How much energy do your solar panels generate in a year?

[HairyKitty]

I’m considering an interest free loan to have panels installed, but really even the big companies don’t give a clear idea of realistic benefits. With kwh prices doubling very soon the payback period is starting to look more reasonable. So if you’ve got panels can you tell me:
How many you’ve got (and the total “powerage”)
Your rough region of UK
How many kwh they generate in a calendar year
How much of this you are able to use (if there’s no battery) and how much is exported

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Updated by MNHQ
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Following as I'd love to know too!

Particularly interested in anyone that has a North facing roof. Our council gave subsidies a few years ago but barely anyone took up the offer. Probably because the payback at the time was 15-20 years. Solar panels don't last that long maintenance free so it didn't make sense to sign up then. With the new energy rates the pay back would be a lot more favourable but I don't know the going rate installation cost.

The big company offering 3 yrs interest free is eon but I notice that in the past couple of years their cost for panels has gone up by 50% or more which is pretty extreme.

I do wish there was more being done to encourage low/middle earners to invest.

I have plugged my house orientation angle postcode into eons calculator but annoyingly instead of suggesting kwh produced it tells me £saved and £resold to the grid, which is effectively meaningless - this reminds me of the old saving products where they quote some random figures that have nothing to do with real life.

Also hannahcolobus, I feel nervous about picking a random installer who’s perhaps cheaper than eon (who want £6000 for 6 basic panels without battery), how can I find an actual genuine experienced installer?

We had the Scottish energy dudes out and we were told certain amount goes back into the grid, and we wouldn't see any benefit for years due to cost.

We generate 18kw hours per day and have 20 solar panels.

We consume around 20 kWh a day but frustratingly import 10 kWh because half our usage is in the evenings.

We are in the south.

Use a MCS accredited installer only! Batteries aren't usually going to add much value. Expect to pay about £1k per kilowatt peak.

And don't install on a north facing roof!

I’m not much help as mine are in the first year so I have no idea how much it has accrued. They came with my new build home- we have 14 panels and are in the northwest and are south facing. On average we use £50 per month electricity (only 2 of us but we work from home and DH has a lot of tech stuff going most of the time for his job). On sunny days like today we watch the smart meter and its only just started ticking up again from about 10am. That’s with lots of washing on, the dishwasher as well as the usual stuff. The buyback rate is crap so we try to use as much as we can whilst it’s ‘free’.

I got a quote 6 years ago from
this company.

contact-solar.co.uk

I was really impressed with their attitude, no hard sell at all, and the figures they produced were very detailed, but we didn’t go ahead with it because our roof could only generate much less than half our daily usage, adding a battery would have been very expensive, & although the long-term returns looked good it was a big chunk for us upfront with retirement looming, income shrinking and other expenses still high.
Also of course energy costs were much lower then…hindsight, eh?
Ive attached 2 pages from the detailed specs. Obviously feed-in tariffs and all that were different then.

Thanks, thats really helpful (all of you!). So it sounds like you only save if you use elecrricity whilst it's being generated and you cant store it up to use a few hours later? If that's the case they are not worth the money at all!

We've had two quotes and both said it would cost us roughly ten years to save what we would spend on the panels. But it of course depends on your own roof.

When was this quoted? As I’m thinking prices are going up 80% in Oct and again in Dec which would half the payback period depending what prices the quote was using

My eon system is a 5.8kw solar array with a 5kw inverter (maximum allowed by the grid for domestic arrays in our area). Then an 8.2kw battery so that we can store for evening use. They say that will give us 30% energy independence (but it should be higher than that in reality since we work from home and are also having a solar immersion to minimise the amount we feed back into the grid).

if we managed to capture all of the power generated (capped at the inverter limit of 5kw) then at approx 35p per kWh that would save us about £1700 on our bills.

The system was £12k fitted on eon’s interest free credit. Clearly for the next four years we won’t actually be saving anything. We will be paying more since whilst our energy bills will be a bit lower, we will be paying 250 a month for the panels. So for those struggling with bills it isn’t a solution at all at this stage. It’s a long term investment.

we were told under no circumstances put any on a north facing roof since it will never pay back.

eons prices have shot up just in the past year.

Thanks this is an interesting thread. Does anyone know if you can put panels on a normal shed or do they have to go in a house roof- we have a thatched roof so no chance of panels going on there!

You can have them on the ground even but the set up is more complicated with wiring considerations

Thanks @Lemonblossom I hadn’t even thought of that.

There is another option to a battery if you have a hot water tank, which is to use any excess electricity generated to heat water.

We had our panels installed 7 years ago, before batteries were a realistic option price wise. We have an iBoost that detects when we are exporting electricity and turns on the immersion element. It's meant our boiler only rarely come on May to September ish, as solar generates our hot water. It's particularly worth it if, like us, you are not on the gas grid - our boiler runs on oil.

How many you’ve got (and the total “powerage”) will depend on house size as to how many you need

Your rough region of UK
How many kwh they generate in a calendar year this will depend on pitch of roof, angle of roof etc so each house will be different

How much of this you are able to use (if there’s no battery) and how much is exported without a battery you can expect up to 30% savings ( this will not include your standing charge though) so I pay 50p a day standing charge for electric - £3.50 if my £10 electric charge weekly - so 30% saving would be on £6.50 not £10. Then if electric doubles in price but standing charge stays the same - then it’d be 30% if £13 not £20

if you have a battery you’d likely save up to 75% if your electric cost- but again when calculating this you must remove the standing charge for electric, as you’ll still be paying the standing charge for electric ( and gas if you have gas)

the average cost of panels is £5k and battery £5k

byt if you use gas central heating you may need to look at some electric heating radiators ( even stand alone) ti be making use of the panels ti heat your home using the free fuel - but without a battery ti store your electric this will mean it’s difficult at night

also less daylight in winter months you’ll produce less electric in the winter months - say 9-4 rather than summer months 6-8 so it’s not how much electric you produce in a year, but how much you can produce when you need it and will it be enough in the winter to cover your usage?

We're looking at solar and have the same oil tank set up as you. Good to hear it works!

When was this quoted? As I’m thinking prices are going up 80% in Oct and again in Dec which would half the payback period depending what prices the quote was using
About two months ago.

Lizzie. It’s perfectly possible to put them on a shed - you would just need to get advice as to how much sun the shed would get and whether it would have much shade. If the shed is close to the house, it’s more likely to be be shaded by the house as the sun moves around. Ideally you want to be putting a minimum of 2.5 kw of panels in the roof, more if possible.

Don't use the present kWh prices as any sort of basis for investing in solar- they could just as quickly fall back to where they were.

Very unlikely. The Cornwall consultancy group, which has been leading on the predictions for the energy cap, with considerably accuracy, are suggesting prices won't get back to 2020/21 prices or thereabouts until approx 2030. The price will decline over those years but a slow decline, their research is suggesting.