Anyone got solar panels on their house?

[Don Barzini]

So obviously there's been loads in the news about energy price rises etc.

I live in a large detached house, myself, the wife and three kids. Last quarter, my gas and electricity bill was around £1000. So lets assume that going forward I'll be paying around £4000 a year (Realise that two quarters of the year are supposedly warmer so not as much heating etc, but prices set to rise, so just for purposes of rough calculations)

I've known a couple of people in the past have solar panels on the roof of their house and they've told me they generate more electricity than they use, so they sell the excess back to the energy companies.

So lets assume I install solar panels and effectively heat and power my house for free (or minimal cost).

Obviously there's an outlay of cash to get the system installed. Anyone know how much? I have a figure of twenty grand in my head. Is that accurate...?

So it could pay for itself in around five years. I'm helping the environment in the process. Surely it's a no brainer....?

Or is my logic flawed? Disclaimer - I know nothing about solar panels, so I'm very happy to be enlightened (pardon the pun).

Anyone know more about it than they very little that I do?!

 

[GB72]

Just so as you know, the Feed in Tarriff that people were paid for excess electricity is pretty much non existant now. Many now look at a system with batteries to store the excess electricity but seems logical rather than sell the excess for a pittance and buy it back for a premium if you use more than you create.

 

[Tashyboy]

I had panels and it makes £2K a year. You will get nowhere near that now. It is a minefield now re solar, batteries etc. I have scratched the surface re having batteries in. If that happens I will also have a car charger put in as well.

 

[chico]

Interested in this we are buying a new house that will have solar panels. They have told this you get the benefit during the day so assume no batteries.
Hopefully will save us some money as the rise in fuel costs is actually frightening now.

 

[andycap]

we have a solar panel system on our roof with battery storage , a previous owner had it installed just before the FIT ended . I think the whole system cost around 10K .We have not had very much back from it but our bills to date have been low , we pay monthly and our biggest bill in winter was £50 . I think we had a month or two last summer where we were slightly in credit . Last months bill was £19 .
I doubt its something i would have had installed purely because of the initial outlay and the prospect that we would not live in the house long enough to get the long term benefit , assuming that it does not put much value on the property it would be future owners that would benefit , as we are .Its also concerned me that with advances in technoligy and efficiency we could end up with an outdated system in a few years .But at present we are very happy to have it

 

[cliveb]

The old FIT scheme was a money spinner, but it's no longer in operation.
The export price for electricity is peanuts, so not worth thinking about.
In other words, the only way solar makes sense nowadays is if you can use all the generated electricity for yourself to save on energy bills.

Problem is that the time when solar panels generate lots of power is precisely the time you typically don't need it (ie. daytime in the summer).
So the only way it makes sense is to also have some way of storing the power for use at other times.
But batteries aren't cheap and don't last forever.
For example, a Tesla Powerwall could cost about £8000 and be warrantied for about 40MWh.
So you're basically paying 20p per kWh to store the electricity you generate.

What's more, using batteries only gives you short term storage - basically day-to-day.
You need to be able to store very large amounts of energy long term, so that the stuff you generate in summer can be saved and used months later in winter.
As far as I'm aware, there's no viable domestic system that will do this.

I did start thinking about wind turbines instead of solar panels. It's windy all year, especially in the winter, and at night. This is a much better fit to domestic requirements.
But wind turbines are more expensive than solar panels, need a fair bit of maintenance, can be noisy, and require planning permission.

All in all, being off grid and it making economic sense is rather difficult here in the UK.

 

[jim8flog]

I would have thought in this day and age the biggest saver is going to be in heat generation and saving on the gas bill rather than the electric . It is the gas charges that are going up massively rather than the electric.

 

[PJ87]

I would have thought in this day and age the biggest saver is going to be in heat generation and saving on the gas bill rather than the electric . It is the gas charges that are going up massively rather than the electric.

Not sure that's entirely true.

My gas has gone from 2.5p yes to 9p by fixing it so yes the bill is high but heating water is small fry ...it's the winter that costs

Electric costs for me are stable but most plans have gone from 14p to 35p ... And you use electric every day

 

[Brads]

I have solar thermal.
Brilliant. Heats the water up lovely and saves a fair bit in gas.

 

[GreiginFife]

I've just recently had a quote and site survey done for solar panels. Maximum we can fit is 16 panels, the ones quoted were 375W do the array is 6kW and that's more than enough for our needs. The system was quoted with 5.6kW battery (2 x 2.8kW) and the total cost including install was £10k. The prices have come down a fair bit from the days of £20k (unless you want a really big system.)

Our main goal is to minimise our reliance on supplier energy rather than replace it completely. If we could reduce bills by 80% then that would be a win for us.

I'm building a garden room at the moment too and thinking of installing a solar roof to make it self powered, like an "eco-hub"