Why don’t we put solar panels on every home?

[Whyaretheynotdoinganything]

Just as the tile says, I’m wondering why the government or the opposition are not proposing free solar panels for every home as a solution to the energy crisis and energy security?

Surely a cost benefit analysis would show net economic benefit, whereas subsidising household energy bills is expensive with little return for the economy.

One barrier would be the workforce, but we’ve managed mass construction projects in the past eg. post war council house building programme.

We need a radical solution fast, it would at least give us hope even if the returns are not immediate.

Those who don’t want panels can pay market rates. Apparently panels pay for themselves in 7 years. I’d happily contribute a proportion but don’t have the savings to cover it all.

I guess energy has an environmental cost regardless of solution. I do worry about the hardware but hope systems in place will minimise damage at the end of its life which is a good chunk of years.

surely there are some requirements in new builds :/

We now have solar panels and home batteries.
In the summer we ran almost exclusively on sunshine.

On October grey days we are still pulling some energy from the panels but we haven’t done a winter with them so can’t comment on that yet.

However two things that has helped our 100 year old house which has not yet dropped below 20 degrees inside are windows with glass that pull in heat and insulation insulation insulation!
As each room has been renovated insulated plasterboard,
and warm curtains and the special glass in the double glazed windows.
We just have one room left to replaster.

Last year we also fitted a heat recovery extractor fan in the bathroom and this essentially drys the bathroom without needing to open the windows and without throwing away all the warm air. It warms the new air coming in with the old air going out.

its all DH doing, we are heading towards retirement but conscious of the help the planet needs and of wanting to minimise further
impact.

I think the gas boiler will be next out the door but it is used minimally - to heat water once a day and to run radiators on low all day if the house temp drops lower than 19. There will be some sort of heat pump to replace.

we have adjusted some routines to fit eg showers all in the evening to follow the boiler hearing the water once a day

dishwasher and washer on after lunchtime once the batteries are full so as not to waste the sunshine

Curtains closed at dusk

lights off in empty rooms etc.

loads of loft insulation

Our house is oop north and more west facing than south.

Solar panels built into roofs loom absolutely fine. They just look like a shiny black panel.

However retro fit sit on top usually with silver metal look horrible and stick out like a sore thumb.

Same here. Conservation area so solar panels not allowed. Also not allowed to change windows unless timber sash so a lot of houses with rotten windows as timber are £££££.

You can install solar panels in a conservation area so long as it isn't on a listed building or that it can be see from the road.

I’d be interested in solar panels if it would reduce our bills, but the lifespan and environmental damage of creating and destroying the panels is a concern.
The front of my house is south facing, but we have a loft conversion so have velux windows, can panels be fitted around that?

Yeah, so long as there is enough room for the panels, including clearing allowance.

You would be far better off spending the money on draft proofing and insulating your house, and buying warmer clothes. You would save money and use less energy, win win.

The thing about energy companies, even the 'green' ones, is that they like selling you energy, the more expensive the better. They don't want to make it easier for you to generate and use your own energy.

Providing energy is a dirty business whichever way you look at it. Batteries rely on child labour mining cobalt in the DRC, Chinese solar panels on Uighar forced labour, then you have decommissioning and disposal of non-recyclable hardware. To develop more efficient gas powered electricity is much cheaper, simpler and probably far better for the environment long term than covering the country with more solar panels and wind turbines (400 cubic metres of concrete sunk into the ground for every turbine), but renewables are the only circus in town at the moment, and some people stand to make a lot of money in the short term by selling it, so practicality and common sense go out the window.

Clearly could be many problems with older houses, roofs not good enough to support them etc, but amazed that it is not mandatory on all newbuilds at least.

If you have £5k to spend on a new house do you insulate better or install solar.
Easy answer you insulate, you get far more benefit from insulation, if you have the money do both, if you have loads of cash spend £10k on a Powerwall battery.
Of course we all expect someone else to pay for it!.

I'd like to see a legal principle that new houses should require minimal energy use to run, or something like that, rather han reference to a specific technology. I've always understood the Passifhaus (sp?) principle to be that the house design makes it warm and liveable on almost no additional energy. But that would require the owners of the big housebuilders to look up briefly from stashing their vast profits offshore or donating to lobbyists with menaces to consider their social and climate responsibilities. So it's never going to happen.

The Tory/Lib Democrats coalition cutting the national insulation programme in 2013 was probably the second most boneheadedly stupid thing they did.

Exactly what I think too.

I've probably come in too late but the key reason is because the grid isn't set up to be able to take any excess electricity generated from each house or building having solar panels.

It means we need to massively invest in either electricity storage for each house or for the grid. Ideally both.

Both of which I'm massively in favour of. But Westminster government is not willing to spend on that.

Why don’t we put solar panels on every home?

the same reason houses aren't being insulated but this government - the don't want to do preventative measures but knee jerk continually. It was the same with the pandemic, and the same with many other measures. Continually fire fight rather than lay down boring sensible options fr the country

the layout government before 2010 was giving grants away for many of these green initiatives and then they were stripped back to nothing when the tory party took over

Houses could be built with triple glazing, solar power, direction heating, ground source and as it would be in bulk the cost would reduce dramatically.

There are campaigns for insulating houses but people object to them...

if houses were built with solar roof tiles, the would produce enough electric to power storage heaters (which are now heat controllable and much different in style from the 1980s)

this would mean that every new house would have free heating every winter, spring and autum

then look at who the government are in bed with and who Liz Truss worked for...

@ivykaty44 do you actually know the cost of these things though? Its pretty expensive and solar panels to make it worth while you need to store the electric which costs loads
Also goverments don't builf houses , private companies dp

I am guessing that the energy generators, the energy distributers (the ones you pay bills to) and the fossil fuel, nuclear and other industries would lobby massively hard against widespread micro-generation at a domestic level!

It would wreck their business models and without economies of scale make power supply ineffective.

Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it though!

I really wanted solar panels on our roof until I read about a family who lost their home due to the solar panels somehow catching on fire! 😱

I had no idea it was a possibility, I think it was the battery that overheated. I mean how scary, I don’t think anyone was hurt luckily but still devastating I’m sure.

I would think this a very rare event but it’s these are worries that keep me up at night lol.

I wonder if I can get a wind turbine attached to the roof instead, that would clearly be the most safe and sensible solution 😁

What do you do for energy at 5pm in winter? Yes you can domestic have storage but that adds to the cost. Plus winter sun would not be enough to recharge your battery sufficient to meet your daily needs.

Are you Jacob Rees Mogg?

California requires them for new residential construction.

simplysolar.com/blog/california-solar-mandates/

And this is why we don’t have solar tiles in the U.K. Housebuilders margins do not allow them to pass the cost onto housebuyers. It needs housebuilders, local authorities and land owners to come together and agree a new framework for delivering houses.

Landowners can sell an acre of land worth £10k for £1.5m, local authorities can impose s106 payments and CIL for other works and housebuilders can manipulate selling prices. But there should be enough fat somewhere in this chain to squeeze out some better quality and energy efficient homes. But it is not going to be Truss or Kwarteng that do it. They have shown quite the reverse two weeks ago.

Landowners can sell an acre of land worth £10k for £1.5m

Land is worth what someone will pay for it.

@worriedatthistime Yes I do know the cost of these things, do you? Other than it’s pretty expensive, have you calculated the costings

@worriedatthistime do you know how storage heaters work? I’m guessing you don’t by your comment on storing electric which costs loads.