Had a few cold calls again like you do.Chap came to our house average roof facing South West.
The cost came to about £7000 which I think is a bit expensive.Panels are made in Switzerland good make and should last.Our Electric bill is about £37 a month and we could save if I believe the hype about £30 a month according to the chap and some money back on feed in tariffs.
This reminds me of double glazing so many different company's and different pricing.I wouldn't be paying more than £3500 to £4000 depending on quality.My misses says no no and I'm not in charge.
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>> we could save if I believe the hype about £30 a month according to the
>> chap and some money back on feed in tariffs.
Could take the best part of two decades to pay for itself. Do you feel lucky?
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I'm not bang up to date with pricing but this seems pretty expensive for 2016 but of course it depends how much they were proposing to put up, and how complex the installation is. There is a cap on the size of a domestic system and I thought I'd read recently that on average a system at that limit should be around the £5k mark, could be wrong though.
I paid a lot more a few years back but the higher subsidy took care of that). I can find some details on cost if you are interested.
There's also a site where you put in your geographic location and system details and it gives a quite accurate estimate of your output. photovoltaic-software.com/pvgis.php . That site is really reliable and is used by many serious PVers as their benchmark. I'd say the most common comment has been that their output has exceeded the prediction.
I think for most people the benefit is less about what they save on electricity bills and more about the government money.
Having solar power does seem to make people review their overall energy usage and seek savings. Maybe it's just people who are "that way inclined" but there are significant energy savings that most people can make without solar (simple stuff like only boil as much water as you need, turn lights off, replace ordinary lights - esp spotlights - with LED etc). My electricity usage was down by well over 30% in the early days.
EDIT Clk Sec says about 2 decades to pay for itself. I will have back the money I paid for it in about 7 years (down from the predicted 8 - 9 years at purchase time). The FIT payments are guaranteed, and indexed, for 25 years so I will have an annual income for a further 18 years, as well as savings on my electricity. There is a lot of debate on whether this is good economics but those who are saying it isn't are often comparing it to a compound 5% or higher interest, which is hard to find these days especially with no risk.
Last edited by: VxFan on Thu 18 Feb 16 at 12:56
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I looked into it several years ago and then the inverters had a life expectancy of around ten years, just about the break even point.
So just as you were starting to show a profit on your investment, you'd probably have to fork out for a new inverter.
I believe they now fit a mini inverter on each panel. Are they better?
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Am I right in thinking that the 'Government Money' referenced on this thread comes from the green levy on all customers' electricity bills?
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>>Am I right in thinking that the 'Government Money' referenced on this thread comes from the green levy on all customers' electricity bills?
Yes - it's got heehaw to do with HM Exchequer and comes from everyone's energy bills.
Last edited by: Lygonos on Fri 19 Feb 16 at 00:42
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Re inverters - yeah it is said that an inverter probably won#'t last 10 years, that'll be about half a year's money for me to replace. Funny really, cost the reason i've not had a condesning boiler fitted on my GCH is that the boilers only have a 10 year life expectancy...
The per-panel inverters are not really to replace a single inverter. I couldn't say if they are more efficient, but they are often used where there is partial shading of the array. My panels have no shading but are in two separate strings. If I had a tre which cast a shadow then the efficiency of the whole string is compromised, by quite a bit. So by having the inverter on each panel the impact of shading is considerably lessened.
btw while we are talking panels - if you are thinking of getting them, do look into Immersun or similar. These devices harvest your unused power (i.e. when you are generating more than you are using) and divert the power away from the grid to a local "store" - which is nearly always an immersion heater (batteries being too expensive and space-consuming). This is financially efficient as one part of the government payment is for the amount you feed into the grid - but as there is no means yet to measure this they pay you at the rate of half of your total generation. (The other part of the payment is, for me, the lucrative part and is per unit generated).
If I'm sounding like an expert, do bear in mind that I'm not really, I just read a lot about these things on another forum and some of it sticks!!
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It may perhaps be a good investment in terms of generating an income stream, but what have you got left at the end of it? An out of date set of ailing panels and equipment now due for replacement.
Where is your £7,000? It's not sitting safely in an ISA or premium bonds - you appear to have lost your capital?
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Mine were £10.5k when I got them and the money is being drip-fed back to me. I'm not entirely convinced by some of the wilder claims about how much you make from them but it will certainly pay me more than they will cost over the 25 year period, by quite a margin, and it is a fairly safe investment (and suited me at the time).
Your question prompted me to look at the payments I've received. Three whole years exactly and I have been paid £5339.93. Plus some small saving on my electricity bill (as I said earlier it's running around 30% lower but hard to establish how much is due to panels and how much due to being more energy conscious.)
I don't much care what I've got left at the end, they will probably outlast me :-) It's no worse than car ownership as far as depreciation goes...
However I can feel smug about my greenness :-)
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Thanks for the comments.I still like the idea maybe a system in the future where you are not tied to the main grit.Any powercut which we have here a few times a year and no electricity.
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Solar panels (more specifically the inverter) need mains power... no help in a power cut at the moment!!
Last edited by: smokie on Thu 18 Feb 16 at 15:54
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Direction of your roof is important to gain the maximum benefit. Ideally south facing perhaps with a margin east and west to maximise the light.
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Our roof is facing south with a margin to the west.Never mind, we changed energy provider today away from British Gas to Scottish Power.The boss has sorted it.
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I should have said earlier then - the moneysaving website is negotiating another deal for it's members. I jumped on the one last Nov and it is genuinely saving me hundreds, yet my supplier didn't change.
www.moneysavingexpert.com/cheapenergyclub
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The thing is Cliff how many people have savings in the bank not generating money .Solar panels do.None of us with any savings are getting hardly anything for our money.
People who have had the panels fitted for free,the roof rented out to the company are saving on electricity bills.Maybe the panels don't look nice but it did make sense to have the panels on their roof.
This scheme is now finished due to the lower payments into the grid.Not enough profit for the solar companies and now the hard sell.Like we used to have with double glazing that many people where fitting them.
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Rent a roof schemes were only for the seriously gullible and I understand there can be quite considerable difficulties with ownership and value etc if the property changes hands. The schemes never earned the roof owners much, just a teensy weensy bit off their electricity bills. The companies jumping on the bandwagon to exploit the government payments was one of the contributory factors to the lower benefits for genuine solar panel owners.
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>> The thing is Cliff how many people have savings in the bank not generating money
>> .Solar panels do.None of us with any savings are getting hardly anything for our money.
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No, but at least we still have the original savings. If you spend £7,000 on solar panels, at the end of their life you have nothing. It's like holding premium bonds for 10 years and then having the capital confiscated.
Unless of course you put aside £700 each year from your savings on electricity to replenish your pot when the panels wear out. Do people take that into account?
Obviously if you never own the panels in the first place and merely rent out your roof to someone else it's different. But there have been recent warnings about that. Who wants to buy a house with a sitting tenant on the roof?
What happens when the contract ends but the renter has gone into liquidation? Who removes the scrap metal from your roof and repairs the holes in the slates?
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I'm sure you are using some logic but I don't see it.
My panels cost me £10.5k, out of my savings.
For year three I'm getting back about £1k. So assume £1k per year of the 25 year guaranteed period (which is conservative as it rises each year with inflation) - that's £25k I have. Plus I've saved a hundred or so in electricity per year (maybe more..)
Plus the electricity savings go on and on, assuming the panels are still producing.
Minus any maintenance costs, which should be low but say they reach £3k.
So I have a net gain of somewhere around £12k. Which may not equate to 5% pa but I wasn't getting that anyway... (In my case it will provide a nice little top up on my pension earnings - by the time the 25 years is up I will be in my early 80s )
How does it differ from owning any consumer product, like a car, a computer or some nice shoes? Only because you actually make money along the way.
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I've never even considered solar panels because I think you need to be in the same property for a few years, ten maybe, to make it worthwhile. Obviously depends on many other factors...electric prices, electric consumption in the household, sufficient solar energy ( not much of that where I live in Ribblesdale). Several elderly neighbours have had panels fitted, and when you're in your 70s I'm surprised the sums add up.
My monthly DD with Ovo for gas & electric has now been reduced to £38, but my stove heats a lot of the house. And I use my local pubs electricity most evenings, helping to spread my diminishing financial resources within the community. Makes me quite warm inside that does...
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The sums can be made to look more attractive than they probably are, or at least that was true in the earlier days when the subsidies were higher (but so was the installation cost). Especially true to someone who has adequate savings which aren't earning them much.
You are right that you are in for the long haul, I wouldn't have had them if I thought I'd be moving house within the timeframe.
Neat idea to use the leccy at your local every night. Do you take the fridge freezer with you? :-)
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Solar Panels again - Clk Sec
