Anyone with solar panels?

[nofashionflair]

If you have solar panels, how much of cosmetic damage did the wiring/fitting do? Eg have you had to box in cables or do any replastering?

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Updated by MNHQ
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Ours was done very neatly, we have 10 panels and two batteries. Would recommend having the battery option, if you can.

Nothing needed replastering

None. All connected up to a battery and inverter in the garage

we did however also get a heat pump installed to connect to it and that required some holes in the house to fix the wiring.

Thank you - good to know it’s minimal. I’m getting quotes for solar but my house was refurbed quite recently, so I really don’t want lots of holes in the walls.

not sure why you think there would be op? Anyway a good contractor will explain exactly what's involved. I was impressed how non-invasive it was but admittedly the tech is based in the garage which won't be possible for everyone.

Our inverter and battery were installed in the garage next to our consumer unit. There is cabling down the outside wall of the house from the roof into the garage, then the wiring is in trunking on the inside of the garage wall. Nothing inside the house at all - except a 3 pin socket installed in the room the other side of the garage wall which will give us some power from the battery in the event of a power cut.

It all depends where they are able to install your inverter.

As long as there's somewhere else to put your inverter, it shouldn't affect the rest of the house too much. FWIW We don't have a battery, it's all to do with how much solar energy you think you'll get and whether you will use it when it's generated. We have electric powered everything, hot water, heating, eV car, oven and hob, we haven't exported enough to the grid that we have regretted not getting one. They're a lot of money.

Not much damage as it’s in the utility room. But we had to be very specific with them about routes into the house.

They’re a bit like broadband fitters and will happily pin a cable across the exterior of your house in any old place to make life easier, rather than making it unobtrusive.

We had no cables in the house. They went down the side of the house externally and into the garage.

We had some already installed on our new build at the back. Honestly you wouldnt know they were there unless you looked up!

Dont put them on the front of the house. They look really naff. I drove through Slough the other day and every second house has them at the front and some have got completely carried away with just how many to put up!

When mine were fitted a few months back the installer would have run cables down the outside of the house and through new conduit fixed to the walls inside if I hadn't suggested an alternative! So check with your install quote.

The bits in mine are:

• Wire from solar panels has gone through the tiles into the loft. (I don't have a loft conversion
• My invertor is in the loft.
• Wire from invertor down through the house, under floorboards and down an existing pipe in the wall to the main fuse board.
• Fitting a new import meter and isolation switch was a tight fit in the fuse board cupboard.

Zero damage. The battery and inverter are in the crawl space of the upstairs.

Dont put them on the front of the house. They look really naff.

It depends on where your house faces, ours are at the front because that's where gets the most Sun. If we put them on the back they'd not generate as much energy, but would cost us thd same

This is about wiring not where the panels themselves are. Not much point in putting the panels away from the sun just for cosmetic reasons 😂

You must have quite an unusual setup if you can use the solar when it's generated and stop when the sun goes in!

For us the battery is very important for getting the most out of a solar system because it goes some way to smoothing out the peaks and troughs of solar generation, and also enables us to charge the battery in winter with cheap overnight electricity.

On our best summer days we generated 30kWh electricity (enough to run the house and half fill an EV, loads sold back to the grid most days) but if we didn't have a battery we'd still be paying for grid electricity every time the sun went briefly behind a cloud. Which is really annoying if you have solar to give away, have paid loads to install panels, and don't get much for selling it back to the grid.

Before 6am / after 5pm there won't be enough sun shining on the roof to power the house and you'd be buying grid electricity if you don't have a battery. But at noon the solar panels you paid for will often generate twice as much as you could use. So store it and use it later on.

I know it's not what you asked OP, but for anyone reading this and dithering about whether or not to get them, get them!

Obviously they're expensive and a big investment but we have saved several thousand since installation earlier this year.

And we went through the long winded process so the energy company pays us when we export the extra to the grid.

So worth it! (And stored in the garage, no mess!)

I love how someone with no knowledge of my house telling me we've done the wrong thing😂- thanks but we know exactly what we're doing. Battery costs so much money, we are all good... Don't worry about us!

Can anyone share what their actual payback/savings have been compared to what was predicted/estimated?
Is it still generally 10 years to break even?

I didn't I said you are unusual in not needing a battery. Most will benefit enough to justify the extra cost of battery (unless you're on the feed in tariff when you might not)

With current prices we estimate about 7 years. But this is our first summer.
In June this year (exceptionally sunny) we barely used any grid power at all. I think about £2 worth. Rest all solar generated and that includes powering the EV!

Naff? How? It depends which way your roof is facing, we have 8 on the back and 6 on the front. The more the merrier.

This is tricky. People who have ten years of data have got different tech from what you'd get installed now, plus working patterns, energy usage, appliances etc have all changed, and most importantly so have the tariffs.

The big unknown in these calculations is the cost of grid energy. When it goes up, the predicted payback time gets shorter (because every unit you get for free off your roof is worth a bigger amount of energy saved).

We had a company called Solar Fast do ours and they spoke to us, at length, about where the cables would go.

We went for the cheapest, easiest option and just had them secured to the walls – no trunking or anything – a year on I barely notice them.

We put the inverter and battery in an outside ‘box’ too so it’s easy to get to and isn’t taking room up in the house.

This blog was handy – https://solarfast.co.uk/blog/solar-panel-installation/  - but I’m sure you are all doing.