solar panels and neighbours

[SayItWithWine]

AIBU Not to tell our neighbours they can all get free solar panels like us (£20,000). My husband says it would be nice to have something noone else has as we are not the joneses normally. But I think its a bit mean as our neighbours are lovely.

There are some good questions to ask here if anyone is interested in any of these schemes.

I am very green but...

Basically the installing company is taking advantage of the governments ridiculous FITs scheme.

The economics of paying 45p/kWh for completely intermittent power generation is barmy.

Unfortunately, they understandably didn't tell you this and you can hardly be blamed.

Ironically, perhaps, your not telling neighbours has thus played a tincy-wincy part in not spreading this ludicrous scheme. But they will in any case easily fulfill their quota of sytstems and make ££££ from taxpayers. Meh.

My sister in law has had them all summer and about to get her quarterly bill so I'm waiting to see what savings she has made. PS She is very high maintainance and has lots of equipment!
Thanks snorkie for the FAQ. I used the calculator there. Our saving will be £275 a year (3.3kw system) I'm sure it will help the national grid if more homes had them and get away from the polluting power stations.
Our leccy in daylight hours is totally free and we will have to be cunning in our use. Anyway off downstairs to turn the tv off that talking to itself, and a few lights on the way (I'M ALONE AND ITS CREEPY .

Not the taxpayer cumfy, the scheme is funded by the electric companies (the govenment pays the FITS, but gets a levy from the companies to cover the cost, so that it's zero cost to the government which is partly why they're so keen on it, the other reason is to meet some arbitrary renewables targets). Everyone who pays an electric bill will end up subsidising the scheme.

Sayitwithwine your pojected savings seem to assume that you will use ALL your generated electricity which is very hard to do (and not cost effective to introduce devices that will automatically switch on and off to achieve it. If you have an old style meter where the dials run backwards when you are supplying the grid, then you will effectively use all your generated electricity, but these are rare and will all be replaced with smart meters soon anyway.

The homesun lady called me yesterday & she said what people were doing was running their electric immersion heaters in the daytime on timer switches. Aside from the fact that the timer switches can't tell whether it's sunny or not, using electricity to heat water is completely bonkers in green terms.

Snorkie
Re immersion heaters:

So they're just doing at 10x the cost and 1/5 the efficiency what a solar water heater (SWH)does. Brilliant.

But hey, those SWH don't look as sexy do they. That must be OK then.

My friend has just set up a fantastic solar panel installation company (national company not one man band!)

Pm me if your interested :-)