If you have solar panels how much are they generating on overcast winter days?

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Ours just going in and Im curious as to real life experiences versus the spiel..

£32k on a regular domestic home? 😬

If you are lucky enough to have a gas boiler, the cost of hot water is so low that adding an immersion gadget us not a profitable proposition.

Your summer gas bill (hot water only, no heating) is probably something in the region of 50p a day, and you would only make a saving on sunny summer days.

If you are unlucky enough to be all-electric, the cost is so high that it makes more sense.

Ours was £15.5K for 23 panels (8 on back roof 15 on front as we are east west facing) and two five kw batteries and a hybrid inverter and 8 of the panels on the back roof have optimisers. That’s including all fitting, scaffolding and mcs certification. We are getting a council grant of £1000 towards it. Not sure exactly how much the batteries were in that cost.

We paid £7k for our panels which have just paid for themselves after seven years; seems like prices have really gone up without the payback? I'm dubious about the value of the batteries to be frank, but our FiT payments will now contribute to those.

Interesting points about the hot water, @PigletJohn - we have a diverter which works great so that our gas boiler is off in the summer; just the standing charge that pisses me off!

We are pretty low users - so far this month the panels/battery have generated about 1/3 of what we use.
In the summer they do 100% and heat our water too via an immersion diverter.

That’s interesting to know. Our boiler is a combi boiler so we don’t have a hot water tank so I guess it makes even less sense to have a solar immersion gadget(not even sure if they work with combi boilers?)

I will add that our boiler had a fault this month (before the frost, luckily) and so while it was being fixed we could at least still have hot showers -worth the extra cost for me!

^^ that should be hot showers. It was worth the extra cost for that alone!

That's a major advantage of having a cylinder ratber than a combi.

How much does it cost to have solar panels & batteries installed? I'm thinking of buying a house in the near future & wondered about having them done if I can afford it.

It isn't a profitable investment. You would probably do better to use your spare money to reduce your mortgage or increase your pension.

I do not think it just an investment issue its about doing a little for the next generation.

We've just had an install done, finished this week. There was quite a variance in quotes, but we've ended up paying 14.7k

That's for 6kw of panels in a split east/west array (so two lots of scaffolding), just under 15kwh of batteries which can charge from the grid, and an EPS backup system so we can run from solar/batteries in a power outage - that bit is actually happening in Jan

We're pretty much all electric with an EV on an EV tariff, so we can charge the batteries cheaply overnight. Last few days it's saved us just under £5 a day and that will be higher come summer as the batteries and a chunk of the car charging will come from the panels.

Ours is doing well today on a rare sunny day! It’s managed to charge the batteries up from 18% and we are running the washing machine and tumble drier.

I have a 24k standard boiler heating my water twice a day for an hour at a time to 60 degrees. Cost during august between 75p and 90 p a day. Will be costing more now as in winter the water is entering the system colder so requires more heating. If you don’t have a battery then having a diverted to heat the water would give you a saving.
I have an 8 panel solar system, no battery. In summer it is enough to run my 4 bedroom house during daylight hours with all the usual background appliances plus washing, tvs and computers on during the day. My house is never unoccupied during the day as my mum is housebound and I work evenings. This time of year they are hardly generating anything. Maybe enough to boil a kettle once and my usage from the grid has gone from 6 kw per day summer time to 14 kw per day winter time.

This is taken from my online electric account on a random day last august. Ignore the middle of the night usage as most people wouldn’t have such high nighttime usage but I have electrical equipment for my mum that adds to my nighttime usage. By about 8.30 am the solar kicked in, small amount pulled from the grid at 11 am which was probably the washing machine going on. Started drawing from the grid again around 6.30 pm and usage rising when diner would be cooked and 3 other adults return home from work at around 7pm.

For comparison a Radom day in december. Ignore the night and evening and just compare the day as at no time was I not drawing from the national grid.