4KW Solar Panels & Battery Storage

Full Installation Walkthrough

This installation holds a special place for us because it is located right here in Yarm, our home town and the base of ALPS Electrical. The property is a well-maintained semi-detached house with a south-east facing roof that was ideal for a compact but highly effective solar installation. The homeowner had been considering solar for some time and decided to proceed after seeing our work on a neighbours property earlier in the year.

The system design centred around eight JA Solar 500W panels, which represent the latest generation of high-wattage residential modules. At 500 watts per panel, these are among the most powerful panels currently available for domestic installations, and using them allowed us to achieve a 4KW system with just eight panels rather than the ten or twelve that would have been required with lower-wattage alternatives. This is particularly advantageous on a semi-detached property where roof space is more limited.

The panels were installed on the south-east facing front roof, which provides excellent solar exposure from early morning through to early afternoon. While a due-south orientation is theoretically optimal, a south-east facing roof actually has practical advantages for many households because it brings the peak generation period earlier in the day, aligning well with morning consumption patterns such as running the washing machine, dishwasher or charging an electric vehicle before the afternoon.

Our installation team erected the scaffold and completed the entire roof installation in a single day. The property has concrete interlocking tiles in good condition, and the mounting system was installed using our standard hook, rail and clamp methodology with each fixing point sealed against weather ingress. The eight panels were arranged in a two-row configuration with four panels in each row, creating a neat, symmetrical appearance that complements the roofline of the house.

The FOX 3.7KW hybrid inverter was installed in the under-stairs cupboard, which provided a convenient and discreet location with good access to the consumer unit on the opposite wall. The 3.7KW rating is well-matched to the 4KW panel array, as the inverter does not need to match the peak panel output exactly since real-world conditions rarely produce simultaneous peak output from every panel.

The 10kWh Fox battery was mounted on the garage wall, with an SWA cable connecting it to the inverter in the house. Ten kilowatt-hours is a generous amount of storage for a 4KW system, providing the capacity to store virtually all of the surplus solar generation on even the sunniest days. This means the homeowner can capture energy during the brightest hours and deploy it during the evening when the family is home and electricity consumption is at its highest.

We configured the system to work with the homeowners Octopus Flux tariff, which offers different import and export rates at different times of day. The Fox inverter was programmed to charge the battery from cheap off-peak grid electricity between 2am and 5am, then discharge during the peak-rate period from 4pm to 7pm when the saved energy is most valuable. During the day, solar generation takes priority for both direct household consumption and battery charging, with any surplus exported to the grid at the Flux export rate.

The consumer unit was already a relatively modern unit with adequate spare ways for the solar and battery circuits, so a full replacement was not required. We added the necessary MCBs and an SPD for the solar input, installed the generation meter, and fitted the CT clamp on the main supply cable so the Fox system could monitor whole-house energy flow in real time.

Testing and commissioning was completed on the same day as the installation, with all circuits tested to BS 7671 standards and the system registered on the Fox Cloud monitoring platform. The MCS certificate was generated and filed, the DNO was notified of the new generator connection, and the Smart Export Guarantee registration was submitted.

The estimated annual generation for this 4KW south-east facing system is approximately 3,400kWh. Combined with the 10kWh battery and the intelligent tariff optimisation, the homeowner stands to save a substantial amount on their annual electricity bills. For a semi-detached property in Yarm, this system represents outstanding value and demonstrates that solar and battery storage is not just for large detached houses with expansive roofs.

We are always happy to install in our local area, and this project was completed just a few minutes from our office. If you live in Yarm or the surrounding Teesside area and would like to discuss a similar installation for your property, we would be delighted to arrange a free site survey and provide a no-obligation quote.