Solar panels, what are your experiences?

[Intheprimeoflime]

What are your experiences please?? Positive or negative?

[Glovepuppet1]

I'd love to hear any feedback too as considering them myself.

[donkeysandzebras]

No experience of them but when we re-mortgaged recently (just switched products for a cheaper deal) we were asked if we had solar panels and, when we said no, the person said "that's good news" and, when I asked why, went on to explain that you have to get the permission of the company which owns the solar panels to re-mortgage and that this is often very difficult to obtain - I think just for admin reasons (length of time to respond).

[SharpLily]

We live off grid. We did lots of research and took lots of advice before buying and we still don't have anywhere near enough power to live without using the generator, a lot. Whatever you think you'll need in terms of panels, batteries, inverter capacity - double it.

[LifeBeginsNow]

I wasn't quite prepared for the nearly £200 a year servicing on them (I'm not sure if there are cheaper but we kept with the manufacturers as it was a new build house).

I think after 5 years the tank needs to be drained and a special solution added. Can't remember the cost for this but it was more expensive than a regular service.

[NeverTwerkNaked]

@donkeysandzebras surely that only applies if the solar panels belong to the company still? I thought that was just one way of doing this?
I know at work I dealt with a batch of properties where the solar panel company would still own the panels, but that has totally died off so I assumed people must be switching to buying them outright?

[Glovepuppet1]

Yes NeverTwerkNaked, I believe it is now much more the case that you buy the solar panels outright, so no problem regarding ownership if you want to sell your property.

[MrsMuddlePluck]

Check if you are in a conservation area. Sadly, even though my house is modern [1984] it is now in a conservation area of Victorian houses. I can't put solar panels up as my south-facing roof faces the street. Wish I'd done it years ago when the area wasn't conservation, but there you go. I should have added a storey to my garage to make a studio flat for my kids back then too. Bah, humbug. Galls me as we didn't ask to become part of the CA in the first place.

I can, however, put solar panels on the north facing roof line, which is also steeply sloping and won't generate anything, which is really helpful [not]!

[Tika77]

Servicing??? We had ours for approx 3 yrs with no servicing, never even been told we’d need any. They’re performing really well in this bastardly sunshine.
We own ours.
They’re not really ‘worth’ it in the financial sense at the moment as there’s no government funding but we were lucky as ours still pay whatever we put into the grid.
A massive outlay but if I were to do it now, we’d be looking at having a battery to store it (husband would vote for expensive slink branded one, I’d vote for cheap homemade.)
They produce even in the winter.

[InMySpareTime]

We've had Solar PV panels for 7 years, from back when the subsidy was still good. They've more than paid for themselves already, and have 18 years Feed-in-Tariff still left. The FiT payments pay for more than my combined gas and electricity bills over the year. They've not needed any maintenance yet, I just do a meter reading every 3 months and money is paid into the bank a week or so later.
Simples.

[Artura]

We bought a pretty big set of solar pc panels with some cash we inherited. We've not "broken even" in terms of cost and don't expect to for many years but it was something we decided to do to reduce our bills a bit and try be a bit more environmentally friendly. We have an immersion switch which is great and means any excess electricity generated during the day goes into the immersion heater so keeps the boiler topped up. Watch out who you get quotes from - one company hounded me with calls. Would love a battery and electric car so we could make even more use of them!

[MimpiDreams]

I was thinking of getting some but my DH (professor in industrial recycling) told me that they're no where near as environmentally friendly as we are led to believe. They're 'clean' during their working lives but the production process is environmentally filthy. As for disposal, there is currently no safe way they can be disposed of because of the toxic stuff in them. Currently old ones get added to the growing mountain of panels waiting for scientists to fine a way to get rid of them.

[PaulMorel]

Had no regrets using solar panels at all. Aside from you can help save the world, you can also save thousands of dollars on it. Paying a big amount of bills on electricity is very frustrating.

[Brayan]

You know, we have a solar fan installed in the attic, and during the time of use we had a positive impression. I chose him using these tips solarneeded.com/review/best-solar-powered-attic-fans. And most likely, we will soon completely switch to solar panels, it is much more economical to light a house.