After a couple of months waiting for the planning permission to go through, the installers have worked over the last week or so to get the solar PV panels up and running.
The whole set-up is just a bit larger than I had originally envisaged but it’s tucked away out the back and isn’t noticeable from the surrounding area. Who knows, maybe the chickens will be glad of the shade later in the year?
Finally everything was declared fully operational last Saturday and even the sun came out to celebrate for the commemorative photograph!
I now find myself regularly fighting the urge to check the generation meter every hour or two just to find out how much electricity has been produced. I’ll definitely keep an eye on the figures but I have to accept that the peak production obviously won’t be until later in the year!
Not so straightforward
There were one or two minor problems when digging the trench for the supply cable back to the house. It turns out that there are a few water distribution pipes buried under these paddocks which we knew nothing about.
These pipes don’t seem to be heading towards any of the existing field taps so we (and the installers) were a bit stumped what they were doing there.
They are definitely connected to our pumped spring water though! The tank nearly ran dry when they broke the pipes during digging but the relevant repairs were made fairly promptly
On the bright side, at least this was just the spring water supply and the result was simply that the tank was almost emptied.
I might have felt differently if it had been the metered mains water but for the moment we aren’t connecting to that and it’s only for emergencies.