I've noticed there seems to be a limit of sixteen panels around here. Most properties seem to have a maximum of sixteen even if there's more space.
I was around the Bristol area for a few days ago and noticed down there it was fourteen.
I'm guessing it's something to do with inverter capacity. Can anyone enlighten us?
As an aside, an acquaintance has just has some fitted on the basis that the feed-in tariff won't change. He's convinced the case is cut and dried. I can't convince him despite today's DT: tinyurl.com/7z3upod
He can be gullible when it comes to salesmen!
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Domestic systems are limited to 4kwh output maximum. The output of 16 panels will take you up to that limit
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Certainly you can't get the higher payment tariff for more than 4kW.
A pal was trying to beat the 15th December deadline to get his installed, and had 16 panels planned. The panels couldn't be supplied in time so an alternative was used, which had slightly lower output per panel, and he ended up with 18.
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Give it five or ten years and one panel half the size and a quarter of the cost of the current ones will do the same job, making the current sixteen panel outfits as attractive a feature as the Duckworth's stone cladding.
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Those things truly are hideous. House near me with nicely aged tile roof now covered in ugly black glass. Might save a few quid on the electricity but probably knocked a lot more off the house price. If I was buying such a house I would wan the price reduced by the cost of removal of the wretched things. The scheme is subsidised vandalism
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Certainly subsidised as it is paid for by addition to electricity bills generally.
I know three, all fairly well off, people who have them. They all agree that the effect of the scheme has been to transfer money from the pockets of people who can't afford them, or can't fit them for some other reason, to the pockets of those who are generally wealthier to start with.
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...They all agree that the effect of the scheme has been to transfer money from the pockets of people who can't afford them, or can't fit them for some other reason, to the pockets of those who are generally wealthier to start with...
My middle brother says the same thing.
He has much-reduced energy bills and about £1,250 a year from his panels, which cost him £12,000.
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>> Certainly subsidised as it is paid for by addition to electricity bills generally. >>
That means the people getting the subsidy are also paying a small proportion to their own subsidy.
I wonder if all consumers
1. could afford the capital, or afford to borrow the capital,
2. had properties that were suitable
and assume that then all installed the panels.
You then would be subsidising your own panels to a large extent (depending on how much more or less you consume compared to others)!
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I wonder what it costs to produce all your own electricity with a generator?
What with wind farms being paid large sums not to generate ( tinyurl.com/848rcch ) and subsidising houses with solar panels, it may even be worth investing in a solar panel and feeding the grid from my own generator for the feed-in tariff.
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>> it may even be worth investing in a solar panel and feeding the grid from my own generator for the feed-in tariff. >>
You don't mean that you are thinking up a scam to rob even more from the poorer electricity consumers who cannot afford to install their own panels, do you?
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>> As an aside, an acquaintance has just has some fitted on the basis that the feed-in tariff won't change. >>
Even if the proposed cuts apply to his installation, he will still make money - albeit not at the "money for nothing" rates paid under the Labour scheme.
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Basically the generation tariff falls after 4KW. It improves once you get to 10KW but this is usually beyond the scope of most installations.
Typically you need 16 panels to achieve 4KW. The Sunpower ones we got fitted are more efficient and so we only needed 12 even though the roof could have taken up to 20.
Less is also less eyesore. I put only 4 on the front roof facing the road and 8 on the back were the are less noticeable. I also specified ones with black borders so they blend with the dark grey roof better. There are also ones which don't have the silver grid showing on the panels themselves although to be honest you can't see this ones they are fitted on a shallow pitch roof because the acute angle from the ground masks this.
The inverter we have has up to 4 inputs allowing for panels of differing output due to orientation and positioning. So for our configuration we have two of those inputs used for the two banks of panels.
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>> ..... I put only 4 on the front roof facing the
>> road and 8 on the back were the are less noticeable......
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I thought the things had to be pointing at the sun to produce something approaching maximum out.
Cos phi angle of incidence, and all that - solar tracking is an option for the keen.
tinyurl.com/72mgyx8
Obviously not an option for a roof installation, but you get the idea:
how useful are both sides of your roof?
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We only have one south facing roof and this already has a solar thermal array on it. The remaining pitches are east/west facing. So not ideal but because the pitch is very low, not that bad.
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Solar panels - Fullchat
