Solar panels

[Patters4779]

Hi. I live in a 3 bed council house. We were lucky enough to get a new roof last year at which time the council offered (and we accepted) solar panels. But I'm clueless.

How much do they actually save you? Im doing what the man said and trying to only use one heavy appliance at a time (either the washer or dryer etc) but I cant actually work out if thats the best way to use them. Help.

Well they work by producing electricity for your home, which is either used by you or fed back into the grid.

If you use up all the electricity they have produced then you will start using electricity from your supplier which you will pay for.

I guess the best way to make the most of them is to do as much stuff as you can when it's warm and sunny.

Not sure how it works for you but for our panels any energy we don't use gets fed into the grid and the energy company will offset our bills accordingly. So for us it doesn't matter how much we use and when. We tend to generate loads of power during the day and then the majority of our usage is after the sun has set but our top up bill is still very low.

Hi can I just say I've been with this scheme since 2016.we have a council house and they put panels in June 2016. How do I start this..... Make sure they have installed the SIM card this is the biggest piece of advice I can give. We were left wondering 2 years ago why we still didn't feel the benefit of the panel at all. Our energy company had stated they don't seem to have any energy production from panels 🤔 anyway to cut a VERY long story short after getting legal advice we found out that they never installed the SIM card so we were actually being charged for what the panels made. We are owed around £6000. BUT after getting a solicitor involved it turns out we can't recover a single penny bcoz we never paid for the panels they are the councils legally. Anyway on to right now when we still aren't benefiting at all. Called in council to assess panels for the 9th time. The council are taking everything the panels make since the SIM was installed 🙄 and guess what we can do nothing about it bcoz we didn't pay anything towards the install of them. Just be careful we are hugely out of pocket and so is 37 other houses on my estate we got a group together to prove this wasn't a single house mishap and the council have just brushed us off. They are their panels and we can only moan. Our next step is to get the panels turned off this is the only route we can take now. Also if they haven't already get someone in to surround the panels with wire or you will get birds nesting BADLY. But if you don't you will have falling eggs, bird feathers, bird poo and a garden area you can't use. Honestly the biggest regret I have in 10 years in a council house.