Anyone got solar panels?

[ImogenBrocklehurst]

Posting for traffic.

Salesman was insisting that we’ll be raking in thousands from power we sell back to the grid; all we really want is to see a drop in our utilities bills. What are others’ experiences?

Don’t pay for electricity for 6 months a year. The sell back basically covers the standing charge. Sell nothing back 4 months of the year and a little back the other two. 19 panels and a heat pump (so probably sell more back if we didn’t have that).

It depends whom you sign up with for SEG. Rates range from 4p to 15p. Your quote should detail the kWh to be exported unless you have a sizeable property it won’t be thousands.

Depending on system size you should see a reduction in bills but really should be backed up by battery storage. Then (in winter) if you can get a tariff where you get cheaper electric overnight you charge the battery from the grid and utilise it when a higher tariff is in place.

If your sales man makes you feel uncomfortable check out Solar Nation. This is a group of independent solar companies to become a member they have to have been trading for over 5 years and each company is vetted for their ephos and pricing etc.

We buy at 6p/kwh and store in batteries and we export at just under 16p with Eon. We've exported 1600kwh so far this year. So, even like this, you won't get £1000s from feed in tariffs each year but we are saving a small fortune each year to power the house and the car.

We have a heat pump and battery too. I think we pay approximately 1/5th of what we used to pay. We sell back to the grid too but def not 1000s! It powers the car for nothing though too in the sunny months so that’s also worthwhile.

Thanks everyone- I’m looking for a down side but experiences seem to be largely positive.

We don't get money for the export, as it doesn't seem cost effective for our setting up. Don't have that many panels and do have a battery, so not exporting loads. On an exporting tariff, the importing and/or standing charges tend to be higher. We get very little between the darkest quarter, roughly corresponding with Halloween to Imbolc. But in the summer, I can easily get the washing machine, tumble dryer and dishwasher on all day and barely pay,above the standing charges.

We get some amount for selling to the grid. It’s not thousands, but more like £800-900 maybe. But it generally heats our water. And I think we have a reasonable electric bill, currently about £150 a month, and we have a 5 bedroom detached house with a lot of rooms, run dishwasher and washer and dryer daily, everyone leaves the bloody lights on all day, we have power to multiple outbuildings.

Basically, we use a lot of electricity and I think our bill is pretty reasonable. Our solar panels are ancient though. New ones would be much more efficient than ours that are probably first generation. 😂

The days of high feed in tariffs and making money are gone but providing you use energy sensibly you will definitely cut your electric bill and might make a bit from exporting to put towards your standing charges. We get 15p per kWh with octopus, 10 panels and a battery, last year we paid a total of £200 for our electricity (including standing charges), 3 bed house, home all day, regular washing/dishwasher etc. We’ve found the key is to look carefully at what uses what energy when, so don’t put the kettle and the toaster on together as it creates a huge power spike that the inverter can’t cope with and you pull from the grid (and pay), if you do then one after the other then the panel/battery cover it and it’s free! You become much more savvy at what energy things are actually using and we’ve replaced a couple of items we realised were particularly bad. In hindsight I’d have opted for a bigger battery - we got a 5.2, which was the biggest anyone recommended but if you don’t have an EV then a bigger battery really helps.

So far this year I have earned enough money to cover my electric and gas bill for the year and am now receiving about £80 per month. This includes the electricity it takes to charge a car.

Our panels were fitted at a time where they offered a contract where we get paid for all energy we generate even if we use it, this stopped around 2019, and now you only get paid for the energy you export and save on what you don't use from the grid by using generated energy. Even though we are on the much better deal I would not describe us as raking it in. We get about £600 a year from our panels (10 panels) but like I say we are on the older better deal, in the summer we use hardly any electric in daylight hours, this is when we use our washing machine and dishwasher etc. I am not sure what it saves us in electricity as the panels were here when we moved in so I don't know what our bills would be like without it (much smaller house prior to living here so not comparable)

The people we brought our house from paid for the panels to be fitted and it was sold to them in the same way it appears to be being sold to you, after a couple of years of not getting the return they were promised, they took the company that sold them the panels to court and managed to get a big chunk of the money for the fitment back as they were missold.

We have just had ours installed. We paid more using a local plumber who has been installing for almost 20 years. His quote process included climbing on our roof, others were relying on Google earth. He suggested a bigger battery which accounted for most of the price difference. Very happy so far we haven’t used any grid power since they went in. Do be aware that there is a very slow process to get all the correct paperwork that allows you to get paid for what you send to the grid. We are 2 weeks in and expect it to take maybe another 6 weeks.

We had solar panels and a battery installed 10 days ago. We have just got our certificate from National Power to confirm we can sell to the grid. We have 12 panels, (6 South facing and six West facing ) and are heavy users in a 5 bedroom house. Our projected saving is £100 per month with Octopus and we should have excess 4 months of the year. We are charging our battery overnight when the tariff is low and exporting late afternoon / early evening when it’s at it’s maximum. As well as our smart metre we have an app where you can see what our energy flow is. As lots of others have said, you do need to be smart about when you use appliances. The extractor fan is eye watering. My 23 year old is learning’ that he can’t use the tumble dryer when it’s 30 degrees outside!!! Obviously early days, but so far we are really pleased. As a side note there were 5 of us in our street who all used the same company. A neighbour did the research. We got a discount and the salesperson wasn’t at all pushy.

@SLMcan I ask which company installed your panels?

We also bought a house with existing panels, so benefit from a very generous early Feed In Tariff. We are paid about £2.5k per year just from how much we generate, so this covers most of our annual gas and electricity usage. The export back to the grid is deemed as half, but the rate paid for this is low. We are home during the day so make good use of the power as it is generated.

My bills used to be approx £160 a month, they are now £60 if you average it across 12 months.

we do sell back to the grid. We’ve also got 2 electric cars. It’s cheaper for us to charge our cars at night on the cheap tariff6p per kWh and then sell electricity back to the grid during the day at 15p per kWh.

we’ve taken out a 3 year interest free loan with the supplier so not actually saving anything, but it’s all guaranteed for 25 years so we will make it back and then some.

id not class it as raking it in though

OP, how many panels is the salesman telling you you’ll be able to fit?
Are you prepared to name the company?

I used a local company, emails to and from someone technical at the company who came out and was able to up the panels on the front from his estimate of 4 ( based on google maps ) to 7.

Can I ask- I am considering solar panels, large south facing roof.

the one thing that is holding me up is I’ve read it can cause big difficulties if there’s ever an issue with your roof? How would you do repairs if there’s ever are solar panels?

You won’t be “raking in thousands”. That is a lie

but you might end up not paying anything for 5–6 months of the year and getting a small amount of money back

I would count on 6 years minimum to claw back the cost

unless there are literally no birds where you are pay for the bird proofing. We didn’t and had to have it added retrospectively when birds began nesting underneath and that was an expensive mistake. Other than that we’re very happy, we have 13 (awkward shaped roof, even number is better!)

if you have/get an electric car you can put any extra power into that in the summer and it brings down the cost of running that. Ditto a heatpump.

We got them Included with our house 12 years ago and don’t sell electricity back to the grid. We have very cheap fuel bills despite having an electric car. We hardly ever heat out hot water in the summer apart from the odd top up late afternoon on a dull day.

We have 8 integrated panels with no battery. I like the flush look better. Roof tiles are removed and fitted with panels. No bird proofing required.

The export pays for the import during the summer. Mostly covers the spring and autumn. It also lowers our bills in winter but doesn’t usually cover the whole amount.

It’s probably not worth considering if you don’t have a decent roof tbh. At the very least if the roof needed retiling or something all the solar would need to come off, technically doable but expensive and faffy.

otoh the panels will protect the roof underneath from weather to some extent

get your roof fixed first, then get solar

Only downside for us was the bloody birds nesting and the hassle that caused. Just make sure that doesn’t happen. A pp has mentioned the flush ones that replace tiles, that def looks aesthetically better (and no bird issues) but almost certainly more expensive and depends on your roof.

I think they were slightly more expensive for integrated but look great.

ps our neighbours were a bit concerned about the “look”, however that turned out to be a non-issue even they admit that

Don’t have to get bird proofing, depends on your situation.
If you have a bungalow it’ll be easier to get the birds out without expensive scaffolding.

As for suggesting OP buys an electric car and a heat pump… apart from the thousands and thousands in outlay , I’d amend that advice to suggest that if your car needs replacing, consider an EV though fitting a charger at home is about £1000 at the moment. Same for the heat pump, if you have a gas boiler working just fine a heat pump isn’t going to save you anything. When the boiler needs replacing though, switch to an air source heat pump.