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 !

I’ve just looked at a price for solar panels and a battery. I know nothing about them but was interested. The quotes were from Octopus and E-On. About 8k in total.

Thing is I don’t plan on living here for more than 8 years. Maybe even 6. But if we get finance , and save £100 a month on electricity, and it costs £100 per month on finance , wouldn’t we get our money back in 8 years ? Wouldn’t that mean we basically break even straight away?

I do have an electric car and a charger .Do get add value to your home ?

I think the market is very tricky at the moment so it’s hard to tell but I would certainly be more likely to buy a house with panels and a charger. I’d really hope for a battery tbh but that does increase the cost a lot.

Battery and Panels coming out as £k quote. I think if the finance is £100 per months and that’s the saving on electricity, it’s breaking even isn’t it ?

I don’t know if you can get a free survey before hand so you can see the estimations beforehand ?

I think it depends on the system you get. We bought 21 panels, a 13.5 kw battery/inverter and power wall system plus an EV charger although we do not yet have an EV. The estimated payback time is 8 years according to the modelling. Most reputable installers will model a few examples. So we had a budget option, a premium and a premium plus. You also have to consider a solar panel system adds value to the house in much the same way a new kitchen or bathroom would.

This is absolute nonsense, we have a full solar, battery and heat pump installation and our insurance hasn’t changed a penny.

Edited to say that I called my insurers immediately the system was installed and sent full details and they said it made no difference whatsoever.

There is no additional fire risk from solar panels anyway.

My last post wasn’t very clear. I’ve looked online at quotes and it comes out at about £8k for solar panels and a battery. This is quoted from Eon. Octopus were a similar price.
Wickes also do a free visit. Is it worth getting a free quote does anyone think?

I mean if you get in finance over 8 years and pay £90 and it saves you that in electricity costs, doesn’t that mean you’d break even straight away?

Would it make a house more desirable when it comes to selling ?

Are solar panels and a battery really complicated to understand ? I mean for people like me who know nothing about these things…

utterly depends on what the solar tariff is in the next 15 years...

the rate per unit I was quoted is now meaningless as my current provider dropped its tariff by 18% when telling me what it would pay for year 2.

Therefore the payback period is not what I thought on original purchase...

Payback depends on a few things

• what is your consumption?
• are you getting a battery ? Just solar pays back quite quickly if you use a lot of electricity because the panels themselves are pretty cheap
• where are they being installed? And how complex an install is it? You can get plug in now so can be quite cheap
• are you prepared to flex your consumption and change tariff? I am on Octopus flex and I manage my consumption carefully (using the AI on my battery and planning ahead when I use electricity)

As an example mine which was professional installation with battery etc will take 6-7 years. Perhaps less with offset on smart usage whcih I do all year round. My relative abroad bought solar panels plug ins at a similar time and these are paying back within a couple of years but obviously only really useful daytime and mostly summer.

Ours will hopefully be repaid in 5 years installed in May in Ireland -large house - 22 panels snd a battery - cost €11300 - no bills since then and we've €450 credit from selling surplus power to the grid.

"Plug in Solar" is legal in UK from the end of this month. Basically you'll be able to purchase a couple of panels which plug into a microinverter and you simply plug that directly into a house socket. Job done. These have been available in Germany, Spain etc. for a few years now, and are available in the middle aisle of their Lidl or their country's Amazon, etc.

They'll not reduce your consumption by 100% but should pay for themselves in 2½ years, and the outlay is a fraction of big panels because you don't have to mount them on the roof, and you don't need an electrician. Even if you do get one in its only going to be a few hours labour.

Batteries have not yet been legalised but it will come, and there are several YouTubes where people are already using them. You can even set it to charge up the battery on cheap overnight mains power and then use that in the house during the day instead of the higher costing day power.

The panels can be placed freestanding in the garden, or tied to a balcony or fence. And obviously they can be taken with you if you move.

There are lots of YouTubes on it, it's definitely a good alternative if you don't want the long term repayment.

I don’t understand this though. If everyone got solar panels and batteries and , and became more self sufficient energy wise , why would the government want this? The energy companies would lose money and in turn so would the government.

Surely energy companies will lose lots of money?

We have installed solar panels and quite a lot of battery storage. We are a very high consumption household of 5 adults with 2 EV's.
Ideally I would say you need enough solar panels and storage for your own consumption...the best tarrifs are the EV ones, where you can also top up your batteries (Ours is ~7p/KWh overnight)
We have a fully south facing roof, no shade across it at all, live in the SE and from October until March got virtually no solar ....the sales men do not tell you this!

For those saying there is no additional fire risk, there have now been fires at 4 primary schools in my region that have all been attributed to solar panels.

I’d say understanding the systems, a proper maintenance schedule and rock-solid insurance cover would all be essential if I were considering them for my home.

I’d probably say if we’re going to live here for non ore than 8 years , it may not be worth it.. again I don’t know if it makes a property more desirable.