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Electrical

Connecting solar inverter to CU

Anonymous user 03/03/2024 - 3.46 PM

I’ve added 3x 120W solar panels to my garage roof, a 30A PWM charge controller, 12.8V 50Ah battery and a 600w 12VDC-220VAC Inverter. All works great. Garage already has mains power with a CU. Is it feasible to get an electrician to install the power from the batter/inverter into the garage CU? Now practically everything in the garage is plugged into an 8-plug extension running from the battery/inverter, not ideal but works. I’d also like the CU fed garage LED strip light and outside LED light to also have power from the solar/battery if that’s available. I thought some form of switch so that I can use only solar whenever possible and switch to mains when that’s exhausted. Does such a switch exist? Just thought I’d ask here before taking this further as I might be better staying as I am. Note - my house already has 4 rubbish 10 year old panels on the roof - so dual supply labels and so on are already in place if this makes any difference. Thanks!

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2 Answers

StrangLX

Rating: 5 out of 5

Broadstairs

Sounds like you have a little inverter that’s designed for leisure use, I doubt it would meet requirements for feed in inverters as these tend to be around 4KW. Installation of solar feed in is a notifiable job so not something that can be approached in the way you’re suggesting. You’d need a specialist to design supply and fit the entire system from scratch.

Answered14 June 2023

Newcroft Electrics

No reviews yet

Swindon

Most things cabn be done but at a cost. From your description you only have a very small 50 A/hour battery and 600w inverter. There are a lot of rules involved in connecting inverters to existing electrical systems. As a start the inverter has to be designed for this application and then various other things have to be done, for example it has to be ensured that the inverter can't make the incoming supply live when it has been shut down and there also has to be an acceptable earth connection in place at all times. I would guess it's not financially viable to achieve this, if it's important to you go out and buy a proper solar system designed for the application

Answered14 June 2023