Thinking of getting some on the roof, anybody had any experience with installation or costs. Thanks for your help.
I have had solar for 4 years. I honestly can't remember what I paid for it but I think you are probably looking at something in the region of 5k to 7k for a 4kwp system. I was around 5k at the time I think for a 3.4kwp system (10 panels x 340w). I am sure you can get it cheaper, depends on the quality of the panels as they vary from the best to cheap tat. Average pay back time is generally suggested to be around 15 years. One question - are you thinking of getting a battery to go with the system? I didn't at the time because I thought it was an immature market and the prices had a long way to come down which looking back was true, but I sometimes now wish I had one. You really need to get the spreadsheets out though and work out whether it pays off. You will often see installers offering solar and battery combos and one thing to note is that the battery is VAT free if installed at the same time as solar, but not otherwise. You will need to take into account the roof direction and whether there is any shading. When they come to survey, they might recommend microinverters or optimisers to overcome any shading issues. This would add to the cost but without them, the performance of the whole array might be badly affected by shading of one panel. You will also need to consider what you are going to do with the electricity you generate. To a large extent, this will have a bearing on whether a battery is worth it. eg. Are you heavy users of electricity during the day when the panels are generating? If not, then without a battery you will just be feeding it into the grid so you need to get yourself with an energy provider that provides the best outgoing tariff. You will almost certainly need to get yourself sorted with a smart meter. Octopus have tariffs that pay as.much as 15p per kwh for example. But if you are at home consuming a lot during the day then you could argue that you are using most of it, so the saving comes from reduced incoming consumption and the outgoing tariff is not as important because not much is going out anyway. Whatever you do, don't just look at the cost of the panels. Think about the whole generation and use cycle and how best to maximise their effectiveness to pay back quicker. You need to do some sums.
I had a 16 panel system with optimisers (due to tree shading at our property) with 2 x 5kWh batteries installed a couple of years ago, along with a car charger, just as energy prices were going stupid. Very happy with the decision. Currently on an Octopus tariff paying 7p per kWh for 6 hours overnight, during which the car and batteries are charged, and we draw very little from the grid at normal rates. Exported electricity is paid back at 15p/kWh. I've just had the notification about the October price increases (standing charge and peak rate increasing, but 7p rate stays the same). This is forecast to increase annual costs of electricity from £571 to £584, excluding any export credits. This includes daily charging of a hybrid car too, which covers most of my regular daily fuel usage. The cheapest fixed tariff they have, by comparison, is estimated at £1,122 per year. It's a false economy to get panels without the battery system these days, as the ability to store electricity generated at cheap rates (and then export more during the day) is one of the big economies you can have, particularly if you have an EV or Hybrid car too. If I could change anything now I'd have gone for a 3rd battery to take the capacity up to 15kWh, as this would pretty much eliminate any peak grid usage, even in winter. Although I'm in Leeds, the installation company (Plan Solar) are Penistone based and I'd highly recommend them. The installation guys were fantastic, and the post-installation service has been excellent, including a warranty visit a few weeks ago to replace 3 of the optimisers at no charge. Happy to put you in touch with the guy who did my quote directly. I used a different company for the car charger, as this was installed before the solar system. If you shop around, the important things to look for are MCS and RECC accreditation (MCS in particular). The quotes on savings/payback you'll get are standardised and only look at usage savings for real-time generation, so don't take account of timed charging, etc. In my situation, I estimate payback of the cost (about £14k, although not everyone will need the car charger or optimisers that are included in this) will take 6-7 years, factoring in all the various savings it's made. The panels have a 25 year warranty, and the batteries have 10 year warranties, so the ongoing savings beyond that will be substantial, even factoring in a battery replacement being needed at some point within the solar panel warranty. One of my better financial decisions, without a doubt.
We had some fitted last August, 6 panels (we only have a small roof area) with double the normal battery storage, it cost us £7550. I think at the current rate it would take 8 years to break even. If I were you, I'd wait for Ed Miliband to announce some sort of subsidy scheme.
It's worth noting that for some people for whom solar is not viable, eg. Small roof area, not ideal orientation, lots of shading, it may be worth considering a battery on its own. The whole idea of the battery is that you are pulling in electricity when it's cheap, in order to use at other times of the day when it's not, instead of pulling in at the higher rate. You can do that without solar and it may be beneficial. Whether a battery is worth while, i.e. working out it's pay back time, depends a lot on what your perception is as to where electricity prices will go in the future. For example, I have just grabbed a sample price with a quick Google of a GivEnergy All in One battery, 13.5kwh installed for around £6.5k. That's a decent size and is quite tempting. I think I will jump at some point and add a battery to my solar system. You need to work out your daily consumption - do not buy a battery with a capacity that is more than you use per day, that would be a waste of capacity and money. But just looking at it's on its own, forgetting the solar, the logic is that, with a smart meter, you could fill it once per day at an overnight cheap rate of say 7p instead of consuming those 13.5kwh in the day/evening when the price is (currently) around 23p per kwh. Therefore, at today's prices, saving is 13.5kwh x 16p (difference between day and night rates) x 356 days per year = £769 per year saving, giving a pay back of 8.5 years But if the prices went back up where they peaked at around 32p per kwh a couple of years ago, that means 13.5 x 25p difference (assuming the cheap rate stays at 7p) x 356 = £1209 saving a year and a payback of under 5.5 years. So how much it's worth it depends on guess work really as to where the price of electricity will be in the future. Bear in mind that the warranty on batteries is generally 10 years so it needs to pay back well within that time. If the difference between peak and cheap rate fell back to less than 13p then the payback would stretch to 10 years in my above example. That's not to say that they will break on exactly 10 years + 1 day, they may keep going for a long time after. But there is the danger that they will be knackered shortly after that point and need replacing. They are in effect getting more hammer than an EV battery because you are intending to fully charge and discharge it daily, which doesn't happen to an EV unless you are doing huge mileage. They also don't have the liquid cooling system that an EV battery has to avoid heat degradation. Hence the expectation that they might not last much beyond 10 years. One other consideration for anyone who can't have solar. Why not invest instead in a shared ownership of a windmill farm. I have considered this as well through these guys https://rippleenergy.com/. The shared profits it makes are received as a credit on your bill.
