Sonal panels and battery - after your views/experience

[Bestronger]

Someone from Ecoway renewables by Taggas Ltd has came by and offered us £12,865 for Solar panels (8x), battery and hybrid inverter including installation, warranty and insurance. We have to pay £140 a month towards it and this is for 15 years and it is based on 9.90% interest rate so means the total payments is £24,744.

I really want to know if we can get it for cheaper and is it worth it to get solar panels, battery and inverter. Did you actually see the difference in your monthly payments and did you actually get money back based on electricity usage? The guy said we actually don't pay for anything because we get payback from the grid to cover for the expenses.

What do you think of this?

You can probably find cheaper than this if you shop around - we had 15 panels and a battery and inverter fitted last summer for around £8k, although DP did get loads of quotes and negotiate down. We also saved on scaffolding, as we already had it up for roofing work.

If you have room for more, it's worth getting as many panels as you can fit - adding more panels doesn't add too much more to the cost.

This time of year we're only saving a bit (small amount generated, plus charging the battery at a slightly cheaper overnight rate), but in September when it first went online we barely paid anything, and in the summer we'll definitely have excess to export to the grid.

Our quote estimates savings of around £1000 a year, and from what I've seen so far I think that's a fairly accurate assessment.

We are having 12 panels and a 10kwh battery fitted for less than £10k.

i have done my research, it will take us 9 years to have paid back the initial investment amount. And it’s 10% ROI which is roughly 4% more than I would expect our portfolio to grow.

However - we are paying cash.
I would be thinking a lot harder if we were borrowigg bf the capital in the first instance.
and - if you don’t stay in the house for the investment term - you will lose out,

You can get quotes from EDF and Octopus for comparison. That APR seems high, you could probably get a personal loan for less.

I'm a fan of solar, but I didn't get a battery because I thought it'd be more hassle than benefit. Payback on a battery for me is 10 years. Battery life is expected to be 10 years. I just sell excess electricity to the grid via Octopus.