Solar Panels & battery storage

[Lavendersquare]

Like many others we are looking to install solar panels on our roof and have had a quote from a reputable company to install 14 panels on our south facing roof with a 10kwh battery for storage.

All In including installation the cost is coming in at just over £13k.

I'm surprised the price isn't higher, anyone recently had solar installed, what do you think of the price?

---

Updated by MNHQ
Landed on this page in search of solar panel advice? Find our guide to installing solar panels in your home in the UK. HTH!

That seems very reasonable. We are just about to get quotes for a similar installation. I'll let you know how much they are.

We recently got 15 panels and a battery (I can’t remember the capacity) installed for £13k so sounds about right.

We've just had panels and a 5.2kw battery installed and paid £10,200 so I think with your bigger battery your price is about right (if not cheaper than ours - can't remember what we were quoted for the bigger battery, sorry)

We just paid £14.8k for 15kwh batteries, 16 panels split east west (so double scaffolding) and a backup system so we can run off batteries in a powercut.

It sounds quite a lot to me.

We had panels fitted last spring and paid just under £6,500 for 12 panels and a 6.5 kw battery.

We paid £10k last March, prices have increased quite a bit since them, I know the firm we used had 300 batteries on back order! So if you are happy with the price and they have took, I would go ahead tbh.

Stock not took 😂

Sounds good especially with that size battery. We paid £11500 for 20 panels and 5..2k battery, to opt for the bigger battery was considerable more.

We paid £15,500 for 22 panels, one 3.6Kw inverter and 2x 6.5Kw batteries late last year, so if anything your quote seems a little pricey (but we are in the North).

We tend to assume all equipment is the same, it may be a bit like buying a car unfortunately most of us have next to no knowledge as to what is reasonable.

Thanks for all the responses, the quote we have us actually for 2 x 5kwh batteries rather than 1 x10 kWh so note sure if that makes a difference.

I think we will do for it 😃

Do you know what type of battery it is - can it be charged from the grid?

We have an EV tariff with a cheaper overnight rate and use these cheap hours to charge up the battery then discharge during the day (when we'd be paying peak rate) which has massively increased the overall benefit of the system.

Solar generation has to be automatically disconnected from the distribution network in a power cut (so that it cannot make cables live that might be under repair) and the inverters normally shut down immediately. It is possible to get one with an off-grid outlet that you can plug something like a freezer or boiler into, but this is unusual and costs extra. This outlet will not be connected to your house circuits unless you have a changeover switch, which is very unusual in an ordinary domestic installation.

Sounds right, we had 12 panels and a 10kw battery fitted a year ago for around £11k, prices will have gone up. Also we are in a cheap part of the UK so Labour costs low here

@PigletJohn perhaps they are becoming more common as we have this set up (it was an extra cost). Also we have a large house so it can’t power the whole house in the event of a power cut but it does all our downstairs circuits so the fridge, freezer, microwave, downstairs lights etc will all work. We can use torches upstairs if needed.

Excellent, this probably also makes it more economical to charge an EV.

@PigletJohn We've had a single socket installed which will draw from the battery in the event of a power cut (for charging phones etc). I'm guessing from what you say that the battery won't recharge until the power is back on though?

If you have solar power, I'd expect it to charge the battery even in a power cut, but I don't know for sure if this is how your system works.

Handy for the apocalypse.

Yes it can be charged from the grid, I have an EV so already use cheap nighttime electricity to charge it, the plan is to charge the house battery nightly as well. I'm hoping that way most of our daytime usage will effectively be free from solar or low cost from nighttime charging.

We do have a changeover switch. And a separate earth.

We run a small business, our server is here, and I wfh too. We've got a totally useless DNO who don't answer the phone and we've had several powercuts (mostly due to builders on nearby sites) so it was important for us.

That's the situation we're in. Ours was installed on 21st December so we haven't been through summer yet. We're basically all electric. 5 bed house

Yesterday we used under 1kwh at peak rate. Our worst day this year - in Jan - was about 3kwh.

@Lavendersquare our batteries recharge during the day when there is excess solar, and we top them up overnight if they have any capacity at the cheap rate. We also charge our EV overnight at the cheap rate, so have the same set up you are going for.

it works well for us. I do find in winter when we are home during day time using power, we don’t have much excess, so the batteries really need the overnight charge. On days when we are using the oven/tumble dryer a lot in winter we sometimes do need to pay full price for electricity if we’ve drained the batteries and the solar isn’t coming through (either due to it being darkness hours or v cloudy/foggy).

so basically some days over winter we do still
have a normal electricity bill!! But those days are few and far between. Most other winter days our grid usage is heavily reduced vs normal. In summer we don’t really ever use grid power, so totally free electricity.

we also sell back any electricity to the grid once our batteries are full and the house’s power needs are met. Generally this is only on sunny days.

We had 12 panels and a 10 kWh battery installed 5 weeks ago.

It was £15k, but £1k was scaffolding.

Really pleased with it. Despite being winter, we've already had a handful of days where we have run entirely on solar/battery power.

Sounds about right. The batteries are the expensive part.

I'd recommend studying your electric meter to see roughly what you use and when to make sure you are sizing the battery correctly (remembering that it won't discharge below about 15% to protect it).

We went for a 5kwh as we are on economy 10. Only had it for two months so it's winter useage.

It is just about sufficient but an extra kw would have ensured it went right through on our heavier use days (I only have 14 hours to cover though and some of these are day time)

However, the cost of the extra battery to save the couple of kWh probably doesn't stack up.

The days are noticeably longer and so the time the battery needs to last is diminishing, meaning I'd only make marginal savings on a couple of months of the year.

You also need to consider the maximum rate your batteries can discharge through the inverter. You may have 10kwh to go at but if you are using 5kwh at once it probably won't support it l.

These are just things to be aware of, not to put you off. I am loving mine!

I'm north Scotland and despite having snow my peak meter hasn't moved in four days.

We are 24 panels and 20 kWh batteries. Lithium something or another. Hugely expensive bits of kit. Big house with complex roof. £22,000.