Solar Panels Quoted Today

[brianixon]

Opinions and relevant comments please.
Midlands, Oxfordshire, Northamptonshire area.
Quote was for 9 panels, 6 Kw battery and inverter. All fitted and tested.
Total cost £15,000.
Assuming 15p per Kw feed in reward, on our usage a 7+ years to pay back. Which is the highest available. The salesman said.
Payment outright.
So Finance would add to costs, and calculations would be complicated by an extension, electric vehicle charging or adding underfloor heating. These would reduce our surplus. But we would consume 'our' electricity. Not buy from a company.

My own random thoughts:- Battery Capacity seems small and battery life?

I need to research panels and their output and technology of battery. Are there alternatives?

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Updated by MNHQ
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Where are you getting 15p per kwh SEG (feed in tariff no longer exists)? I get 6p with British Gas and thats a good rate. You'd have to be with octopus to get 15p and then its only for a short intro period (I think 12 months).

We have 15 panels with optimisers plus an 8kw battery and a solar immersion for £15k (last year)

It is never possible to generate all of your electricity so don't make this assumption. My panels generate a good amount between March and mid September. But you will still use electricity from the grid since you pull from the grid when you are using more than you are generating. In the winter when we use the most electricity you will be generating very little and so you will be mainly buying in from the grid. Even when you do generate you will sell a tiny bit back to the grid just because of the fact that the systems are set up so that some flows back (and this can't be avoided). In the summer you will be selling excess back but at a much lower rate than you buy in at.

A solar immersion is a good investment since you need to aim to use as much of what you generate as possible.

So to give you an idea.

Yesterday I used the following

Generation from panels to home - 8.13 kwh
Grid to home - 6.91 kwh
Battery to home - 7.29
Total consumption - 22.33 kwh

our panels started generating at about 6ish. By 10am we were not pulling from the grid. By 4pm we were still generating but were being topped up from the battery, By 9pm we'd used everything in the battery and were back on the grid.

It seems expensive to me. I had a 6.2kwp system installed last month with a 10kwh battery (9kwh of usable storage, as it never fully discharges to protect the battery) plus an Eddi diverter for hot water (oil fired central heating, we have an immersion). It also included optimisers which are not always needed and were £600.
The cost fully fitted was £13.5k. I live in Northern Ireland (not especially sunny). This month so far they have generated 323kwh (today was 24kwh, best day so far) and have covered 84% of our usage all month. In winter it will be more like 20%!

That sounds really expensive. Depending on brand the company I work for would supply and fit around £10k

Ps, if you can ascertain your typical energy consumption overnight that might inform on battery sizing - we use around 500 watts per hour so the battery lasts overnight if its fully charged when it's dark for 12 hours - but so far since Feb it's only been fully charged at the beginning of sundown a handful of times.

Definitely expensive.

From memory battery life is 10 years.

Thank you all. I shall analyse what you have said and re-post.
The quote was more than I expected. This was the first quote I sought. We did not expect to cover most of our needs. Only some.
He did not tell me about the feed-in only being an introductory offer.
He spoke of an 8 kW battery as well.
More questions from me tomorrow.

Yes this sounds expensive

Sub-Company I work for supply 'home fit' kits

10 x panels
1 x battery
1 x inverter
All fixings at customer lengths
Approx £6k

This does not include installation, you would need an electrician for final connections.

It isn’t that the “feed in” is an introductory offer. The feed in tariff doesn’t exist anymore to new users. It’s now the seg which pays you per unit of electricity. Most energy providers pay around 5p per unit. Tesla currently pays 12p if you have their powerwall. Octopus currently have a 12 month deal at 15p.

The main issue is that people think “I use 3000 units, I will generate around 5000 units so I can sell back 2000 units buy no units and I’m quids in”. it doesn’t work like that. You don’t generate much in winter so you are buying in. In early spring and late autumn you’ll be generating some and buying some. In summer you will generate more than you need in all likelihood but you can only store what your battery will hold so unless your battery is big enough and your usage low enough to get through the night you might still have to buy in even during the summer.

And everything depends on the size of your inverter. Think of it like a bottle neck in your system. You can have as many batteries as you like but the extent to which you can fill them up is constrained by the size of your inverter.

Sounds pretty expensive. We're Northamptonshire, and recently had 16 panels fitted including skirting round for bird protection (forget the official name for it!) plus are having a Tesla Powerwall installed (there were very long lead times on this, we agreed our install last July and probably won't be getting the powerwall until May) for around £16.5k,

This included all fitting costs including 2 sets of scaffolding, as we have 10 panels on a south facing roof, and 6 on an east facing roof (L shaped house).

Remember though that solar panels are not a homogenous product. Some are much better than others

Thank you all for the information and comments.
The Quote is for Titan 445w panels
No info given for Inverter or Battery.
Anyone know anything about Vanadium Flow Batteries?

We have a south facing gable end but salesman said that Solar Panels cannot be fitted vertically. Was this right?

That sounds super expensive. Granted I don't have a battery and there was no need for scaffolding, but we got 12 panels for about £4.5k

We got 23 panels, 10 with optimisers (rear roof), two solax 5.8 kw batteries and a solax X1 Hybrid 7.5D inverter fully fitted (also scaffolding front and back) with all mcs certification and dno registration for £16000 fitted in Dec. We got £1000 back from the council on a grant they were doing. We are still trying to get the 15 p Octopus export rate but needed a new second generation smart meter fitted which has just been done. Octopus have a new rate called Flux which looks good and we might swop to that.
Like already stated in Winter we didn’t cover our use. Now we are covering our use during the day but not filling the batteries to full when it’s raining like today. Sunny days we have produced masses and exported loads to the grid as the batteries were full by lunchtime. We were away at the weekend and used no electricity from the grid at all. All in all I’m glad we got them though I’m not sure if our quote wasn’t a bit expensive too! Was really difficult to get decent quotes. Most just took a google maps photo and sent a quote based on that.

We paid similar for 12 panels, inverter (Solis) and 10kwh batteries (PureDrive), we got 3 quotes and all were similar.

We aren’t exporting yet, the paperwork takes ages! Octopus seem to be the best to sell to, depending on what tariff you go for you can get around 15p/kwh, I don’t think it’s just a 12 month thing? We won’t because I have an EV so picked an EV tariff, therefore we are limited to 4p; however I have been filling the batteries at my cheap overnight rate so even in the winter I only pay the higher rate if anyone uses the shower which is 8kw because the batteries won’t release more than 3ish at a time. Look at Flux, Outgoing or Agile if you don’t have an EV.

In February I pretty much halved the amount I charged overnight, using solar for the rest. In March on good days we have been self sufficient (sadly not today when we only produced 2kwh all day!). In the summer I will put any excess into the car if I am here, that’s worth more than the 4p.

We can’t use it to heat water as we don’t have a hot water tank so unfortunately I am still paying large amounts for gas for heating/hot water.

We have had some minor issues since installation that have got solved remotely by Solis, there was also a fault with the clamp that measures the input/output by the meter that we had to fix, there are loads of very knowledgable Facebook groups who have been a godsend so definitely look out for one for your inverter.

@FlyingFlamingo how did you solve the clamp problem as we are having issues with ours not measuring correctly (though the smart meter does!). Had the installers here today again but they seemed to think it was an app issue. We rang Solax and they say it’s a clamp issue so we will have to get them back again.

Ours was initially backwards so giving nonsense data…it worked 99% of the time after that then we started getting error messages, it turned out the meter wires were loose. Then our battery voltage was set too high so Solis fixed that remotely. We also had a fairly common error code when the batteries hit 100% so they did a remote update. It’s all working fine now but we are still waiting on paperwork so can’t export. Because I can put the excess into the car that’s not a huge issue for us though unless we aren’t here!

The moment you mentioned a salesman I knew it would be expensive.

Go to the MCS website: go to the Find a Contractor section:
https://mcscertified.com/find-an-installer/

Put in your details and you'll find local companies who do this work and are registered under the MCS scheme (which offers you, the customer, a certain level of safety and accountability). Call them, see what they can offer. Look for known, reliable brands. Solar Edge, Sonnen etc. They'll cost a bit more but they are more reliable.

Anyone can set themselves up as a salesperson. Lots of people have gone from double-glazing sales into PV. They come round and sell you a system, then arrange for an installer to come and do the work. They employ installers as cheaply as possible. Cut out the salesman and go straight to the installer.

They can be hung vertically, but because of the angle they may not be as efficient — maximum surface area exposed to the sun=more electricity generated. 30-45 degrees is the optimal choice, though I've read of experiments with panels laid flat coming in close to optimal.

There's also the issue of gravity and stresses on vertical-hung panels, so more H&S and specialist fitting issues.

Apologies in advance for suggesting something you haven’t actually asked for but in case you hadn’t thought of it…

Have you considered solar thermal panels instead? They heat your domestic hot water. I’ve found them incredibly effective.
Much cheaper than solar panels to buy and install (about a third of the price and you need less panels), no battery needed, virtually maintenance free. Also covered by the Domestic Renewable Heating Incentive (RHI).

Wow, that’s expensive. Ours was £13k and we got 14 panels. I think the battery and inverter are the same size as yours from memory but not sure how to check on the app. They were fitted last year and by Project Solar and We’re extremely happy with them.

Thank you all for the replies so far. Please keep them coming especially if you will mention names.

@seekingasimplelife I had not thought of thermal, we do not have a water tank, so not sure if I can use that idea.
@QueenBeaver Interesting you used Project Solar, it was they who gave us our quote.

Back to the research. . . . . .

Don't overpower your system. We have a big house (large six bed rural detached). When the system is working well such as today (bright clear and sunny) we can't use everything we generate and that's with panels plus a fairly big battery (8kw) and a solar immersion unit so that we also heat our hot water with solar. If you go for too large a system for your household you are then paying to set up a system which mainly benefits the electricity companies.

Export rates are shockingly low.