Does anyone have solar panels?

[Matildathebrave]

Have been contacted by www.ecovisionenergy.com/ but am a bit dubious.

Sounds too good to be true.

Would be grateful for any advice?

Loads of people who live in the estate near me have solar panels. When we decide to get them, I'll just pop round and ask them who did there's and if they're happy.

Much better to get a personal recommendation I always think than risking it with a random company.

However, you could always ask your energy company if they can recommend one.

Or check out this innovative idea:
free solar panels for your excess electricity

You must make sure that whoever instals your solar panels has MCS certification or you won't get your feedin tariff payments - Microgeneration Certification.

The payback time is currently 8 to 10 years, the payments are guaranteed for 25 years - so it is a good deal. You need a south facing roof.

You will get a better return if you invest yourself than if you let a company claim on your behalf.

There have been other threads about this before so worth scrolling through.

My mum has been going on about solar panels for years. She has a pretty large south-facing roof and she's interested in the type of panels where you can sell your surplus energy back. As her electricty bill is already microscopic she's interested less in 'money saving' and far more in 'money generating'. She's been given payback periods that wildly differ. And some interesting estimates for how much value they add to your home. Does anyone know if these things actually give you an income?

Yes you can earn an income from solar panels, it is inflation-linked and guaranteed for 25 years. The payback time is around 8 to 10 years, and I would think they would add value to your home because of the financial benefits.

Some good information on Friends of the Earth website: www.foe.co.uk/resource/factsheets/feed_in_tariffs.pdf

I had a quote for solar panels done last week. Your roof doesn't need to be exactly south facing - south-southwest is ok.

I was quoted £16,000 for installation of 10 panels (plus various discounts, making it about £11,00) and am going to look into some of the free solar panel deals

I run a solar power company and I would advise anyone considering solar to approach it with caution. Might sound odd coming from a company in this business but unfortunately caution is advised. This is because solar today is very like double glazing in the 1980's, there are hundreds of suppliers out there, some good, many not so good. Which! magazine has warned against mis-selling in the industry, see link www.solarpowerportal.co.uk/news/steer_clear_of_the_swindling_solar_salesman_5478/

Solar PV is a really good way to help the environment and to make money, but only in the right location!

When you consider solar pv the supplier is required by Govt. to provide you with a standard assessment procedure (SAP) calculation of the benefits and to explain all the costs associated with it. Many suppliers will not take into account shading or will tell you there are no maintenance costs. So ask your supplier how they calculate the benefit to you. We do the SAP calculation only because we have too, we also do use 3D modelling software to analyse solar pv benefits on much more detail than the Govt require. Ask your supplier how they do their calc, if they only do the SAP, then all you are getting is a rule of thumb assessment that makes not differentiation between a site in Inverness and one in Lands End.

If you are considering solar PV, do a number of things;

1. Get 3 quotes
2. Ensure your chosen suppliers do a proper calculation in addition to the SAP calculation
3. Do not accept the lowest quote/highest savings calc on face value, question how the calculation has been done and what is included. An ideal location will give you simple return, i.e. first year savings divide by cost of between 10% to 13%. If you are quoted higher than this, start to feel nervous. If you are quoted lower than this, it may be because the location is not ideal and the supplier is being honest.
4. Be wary of "free solar panels", there is no such thing as a free lunch. The Government are actually becoming concerned about the rush for free panels and are considering how to deal with some of the mis-selling that goes along with it. Free solar panels are OK if you are willing to accept savings of a few quid a year and your mortgage provider is happy with them. In my view the return to the householder from a free system is so poor that I would not advise anyone to go down this route.

Does anyone have any info that would help us persuade the council to let us put solar panels on? We are in a conservation area and have to apply for planning permission, but the forms are so complicated, needing heritage statements etc. Solar panel companies have not wanted to give us any help in this processe any info that would help us persuade the council to let us put solar panels on? We are in a conservation area and have to apply for planning permission, but the forms are so complicated, needing heritage statements etc. Solar panel companies have not wanted to give us any help in this process

tumteetum, whcih part of the country are you in? I might know someone who could help.

tumteetum. Don't be too scared of the planning process, with common sense and a rigorous approach you might be able to do it yourself. I was able to do a planning application for our wind turbine and we are in a green belt area. We weren't asked to complete a heritage statement but a 'neighbour' of ours along the valley was - apparently the planners thought his turbine would 'negatively impact the setting' of a few Grade II listed farm houses all of them over 800metres from his place.

Although wind and solar probably require a different approach, I would be happy to ask him how he went about doing the heritage statement.

In the supporting statement for my turbine I researched local and national planning policies which supported my development and banged on heavily about the 'benefits' of the turbine in terms of carbon savings, offset of grid electricity etc.

DaveA, i'm in the midlands

I'm probably not much use to you as am in Australia but we have just had solar panels fitted. We had solar for the hotwater only done last year, and then had solar pv fitted 10 days ago, just in time to catch the govt rebates here.

Our system is a 2.7kW (12 panel) system, which will not supply all our electricity needs all the time, but it will probably reduce our bills by 50%. We also feed back into the grid, but our RECs (Renewable Energy Certificates) have been bought by the installation company, further reducing our installation costs. We do get paid for the energy we feed back in though, even though it is less than what we pay for any grid energy we use.

We couldn't afford, and didn't have the roofspace for, any more than 12 panels.

THe one thing that did piss me off after it was installed though was to find out that if there is a powercut, our solar will shut down too. Once thebloke explained it, it made sense of course - because we feed back into the grid, they can't risk having power going through the lines when someone is working on them - but it was bloody annoying nonetheless, as it was one of the (obviously poorly researched) reasons for getting it! That and the ever-increasing electricity costs over here.

We have solar PV. We got 8 panels for about £8000, it's a 2kW system. We generate between 3 and 13kW a day depending on sunlight ( in Manchester ), and have just sent off our first quarterly Meter reading. The meter was at 650kWh at the time, so expecting a payout of over £300 for the quarter. In addition it's really cutting our power use during the day, our combined gas & electricity has been consistently around £17 a month for the last 3 months for a family of 4 in a 4 bed semi.
If you have the cash to buy PV it's a far better return than the bank, plus it puts two fingers up to the greedy power companies!

I've just started looking into this, but have no idea how to start or what the costs will be. Just googled and the first result was for British Gas -had no idea they did this. It seems a bit of a minefield.

I went through the energy saving trust, they have a list of approved installers in your area, and can give you individual advice. IME it's about £800 per panel plus £1k for the inverter so the more panels you can squeeze on the better the payback period will be.

I have a few low voltage panels for running a pump from my solar heating tubes but they do not generate any usable electricity, I use a couple of wind turbines for the bulk of my electricty due to the constant and reliable winds as I live very close to the sea.

Know a great solar panel installation company very professionally if anyone is interested.

I love the idea that you can be green and earn a great deal of money too.

Regarding the government feed-in scheme - Can someone give me an answer on this?

If the 'feedback rate' is 45p or whatever per unit, what happens when you use all your electricity? Does anyone know whether you could end up with solar panels that you don't get a surplus rate on? Surely this is a huge factor to the whole equation - as you are paying interest on a loan to pay for the panels, so that would have to compete.

Also, the new plan is for 25 year cheap government loans on sps - surely that would be cheaper in the long run?

little bump

FITs work on the assumption that you use 50% of the electricity you generate, and export the rest.
Your system will be set up to use generated electricity as far as possible, making up a shortfall with grid energy.
Using power during a sunny day is effectively free, as it won't affect your payment but will draw energy from panels rather than grid IYSWIM.
The energy you sell to the grid is a small percentage of your overall payment anyway, as you get (currently) 43.3p for every kWh you generate, plus 3p for every 2kWh (taking the 50% rule into account).
This means you get 44.8p per kWh no matter how much of the generated energy you use. We got £420 for our summer electricity. You need to get in quick though, as they are dropping FITs to 21p in a few weeks

The FIT pays you about 45 pence per unit of electricity generated regardless of whether you use it or not. Then they give you an extra 3p per unit for any electricity you don't use and export to the grid. But because they can't actually measure how much you export (with the current meters) they assume its 50%. It doesn't make much difference in any case as the 3p is so small compared to the 45p which you get anyway.

as inmytime said first! If you use all the electricity, you still get paid nearly all the FiT, you don't have to pay the electricity company to buy that amount of electricity and until they upgrade the meters you get 1.5p extra per unit for half of it as they assume you did export it.

Please note that as has been said on the other solar panel threads, the government has just changes the rules. If you don't get your solar pv installed and registered with a FIT provider by 11th december, the rate you get paid from 1st april next year will be more than halved, to 21 p per unit.