Solar panels payback time.

[oncemoreuntothebeachdearfriends]

I live in bungalow land, mostly south-facing, but none of the neighbours have them so I can't ask - & obs I don't trust sales reps.

If you've got solar panels, what is your estimated payback time ?
Or if you haven't, did the sales rep give you an estimate 😀.

I know it's a "how long is a piece of string" question, but I'd like some idea before I ask for quotes.

Thank you.

We have ours set up so that they work even if the grid goes down. They won’t power the whole house, but they will still charge the batteries and I can run the freezers and some other bits from the batteries via a plug socket - and that’s all I’d need.

I need to look into how to do this.

We are off-grid so no electricity related costs at all. Probably about 7 years, but we bought the panels 5 years ago so they were much more expensive then than they would be now, as were the batteries (only moved into the house a year ago though).

we also have this set up which costs extra. DH is convinced that in the future we'll have large scale blackouts so even if the rest of the world goes to pot I'll still be able to cook beans and do the laundry.

We got ours before the pandemic, and I reckon it roughly halved our electricity costs overall (more in summer, less in winter).

But obviously it depends on your usage patterns and your ability to shift usage to times when the panels are producing lots of power. So you want to charge or run appliances during the day rather than overnight, and try to run hungry appliances sequentially rather than at the same time.

If you're not selling back to the grid, a solar diverter is worth paying extra for (£100 or so iirc) - it diverts any surplus power into the hot water tank, thus saving you gas/oil on water heating. On a sunny summer day we can get a full tank of hot water as well as being able to do laundry/dishwashing more or less for free.

I don’t use price comparison for home insurance. I’m interested in full and comprehensive coverage, not a wriggle room policy. Perhaps If you ask you will realise you aren’t covered, or have even invalidated your policy by not declaring them. Not a risk I’m going to take.

While insurers might not like to make pay-outs, there are rules that bind them including the treating customers fairly rules, and the fact that if they want to know about something they have to ask.

Our insurance is just fine.

You may, however, be causing yourself higher premiums by divulging info that they don't need/ask for, but will 100% price in to your premiums against your interests if you feel a need to specifically disclose it.

Approx 8 years. We have a big battery and an EV and our bills are already much lower.

Insurance is about knowing you have cover. No point paying any premium if not.

Thanks very much everyone, extremely helpful.
We are very low users, 2 adults, petrol cars, no tumble dryer !
I'll get some quotes, so it's good to be armed with the knowledge I've gained.
8 years possible pay back is a serious drawback at our age !