Solar panels

[WhatAFusspot]

There may be a better place for this thread but chat gets a lot of traffic so.....

I'm concerned about the rising energy bills so have been thinking of solar panels which TBH I've been thinking about for several years.

We have a detached south facing house with a garden which isn't overlooked form the back so it shouldn't affect the neighbours. The back of the house gets HOT in summer so perfect for panels.

Birmingham.

Can anyone recommend any companies? What should I look out for? I wouldn't want to take a loan, we can pay from savings. What are the downsides? Any good websites to research this a bit more? I'm really clueless about it all.

Thanks

We did the research (and a thread on here) and have decided to leave it a few more years.

I got 4 different quotes (frustratingly the systems are all slightly different which makes the quotes difficult to compare).

It is expensive, £10 k plus, and the payback is long.

Unless you are home and using the power when it is generated (sunny days) you need a battery. They are the biggest cost.

We have moved to OctopusGo tariff. It means electricity is 5p per kwh between 00:30 and 4:30. We set the electric car charging and the dishwasher for then.

I am hoping the systems will come down in price.

In some areas I think there is some funding to help with this.
You have to meet certain criteria but it is worth looking into.

Thanks both. I am wary of getting drawn into a funding arrangement. I would imagine there's loads of pitfalls.

It seems such a minefield, I am nervous about the whole thing!

We are having solar panels fitted in the spring with this lot. Obviously we haven't had the work done yet, but we've been impressed with our dealings with them so far.

We are also getting a battery so that we can store excess energy rather than sell it back to the grid. That costs more, but means will be more independent from the grid.

Apparently there used to be good deals for selling electricity to the grid but there aren't now, so it makes more sense to use as much of our own electricity as we can, especially as we will probably buy an electric car next time round.

Bumping this as interested in solar in light of increasing energy costs. Panels are going to be pretty hard to come by apparently so thinking we should decide fairly soon if we're going to do it

Has anyone taken the leap recently?

Ours are due to go up within the next few weeks. We are having a fairly large array (it needs grid approval due to the size) with a battery and probably also installing an i boost to use the excess energy created to heat our hot water through an immersion rod rather than selling it back to the grid. We are also installing the stuff required to enable us to have power in the event of a power cut.

Costing just under £15k in total with a payback of less than 8 years (it will be even faster now that electricity prices are rising so much).

We have an everhot (electric storage range) and so it will make a big difference to our bills.

I had solar panels for 15 years, completely autonomous system.

They are great. I had different panels for electricity and hot water. Can't tell you exactly the system cost but I would say in today's prices under 15k, could probably be done for less.

Just do your sums carefully - the deals are nowhere near as good as they used to be. We have solar panels on a fantastic tariff (in comparison to most, I mean) and we get £800 a year off them - they've long since paid for themselves as they were partially funded.

I also think they add a lot of value to your house as well though, so that's worth thinking about.

@LindaEllen, I think getting pay back in actual money is a thing of the past now unfortunately

Yes the payback rates for feeding electricity back into the grid are very low. However if you can size your system correctly and use things like an iboost/immersun system to heat your water and then you also have a battery then you should be able to use a large proportion of what you generate. Particularly if you are at home at all in the daytime and can use things like washing machines and dishwashers during sunshine hours.

We are having a 16kw system installed next month. Any excess electricity will be diverted to heat our water. I would like to get a battery, but want to see how this set up works out for us first before taking the plunge. It's costing us about £6k.

My DH WFH and I work P/T, so there is always someone in the house and running appliances during the day isn't a problem. With the water being heated with the excess electricity I'm hoping we can get away with using very little or no oil at all over the sunnier months.