[Technology] Solar Panels

crodonilson · Mar 23, 2022

WIth the escalating cost of electricity and gas Mrs Crodo and I have been interested in looking at solar panels on our house. Just seen that the kind Mr Sunak has announced zero VAT on such products for the coming year. Anyone recently has them installed, how much should I be looking at for a 4 bed detached house and what saving should I expect to make on energy bills??

Springal · Mar 23, 2022

Long term pay off when I looked - like over 10 years. So if you're definitely going to be staying put and happy with a long term pay off might be a good idea.

However the energy companies have gone proper stingy in terms of 'buying' energy back off you which used to be a good earner I believe

crodonilson · Mar 23, 2022

Springal said:
Long term pay off when I looked - like over 10 years. So if you're definitely going to be staying put and happy with a long term pay off might be a good idea.

However the energy companies have gone proper stingy in terms of 'buying' energy back off you which used to be a good earner I believe

Given the cost of electricity and gas is about to go up hugely next week and will do so again in October when the price cap gets adjusted again I had hoped those payback figures would have shrunk. I didn't expect a giant windfall in terms of the payment on what I produce but more so wondered the % my own bills were likely to be slashed by if i had them installed (Currently looking at 2k annual bill combined from next week and if current prices are anything realistic will be more like 2.7k from October).

Rowdey · Mar 23, 2022

crodonilson said:
Given the cost of electricity and gas is about to go up hugely next week and will do so again in October when the price cap gets adjusted again I had hoped those payback figures would have shrunk. I didn't expect a giant windfall in terms of the payment on what I produce but more so wondered the % my own bills were likely to be slashed by if i had them installed (Currently looking at 2k annual bill combined from next week and if current prices are anything realistic will be more like 2.7k from October).

Hadn't seen that VAT announcement yet, but good if so.

IMO, A lot depends on how you are going to use it. If you have a hot water cylinder, then 'free' HW is a good use.

If no cylinder, then you need to 'use it' during the day (work at home, use appliances like DW and WM during day) or else you need a battery to store it to then use at night.. Battery costs have come down a lot, but dont mistake getting bigger is better.. Batteries like being full/near empty not use small amounts..

LamieRobertson · Mar 23, 2022

crodonilson said:
WIth the escalating cost of electricity and gas Mrs Crodo and I have been interested in looking at solar panels on our house. Just seen that the kind Mr Sunak has announced zero VAT on such products for the coming year. Anyone recently has them installed, how much should I be looking at for a 4 bed detached house and what saving should I expect to make on energy bills??

How bigs the garden ..think of the potential of a field of them..you could be supplying the whole of Lyme Regis

nickbrighton · Mar 23, 2022

There is no doubt that microgeneration is the way forward, with households producing a lot of their own electric through wind, solar, heat pumps etc

The issue is retrofitting in the current housing stock, most of which is between 50-120 years old. It simply isn't designed and built for heat pumps, solar, small turbines. The materials used in building aren't energy efficient, and the cost of fitting out a lot of these properties with all the latest energy productiongizmos is simply not cost effective in the short or medium term. They won't pay for themselves for decades and so the initial outlay of tens of thousands isnt an option for most

New Builds are a different matter, the cost of building all the infrastructure in is not much more than a traditional build, and so I think thats where the Government should legislate- all new builds must be capable of prodding a reasonable % of its own future energy requirements- solar roof tiling, heat pumps, small turbines etc

However welcome zero VAT rating energy efficiency products is, the vast majority of us will find its a non starter simply because we cant fork out £10k plus to make it worth while. I had a quote just to replace 8 windows in my terraced house-it was over £8k,and thats the bare minimum required before you start looking at heat pumps etc

There is no easy solution to retro fitting old properties, which is why I think more should be done with new developments

nicko31 · Mar 23, 2022

Like the idea of them but reducing VAT from 5% to zero will just about offset the extra surface freight to get them here from China

There are no other incentives and the feed in tariff is 5 - 10p / unit

Maybe there is something coming next week, we'll see

Superphil · Mar 23, 2022

Every new home being built should be required by law to have solar PV panels on the roof, as well as a hot water solar panel. Add to that rainwater recovery for toilets and washing machines and where feasible all new builds should have ground source heating.

It should be the legal requirement, but of course, how would that effect the massive profitability of the likes of Barratts, Berkeley Group and Persimmon? They ain’t going to let their politician friends and company directors tell them to do that are they?

SAC · Mar 23, 2022

https://solartogether.co.uk/brightonandhove/home#

If you are not in a rush, it's worth seeing when the next scheme is running.

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/utilities/free-solar-panels/

nicko31 · Mar 23, 2022

Superphil said:
Every new home being built should be required by law to have solar PV panels on the roof, as well as a hot water solar panel. Add to that rainwater recovery for toilets and washing machines and where feasible all new builds should have ground source heating.

It should be the legal requirement, but of course, how would that effect the massive profitability of the likes of Barratts, Berkeley Group and Persimmon? They ain’t going to let their politician friends and company directors tell them to do that are they?

Yeap, we were on track back in 2015 with the Code for Sustainable Home, then the government has too many mates in this sector. Get rid of the green crap said Cameron

https://www.building.co.uk/news/cod...nable Homes,tape' in the housebuilding sector.

GT49er · Mar 23, 2022

I may not be the best at defining search requests on t'internet, but I have found it difficult (to say the least) to get a straight answer about the cost.
So, can any NSCers who do this, or have had it done, buying one solar pane and having it installed with all the necessary gubbins to get it to provide some of my electricity needsm abd feed a litte bit back into the national grid - how much should that cost? Just the overall package - I don't want all the technical details. Plus to what extent (roughly) would it reduce my electricity bills - 2%, 5%, 10% - or what?

Lenny Rider · Mar 23, 2022

Always wondered why they don’t make them to look like roof tiles?

zefarelly · Mar 23, 2022

Good question . . .I'd like even just some basic ones for my workshop/mancave, only needs to run lights and hi-fi/amps generally

zefarelly · Mar 23, 2022

Lenny Rider said:
Always wondered why they don’t make them to look like roof tiles?

Likewise, probably easier to make them look like Welsh slate than Kent Clay nibs.

nicko31 · Mar 23, 2022

GT49er said:
I may not be the best at defining search requests on t'internet, but I have found it difficult (to say the least) to get a straight answer about the cost.
So, can any NSCers who do this, or have had it done, buying one solar pane and having it installed with all the necessary gubbins to get it to provide some of my electricity needsm abd feed a litte bit back into the national grid - how much should that cost? Just the overall package - I don't want all the technical details. Plus to what extent (roughly) would it reduce my electricity bills - 2%, 5%, 10% - or what?

The feed in tariff isn't great right now, but you can use the energy as you generate you can save circa 30p a unit, that might be 40p by the Autumn. For example run dishwasher, washing machine, towel rails, immersion heat or an EV in the daytime

3kw system about £5000 and will produce about 2500 kw/h a year, so absolute best case is you save £750.

So depends a lot on your circumstances and you need a decent roof

BNthree · Mar 23, 2022

GT49er said:
I may not be the best at defining search requests on t'internet, but I have found it difficult (to say the least) to get a straight answer about the cost.
So, can any NSCers who do this, or have had it done, buying one solar pane and having it installed with all the necessary gubbins to get it to provide some of my electricity needsm abd feed a litte bit back into the national grid - how much should that cost? Just the overall package - I don't want all the technical details. Plus to what extent (roughly) would it reduce my electricity bills - 2%, 5%, 10% - or what?

I was just looking at the Solar Together site [MENTION=29514]SAC[/MENTION] posted and it said the average cost for supplying and fitting solar panels was £4,800.

McTavish · Mar 23, 2022

Getting ours fitted in May. This is being done through the Solar Together scheme.

22 panels on two roofs (7.5Kw system) with a 6.5Kw battery and an I-boost immersion heater controller: £13,000 (and depending on the details of the zero-rate for VAT this should come down another £400 (panels are already only 5% VAT, not sure about batteries.)

We think that this will reduce our (high) energy costs by about 80%. Unusually most of our energy is used during the day which will help.

One thing that I found was that some of the "extras" that were offered were not cheap: bird-proofing for example was not in the original quote but seems to be pretty much essential and added £1,200 to our quote. If you are just getting one roof and ten panels with no battery then £5,000 should be do-able.

Selling energy back to the grid is nowhere near as lucrative as it used to be so shouldn't be a big factor in your calculations.

WATFORD zero · Mar 23, 2022

Audax · Mar 23, 2022

Springal said:
Long term pay off when I looked - like over 10 years. So if you're definitely going to be staying put and happy with a long term pay off might be a good idea.

However the energy companies have gone proper stingy in terms of 'buying' energy back off you which used to be a good earner I believe

It's got more to do with the government getting stingy. Those of us who had solar panels installed under the original FIT system (believe it was changed in 2019) signed a contract that locks us in to a reasonable rate of return, especially for those who can keep most of the electricity generating on-site and avoid exporting. The scheme I'm on we send in a meter reading every quarter. From that reading, our most recent payment was 15.92p/kWh produced and then 5.57p/kWh "exported" - but the contract assumes that we always export 50% of what we generate. The amount we get paid increases every year - I'll know what it was bumped to for 2022 by mid-April, but from memory the increase is linked to inflation so it should be a decent increase this year.

For our system, we're now in profit once we combine how much we've been paid directly for generating as well as how much we've saved off our bills by using the power on-site. Took roughly 7 years. I think by the end of this year we'll also have paid off the power diverter we had retrofitted (that directs unused power into our hot water system to reduce gas needs), and by end of next year it'll also have paid for the EV charger we fitted when I got my Zoe nearly 18 months ago.

I've not looked into the new scheme in any detail, but I believe it's now based on how much you actually export and paying you the current market rate and it now takes quite a bit longer to pay off the installation costs.

If the VAT removal extends to home batteries and heat pumps, I might need to look into those options. I had a quote for a battery retrofit a couple years ago that was borderline on being able to pay for itself in a reasonable time frame, but if VAT is being removed, and electric/gas bills remain high for a prolonged period, it might be time to get it done. Same with the heat pump - for us, borderline, but might be worth doing now with gas prices going stupid.

crodonilson · Mar 23, 2022

McTavish said:
Selling energy back to the grid is nowhere near as lucrative as it used to be so shouldn't be a big factor in your calculations.

Surely this is something the government and energy companies are missing a trick on? When we want to become more independent on our energy needs making this more lucrative for the consumer is a good thing and would drive demand for solar panels and after setup costs it is essentially free energy? I think currently the best rate you can sell back is in the region of 10p KwH (and the vast majority are around 3 or 4p and as low as 1.5p), with the new price cap the price we all pay to our supplier for electricity is 28p KwH.

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[Technology] Solar Panels

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