and they're not kids!). It is a zoned heating system - since we got the batteries, I've found it more efficient to simply heat the zones we want heated all the time, rather than timing them on and off as we used to. The pump is sized to heat the whole house though and to be honest is probably over-sized for what we use it for.
2. Comfortable temperature would be around 20-21C - I don't find the need to wear a jumper around the house, although obviously my wife does!
3. Solar is not effective in January. It starts to become more effective from early March and from mid-March on a good sunny day it is very helpful. From April, given sunshine, we could be grid-independent, if we don't need much heating.
4. I'm not sure about a car with V2H - it'll be interesting to see how that develops - the Tesla M3 has a 74kWh battery which would keep us going for over 2 days, but not sure I'd want to relinquish that much control.
6. (sorry, numbering went wrong somewhere) - no backup system for power cuts - we've got a wood burner - we live very close to a town centre and on the very rare occasions we have power cuts, they don't last long. It is possible to set the battery inverter up to provide a backup power supply though, if you wanted to.