Smart Home Project: Huf Haus

Set on a hill top rural location at the end of an overhead power line circuit, the owners of this new Huf Haus suffer from frequent power cuts. These are normally caused by falling branches but are also sometimes due to planned maintenance works.

Fed up with the disruption (the longest outage lasted 36 hours) the owner reached out to Surrey Smarthome for the installation of a Home Battery.

The house is heated by a SmartGrid ready Air Source Heat Pump and the owner also has an EV charge point so, with the addition of a home battery, the owners will be well positioned for ‘time of use’ electricity tariffs.

The main objectives were:

• Protection against planned and un planned power cuts.
• Taking advantage of his dual EV electricity tariff to enable the battery to pay for itself over time.

Without any solar panels the plan was to install a home battery that would charge off the grid during the cheaper nighttime rate, then power the house during the day when electricity is at the higher rate whilst also leaving some in reserve should an unplanned power cut occur.

When SSEN gives notification of planned outages or the Met Office issues a storm warning this could be scheduled into the battery control app to make sure the battery is at 100% if or when the outage starts.

We decided upon a 13.5KWH Give Energy ‘All In One’ battery with a 6kw power rating and a ‘Give Gateway’.

By looking at historical usage data we could work out how many days in each year where the battery could be used at its full potential, and therefore what the potential savings over time could be. 

For this case the forecasted payback for the installation would be 7 years. 

It is worth noting that this payback time would be less for a property with an existing PV array.