We are looking to add another AIO. Does anyone have experience of multiple AIO installs since they became available?
Does the battery just look like a single 27kwh battery but with the same charge/discharge rates?
Any pointers to how multiple AIOs work (documentation, empirical knowledge etc) is much appreciated.
From another forum rather than experience:
Yes if fitted correctly (parallel) it looks like a singe 27.
Technically you could export to the grid at 12kWH but that is subject to getting the ‘upgrade’ approved. Internally you have 12 to use at will with short (30 sec) of 15.
I’ll be interested to see what you get quoted: my second AIO quote was so high I assumed the original installer didn’t want the job.
Thanks for the feedback. My interest is more with the charge rate and from what you are saying, that should be 12kw. We have 10.5kw of solar and I would rather use all of it to charge the batteries than export. Also, on the agile tariff, we get quite a few negative rate periods (the Highlands - we have so much RE, that the rates go very low as soon as it is a windy day).
I am still in extensive (and long running) discussion with the DNO. Even though we have a 5kw export permission, the network is constantly running at (average) 250v and trips the solar as soon as the grid goes above 253v (very often). Exporting just exacerbates the voltage issue.
Regarding the install cost, I do not see that it will be more than the original AIO. All the hard stuff has been done and it should just be a case of adding the second AIO and plugging it into the gateway. Our installer is quite responsive even though they are 90 odd miles away.
It should be about £6k for an additional one. As you say, just power connection to the original gateway, a network connection, either cable or WiFi to the internet. Then 2 network connections from the original AiO. One from Gateway out to Gateway in. The other from Parallel out to Parallel in.
They’re amazing. 12kW charge/discharge. Covers pretty much anything.
Thank you for the excellent feedback. Knowing it is 12kw in/out is especially helpful.
Might need some RCBOs in the gateway?
Is there enough room for an extra breaker?
I think that’s how they get around it from memory?
We had an additional AiO added in August this year.
Cost wise it was cheaper for the kit than the original as you don’t need the gateway.
Only change to install was to change the AC isolator to a twin RCBO and obviously the additional cabling to the Gateway and Cat5 to the router. Took a few hours.
The only issues we’ve had has been that if you allow the full charge amount you come perilously close to your main fuse rating if you then run anything else major on your system. This was causing problems with the system and we now only charge at 50% of capacity, which is fine for us on IoG.
We had an issue with one or another of the RCBOs tripping when the system went into island mode which turned out to be earth leakage rates being too high for individual RCBOs as opposed to being spread over many in the consumer unit. Swapped the RCBOs for 100mA ones solved the problem. Not quite sure why Giv want RCBOs to isolate the AiOs from Gateway, but that’s what they told the installer.
Once installed the system looks as if it just has one battery on the App and Portal and you do all the settings through the Gateway, not the AiO. You also have to get old data through the cloud when using the App as Local view is not available at the moment.
Hope that help?
Thank you very much for the information. Our meter is rated 100A so I would hope that the 12kW would not be an issue (we have definitely pulled a lot more than that during negative rate sessions on Octopus Agile*). Also, due to a slightly longer run to the grid supply, we have a doubled up supply cable to the house.
The main benefit will be being able to dump all of our solar generation into the battery without having to resort to exporting or finding another dump (hot water, car etc).
Considering switching over to IOG.