Solar Panels

[ptumbi]

Probably been done loads of times - but does anyone have solar panels?

I am thinking of them for my semi. I already have a hotwater panel, which I hoped would eliminate the need for gas in the summer (no heating on, electric oven and lights etc - it hasn't actually removed the gas charge but it is reduiced)

I know the gov don't give so much back now in the way Feed-in tariffs, but I'm quite happy just to not pay as much electric, not to make it a money earner!

Solar panels are apparently quite cheap now.

It doesn't have a very good payback.

You might spend £6,000 and get £600 a year of in savings and payments, however this is not (as some people think) a 10% return.

If you invested £6,000 with a 10% return, then at the end of year one you would have £6,600, and at the end of year two you would have £7,260.

If you buy solar panels with 10% savings and payments, then at the end of year one you will still be £5,400 down, and it will take you ten years to get back to where you started (ignoring inflation).

However if you have the money kicking around doing nothing, and you have already paid off all your debts, funded your pension, invested for the future and have a substantial nest-egg for a rainy day, and you expect to survive, and live in your current house, for another 20 years, it does no harm to spend some of what's spare on solar.

I'm not actually looking for a payback - I think it's wrong that the gov paid a tariff of (say) 25p/unit in, and customers pay 10p (say)/unit out...so making a profit of 15p/unit. I'm happy to just have the panels cover what I use...(same in/out)

I think a 8xpanel would be less than £5000, and if it covers much of my electric, I'll be happy. i don't intend to be here for 20 years, but it is (if nothing else) a good selling point for the house! My electric is over £650 a year, so a reduction on that wuold be good.

The best thing is if you can use the electricity you generate (eg tumble dry during the day, charge things up including electric cars etc). We are out at work during the day so couldn't make the most of this. So instead we have solar hot water as you can store hot water more easily that you can store electricity.

DidI - I already have a panel that heats up the hot water, so in summer we shouldn't use any gas. I'm not working ATM so washing machines/dishwashers etc are on in the day.

the FIT payment, and the retail price of electricity, are moving closer together, which I think is fairer. At the moment, the payment per kWh generated works out at about 16p, which is higher than the price you are charged. For people with older panels, it can be a lot higher.

I think it would be fairer to have "net metering" so that the amount you send up to the grid for others to use is deducted from the amount you import from the grid, so you would only pay (or be paid) for the difference, but that's not how it works.

At the moment, if you generate, say, 20kWh on a sunny day, and use it all yourself, you still get paid about £3.20. I don't think that's fair on the taxpayer, who coughs up the money for you.

Quite PigletJ. I don't really agree with being paid by the taxpayer to generate your own elec. fair enough if you've got the older panels which cost more to start with, and the tech was new and untried...
Anyway I think I'll look into how much a 8xarray would cost and gtake it from there.

ptumbi sounds like you've done your homework !