At the moment our water heater operates on a day/night switch so that it is powered up only in HC mode.
We are due to have solar panels installed sometime soon. What do we have todo to ensure that we heat our water by solar whenever possible?
TIA - from a survive.france virgin
Hello!
We have the same - PV cellls on the roof but no day/night timer.
If you can persuade the Solar Cell fitters to remove the timer (minuteur) and fit a correctly rated contacteur in lieu - thats the theory but depends on your set up. The Solar Cell fitters will be doing work connect the panel feed to you main consumer board in anycase so try your luck with them first and see if they can do the job for youā¦OR shoot them a message and tell them you want rid of the minuteur.
Other than that, and unless you are savvy with the panel and how it works, you will need to get an electrician in to remove the timer.
Iām afraid I canāt comment on your question @Thefoolonthehill since we arenāt in your situation, but quite a few on Survive France are.
I just wanted to say āWelcome to Survive Franceā! We have quite a lot of knowledgeable people on here and are, in the main, a pretty friendly bunch.
The installers will surely explain this?
You need something like the items linked to below.
However, a load diverter relies on seeing resistive loads so you need to ensure that your water heater has a mechanical thermostat & no fancy electronics. Having said that there are workarounds to use a chauffe eau with electronic controls.
Your HC switching can be stopped by turning off the control circuit, which should be a 2A breaker located alongside your HC/HP contactor. In the absence of the circuit being closed at the meter during the HC period you can then force the chauffe eau to āIā & it will stay on 24/7.
However, if you end up using a diverter then you need to wire it properly.
Iām an electrician & I run solar PV & an Eddi, so I know about this stuff.
Your solar panels - are they PV or are they dedicated to heating your water onlyā¦?
PV
I did my best to ask the installers but
They speak no English and my French goes a bit beyond Ā« the pen of my aunt Ā» but not far on technical stuff and as we all know, you only get the right answer if you ask the right questions
We will switch the heater to Ā« on all the time Ā» and monitor carefully via edf et moi and the new app. I have the name of a trusty electrician from a neighbour - plan B.
Thank you for your prompt replies. When we have a solution I promise to post, there may be others in the dame boat.
Wine time
I think that the chauffe eau will only stay at position 1 (on) until the start of the next HC/HP cycle and then the system will revert to auto.
Thanks, I suspected that or similar cherchez lāĆ©lectricien I think
TTFN
That is true if the control circuit is energised. However, in my exchange with the OP I was talking about how to prevent that (i.e. making it run 24/7) by switching off the 2A breaker that protects that circuit.
If you read the whole paragraph that I wrote it makes more senseā¦
I can only echo what @Badger says about the diverter. We have an Elios4you Power Reducer which diverts surplus solar energy, which otherwise would be fed i to the grid, into the hot water tank. Other products are available. For us itās brilliant. We calculated a few weeks ago that we only have to use grid electricity to heat our water for about 2 to 3 weeks per year.