Are solar panels worth it??

[PancakeHouse]

Lately I’ve been inundated with offers for solar panels, through the letterbox, cold calls and targeted advertising on social
media.
I’m in Wales and apparently there are many grants available….if I fill in my details for them to quote me first.

Does anyone have them and find it worthwhile?

I do have detached house with a south facing roof, currently have mains gas for heating/hot water and normal electric tariff.

I don’t have an electric car, but may consider in future if solar panels were a worthwhile investment.

Any one willing to share their experiences?

Many thanks

We have them and they have been very worth it, during the summer the money we get from exporting power pays for our electric and gas bills including the standing charge and we get a geed deal extra paid into our account I would guess that this year we will spend about £400 pounds on gas and electric including charging a Hybrid car, maybe half of that if we have another sunny summer. I will add though that I wouldn’t do it without a battery even in the summer we charge the battery at night at 6p a unit and sell during the day at 12p a unit, well 15 p until April.

There aren't any grants at the moment. Only use MCS accredited installers for quotes.

I'm in Wales and also told we could have a grant, but apparently didnt qualify as income too high after all the faff. We still went ahead with them and last summer was great with how much we saved/earned. October onwards not so much, no sunshine this winter!

That’s really helpful info, thank you!

do you mind sharing the cost of the installation and panels, how long is it supposed to take to break even?

Mine was £11K including 10KW of batteries and an emergency change over switch which ensure the house has power when we have a power cut which happens quite often.

They are worth it if you have at least 10kw of batteries as well, if I was doing it again I'd get 15kw.
Also worth it if you have no mains gas.
If you have a hot water tank it's very useful as you can use solar to heat your water either during the day instead of exporting or at night if you're on a solar tariff.
If you pick a tariff like agile which fluctuates throughout the day you can save more but it does require time spent on it.