To want to heat home with solar panels ?

[User112]

Does anyone have solar panels and use them for heating home in winter? The installation costs seem a bit steep for just hot water 🤔🤔

Anyone?

I’m interested in installing them but can’t find much information online. I think it would take 10 years to recover the cost, but I’m thinking with rising oil prices that may be pessimistic.

Solar panels are powered by the sun. In winter there are fewer hours on sunlight, it is often cloudy and the sun is at a lower angle in the sky so the sunlight is less strong so solar panels are not terribly effective during the times when houses need heating.

I really want them but don't know where to look. I did see a discussion here about leasing the roof to make it cheaper but I can't find it

Effectively yes, I do this, but I have electric radiators and live in a country that gets a lot of winter sun. My house is all electric, so solar panels are a no-brainer.

Yes, our underfloor and hot water is solar powered. If it's not hot enough then the boiler kicks in as backup. You'd be surprised how little heat / sun is required, even in winter

We have our solar panels linked to our immersion heater so once the battery is charged any surplus goes to heating the water. It means we get hot water for the taps almost all summer without using the boiler. But as a pp has said you don't get as much light in the winter which is when heating is most needed so we were initially advised not to try for solar heating. That said we are considering getting the water tubes which are more efficient so can provide some benefit in the winter.

We have solar panels and pay very little for electricity in the summer months

In the winter we get less sun but still pay less for electricity than we would without them.

We have a big roof with 16 panels. We got our installed when you could still get feed in tariffs so the cost of installation was covered in 4 years and now we just benefit financially.

It's not as attractive just now but long term it still saves money.

point to note - it doesn't have to be hot, just sunny. We have a south facing garden and our solar panels for heating + water heat up quickly even on days where it is freezing but the sun is out.

Consider a better as well, means you can maximise the energy you produce instead of getting very little back if you export to the grid. You can also then look at agile tariffs in the winter and charge the battery on the cheaper overnight tariffs. How effective the system is depends on your usage but worth looking at closely.

We have solar panels and are all-electric. We don't generate enough electricity in winter to cover all our electricity needs in winter, but have more than enough in summer. We have under floor heating in a couple of rooms which we do use during the day, but most of our heating comes from storage heaters which use the economy 7 tariff. I don't believe that there is any way that our solar panels would be able to generate enough for heating as well as everything else, especially as you will be needing heating when it is dark, so not generating any power, and you would need to rely on your battery/ies. Remember that the sun is lower in winter, there are more cloudy/rainy/snowy days and the hours of daylight are shorter. I am assuming that you are in the UK? We are in Devon. We reduce our electricity bills by having A+ rated appliances and by only doing washing/drying during the hours of daylight, plus cooking during the day when we can. And trying to balance our electricity use so that we are not using more than one high wattage thing at the same time. And we have looked at those heaters which say they store heat during the day - they are effectively just storage heaters which don't run on economy 7. If we were to use those then yes... We could use some solar power for heating, but then we wouldn't have it available to use for other things. It would be unlikely that we would generate enough power for them without taking power from the grid as well, so I can't see that we would be saving any money. I suppose it depends on your lifestyle... If you are out all day then it might work for you. I work from home so it wouldn't work for us.

Thanks all!

We have solar panels and a power wall, so they 'just' generate electricity rather than heating water. We were expecting it to take about 5 years to pay off the installation costs but currently it's looking more like it'll be paid off in 2 to 3 years so well worth looking into imho.