Solar panels - any words of wisdom?

[WatchingTheCloudsRollAway]

DH and I are considering installing solar panels on our new build property. But I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed at the prospect and uncertain if it's really a good idea.

The idea is to pay for them out of pocket, rather than paying monthly for them, with the aim to reduce our monthly cost of living in the face of rising fuel (and everything!) prices.

If we can afford it we plan to get battery storage, as I gather the amount electricity companies pay for solar energy is not all that great (although we'll still look to sell back anything that we don't use/can't store).

On paper it seems sensible and I do like the idea of using clean energy from an environmental perspective.

But I worry we are being pie-in-the-sky about it.

Any mumsnetters have any experience or words of wisdom to share? Anything we should keep in mind or anything to think about/ask when getting quotes?

They are a very good idea but check about the roof as when we had them it was a rental agreement with the roof space and it was difficult to sell the house afterwards as the mortgage companies were rather funny about it

We’ve got solar panels, we’ve had them for about 8-9 years. They’ve more than paid for themselves. We are saving for battery storage, which would make a big difference, from my research.

On a practical level, get bird wire round the edges. We had ours retrofitted and it has solved the problem of birds nesting underneath. I didn’t mind the noise, but the poo made the back patio unusable.

I’ve got solar panels and they do work to reduce electric bill. I paid extra for something called solar gen so rather than send electric back to the grid it turns on the immersion for hot water. I get about 600 quid a year from electric company but Inthink FIT are lower now

Thank you all for the replies. We've had a couple of quotes now and all looks promising. We can afford a battery!

We got a quote for a Tesla power wall, but it's £££ and really outside of what's affordable for us. I was a bit amazed at the difference between the Tesla vs the Gen2 battery!

The quote we are going for will allow us to generate almost 50% of our energy, which sounds great to me.

Thank you @womaninatightspot for mentioning the solar gen. I've asked about this and having it added to the quote as it's not a lot extra (in that grand scheme of the cost).

Second the tip re pigeon proofing. Had ours retrofitted recently - cheaper to do it at the same time.

Our system also uses excess electricity to heat our water. It heats all of our water from May-September and bas saved us a fortune.

We had our panels installed in spring, the advice that we were given was that newer generations of batteries would have larger capacity and come down and price, and that they weren't worth it at the moment.

Our panels work well for us as one of us is P/T and the other WFH. We can easily run dishwashers, washing machines, slow cookers etc over daylight hours. Our energy consumption was down to about 1/3-1/5 of what it would usually be over the summer, and, as I mentioned, we had hot water too.

As we only had them installed last spring I can't comment on how they perform over the winter yet.

We’ve got them installed now, still not really paying for electric and exporting a good amount. Working from home really helps as we can utilise really sunny days for extra washing loads etc. To wring every benefit you’ll need to make adjustments like that.

bird proofing is a must.

one of the main benefit is that we feel we are doing our bit for the environment by relying a lot less on fossil fuels.

We have solar panels and get about £600/700 a year in FIT payments, but we are on an older tariff.

In spring/summer, we pay hardly anything for electricity, especially with the better weather we are having. You get in to a habit of waiting until the sun hits them before you put anything significant on!

I’d love a storage battery but I’ll wait until the cost comes down.

Were had them fitted this summer and had a few months of not using anything from the grid but not so good on the autumn. But on a sunny day it is great. You have to get used to putting washing machine and dishwasher on whilst sun is shining rather than nighttime as then the power is free and the batteries can start to refill. IE make most of sun whilst it is shining on winter days. In the summer you make far more than you could ever use or store.
It is also great to know with current costs of electricity, the cost of solar panels is paid off much sooner.

Ours are coming in a few weeks, can’t wait

Def depends on your roof to some extent but it looks like you are ok on that front

biggest issue for us has been availability of the installer as they are super busy plus the wait times for batteries are long. However although we were previously told it would be next year for the battery it will now be installed with the rest of the kit.

we recently moved here and def intend on staying for 10y plus. Possibly forever. We think with current prices they will pay for themselves in half that time.

we have an electric car and plan to charge it through solar via the battery so setup will be with that in mind.

we are next to a woodland and been told for that reason we don’t need Bird proofing as birds will always prefer actual trees when available.

The rate we get for solar wasn't great. We had stuck with it because the rate we got for when we didn't have solar was better if we stuck with it.

Yesterday out of the blue we got an email saying they were changing our tariff.

This increase now means on our usage that what we use will be covered by what we put back to the grid. We will only be paying our standing charge.

This is a pretty significant shift. We decided against the battery due to cost / technology available and we are still worried about rolling black outs. But in terms of cost it's pretty much wiped any concerns we had about having invested in our panels. It means the calculations on how long it will take to recoup the cost of the panels has greatly reduced too. They were definitely worth it.