Solar panels , would you ?

Got our bill today and we paid £7 for the last month, electricity and gas. Mostly standing charges and gas.
This has been helped also by gaining £0.01 in one of the 2 free electricity sessions ;-)
 
I’m moving soon and plan to get solar panels, battery and ev charger.
I’ve looked at octopus to get a rough idea of price of installation.
Seems pretty reasonable. I have looked elsewhere but can’t seem to get an idea online anywhere else without getting too deep in details as I don’t want the seller getting junk mail!

When I do move in I intend to get quotes. Is it better to get a big company or better to go local? If local how do you find a supplier to trust.

Also can anyone give advice on what to make sure I don’t agree to something that I will regret later
 
Ross61 said:
I’m moving soon and plan to get solar panels, battery and ev charger.
I’ve looked at octopus to get a rough idea of price of installation.
Seems pretty reasonable. I have looked elsewhere but can’t seem to get an idea online anywhere else without getting too deep in details as I don’t want the seller getting junk mail!

When I do move in I intend to get quotes. Is it better to get a big company or better to go local? If local how do you find a supplier to trust.

Also can anyone give advice on what to make sure I don’t agree to something that I will regret later
Click to expand...

If you see a house with solar in the area you’re moving to, go knock on their door.
 
larmen said:
I stumbled across this calculator, one that actually gives me numbers before harvesting my data: https://heatable.co.uk/solar/quote
Do you experienced people think this numbers are 'reasonable and realistic'?

Depending on my drawing and selected roof pitch I am supposed to get 7 or 8 of their panels onto the roof, and that costs me either 6k for a 2.9kW 7 panel option or 6.5k for the 8 panel 3.4kW option.
That's supposed to be all in. (well, they don't mention bird protection).


For batteries I like the idea of the new givenergy all in one system which costs about 6k excluding vat for 13.5 kWh.


Just taking this as a starter for research.
Click to expand...
Bumping it up for the link which allows skipping entering contact information
 
Ross61 said:
I’m moving soon and plan to get solar panels, battery and ev charger.
I’ve looked at octopus to get a rough idea of price of installation.
Seems pretty reasonable. I have looked elsewhere but can’t seem to get an idea online anywhere else without getting too deep in details as I don’t want the seller getting junk mail!

When I do move in I intend to get quotes. Is it better to get a big company or better to go local? If local how do you find a supplier to trust.

Also can anyone give advice on what to make sure I don’t agree to something that I will regret later
Click to expand...
I bumped my old reasearch up for you. Take the numbers with care and imagine a panel less than the tool says
 
Ross61 said:
I’m moving soon and plan to get solar panels, battery and ev charger.
I’ve looked at octopus to get a rough idea of price of installation.
Seems pretty reasonable. I have looked elsewhere but can’t seem to get an idea online anywhere else without getting too deep in details as I don’t want the seller getting junk mail!

When I do move in I intend to get quotes. Is it better to get a big company or better to go local? If local how do you find a supplier to trust.

Also can anyone give advice on what to make sure I don’t agree to something that I will regret later
Click to expand...
Be very careful about your calculations. Bare in mind that those times when panels generate the most output, you won't be able to use it or store it all. You will always end up exporting some energy. And in the winter you will have to import nearly all your needs. As a rule of thumb, without a battery I export about 65-70% of my generation.

In my particular situation (low usage, no EV), the panels make sense, but batteries do not. But only because the export rate I get is decent. If I added a battery for ~£5k, it would only save an extra £100 or so per year.

Your situation may be different. It might be that having a battery but no panels works better, if you can charge up overnight at low cost and then run the house for the whole day from that.
 
Number 1 is to get an installer who is MSC certified. No MSC, no feed in tariffs.

Feed in is looking to get worse each year, so exporting is worth less than self usage. Especially if you have a normal domestic usage profile of someone who is working away from home during the day.

This means home storage is likely beneficial. But an installer will go through the calculation with you. If not, then they aren’t going to be your installer.

We have a smallish battery, 5 kWh with 85% usable. On Flux we fill up ‘cheap’ at night and it takes us through the morning until generation. Then when I know I need energy (Monday & Tuesday) and there wasn’t solar to keep us topped up then I refill from 3pm to 4pm, that takes us past the expensive window.
I would like more kWh but it is getting less profitable the more I get into fringe usage.

Some systems have a home backup in case of grid failure, so you can still run the house of solar or battery when your neighbours are dark. We don’t have it, and we had one power outage since living here for 7 years.
But if you live rural you might have more and it might be beneficial as well. Like the Tesla gateway, but other suppliers are also available now.


My ideal system would be as much solar as the roof can hold, a 9kwh battery and a gateway. From that we compromised the battery size as the savings above 5kwh are marginal and the gateway as cost were high then and usage unlikely.

Don’t try and get every kWh and penny saving out of it. Try and get a system that works well for you and takes the bulk of the bill. If you want a tea and need to import for a minute that isn’t the end of the world. As you aren’t going to run the kettle for hours on end or microwaving food all lunch time.

And any system gives you access to more tariffs then the standard tariff.
 
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larmen said:
Number 1 is to get an installer who is MSC certified. No MSC, no feed in tariffs.

Feed in is looking to get worse each year, so exporting is worth less than self usage. Especially if you have a normal domestic usage profile of someone who is working away from home during the day.

This means home storage is likely beneficial. But an installer will go through the calculation with you. If not, then they aren’t going to be your installer.

We have a smallish battery, 5 kWh with 85% usable. On Flux we fill up ‘cheap’ at night and it takes us through the morning until generation. Then when I know I need energy (Monday & Tuesday) and there wasn’t solar to keep us topped up then I refill from 3pm to 4pm, that takes us past the expensive window.
I would like more kWh but it is getting less profitable the more I get into fringe usage.

Some systems have a home backup in case of grid failure, so you can still run the house of solar or battery when your neighbours are dark. We don’t have it, and we had one power outage since living here for 7 years.
But if you live rural you might have more and it might be beneficial as well. Like the Tesla gateway, but other suppliers are also available now.


My ideal system would be as much solar as the roof can hold, a 9kwh battery and a gateway. From that we compromised the battery size as the savings above 5kwh are marginal and the gateway as cost were high then and usage unlikely.

Don’t try and get every kWh and penny saving out of it. Try and get a system that works well for you and takes the bulk of the bill. If you want a tea and need to import for a minute that isn’t the end of the world. As you aren’t going to run the kettle for hours on end or microwaving food all lunch time.

And any system gives you access to more tariffs then the standard tariff.
Click to expand...
thanks for the replies.
We are high usage (4400kwh) and neither of us work. We will have a fairly large roof which I estimate we might be able to get up to 14 panels on. We will also have a garage with a sloping roof and possibly get another 6 panels on.
I’m not saying I will get that many panels, but the option is there.
Our goal is to neutralise our electric bill as much as possible but exporting is a bonus.
 
Once you put scaffold on one side of the house you fill that roof up as much as you can. The cost is not in the panels.
You might need a bigger inverter then which needs permission rather than just registration (98 v. 99), but that’s the installers job to sort out.

3.6kwh are the small inverters (back then) and that’s because they are under that limit. On 400w panels you get ~9 with out clipping, but a bit of clipping isn’t a bad thing as you get more on lower output times .
 
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