Interesting topic this one. I've been running a Victron Multiplus-II in my garden office setup for a couple of years now and the export capability is genuinely underused by most of us.
The real potential here isn't just individual installs — it's what happens when you aggregate them. Virtual power plants are already a thing in Germany and Australia, and we're crawling towards it here in the UK. Octopus Energy's grid services stuff is probably the closest we've got domestically right now.
My setup is modest — 4kWp of panels feeding a 15kWh Fogstar Drift lithium bank — but even that could theoretically be dispatching power during peak demand if I had the right DNO agreement and export tariff in place. The problem is the bureaucracy around G98/G99 notifications and the absolute lottery of getting your DNO to play ball within a reasonable timeframe.
What's frustrating is the tech is there. Victron's ESS configuration can handle time-of-use optimisation, sell excess, charge from grid when it's cheap — the whole lot. It's the regulatory and grid infrastructure side holding everything back.
Anyone here actually gone through the process of setting up smart export and found a DNO that wasn't a complete nightmare to deal with? Curious whether Scottish Power Networks is any better than the horror stories I keep hearing about certain others.
Also worth discussing — does battery chemistry matter for grid services? LFP discharge curves are pretty flat which is great, but response times for frequency response markets might favour different tech. Thoughts?
