IG, you must be loving these relatively clear skies at the moment, how are your panels performing ?
Can't help but feel I missed the boat
I am wondering if the companies have found a way round the reduced tarrifs, when it was announced all advertising stopped and and there were no more offers, but this week I have had 3 spam calls offering solar panels and implying that there was income to be had from it. I did not take it further. In this financial climate I would not want to take a chance, but I am wondering if the Companies are rethinking it and deciding that a small income is better than none. I think there is still FIT albeit half of what it was.
There is income to be had, but only half what was previously on offer
Exactly. I'll be letting the dust settle then look to install mine before April to avoid the EPC tie-in.
I have recently had a 4KW system installed on my South Facing roof, cost me £13,990 fully installed and was installed last Sunday (27th) and took athree man team the best part of a day.
Panels look good, very little mess was made during the installation, and the internal work ie for the inverter and the generation meter was very good indeed.
Our yearly generation estimate due to:-
Location - Colchester
System Size - 4KW
Level of Shade - 0
Angle - cant remember but quite steep
Orientation - South facing
is 3500KW per year...
Giving
£1515.50yearly income
£52.50 buy back for half of the generated power
Giving £1567.50 back per year totally tax free plus the savings outlined above.I personally would need to earn double that pre tax to generate that sort of cashflow, so to me this means just shy of 9 years to pay for the system in outright cash terms.
Our electricity bill is about £900 per year and asusming a 15 - 20% saving that is ROUGHLY another £180 a year.Its worth noting that in the week it has been installed, we have seen our day time running costs halved as per our Owl monitor.I appreciate that this may not be super correct but it is definitely helping.
We are lucky as the wife works from home 4 days a week, so will be able to stagger high KW use appliances (washing machine/tumble dryer, dishwasher, underfloor heating) meaning we will hopefully be able to use as much of the generted stuff as possible.
We've been in the house for 2 years so far.Arent planning on going anywhere for some time as school in the area are good and our little girl is only 7 months old.
So to me the system was and is a no brainer.
I don't THINK the government is gonna change the tax free element or FiTS element as in all honesty for Residential owners of the paid systems, this would generate very little in tax revenue.I can honestly see a degree of chance of commerical companies taxation being increased but even that is slight.
That being said, the current offer of 43.3 p per KW is of course dropping as of 12th December and once the new rates kick in the system definitely isnt AS worthwhile for financial reasons.
However, it is still a good way to cut your carbon footprint, and whilst this wasnt my first reason for doing this I have read that a 4 KW system will offset approx 1.4 tons of Carbon per year which should easily offset our family car and then some (doesnt really offset anything off of my cars footprint but some of it is being offset...hahaha)
Taking into account electricity prices only going up each year, and this sort of fully owned system only adding to the value of your house, I think there are for more positives than negatives.
In an earlier post, it was mentioned you would be better off paying the installation fee towards your mortgage and if you arent fixed in and if you have a partifularly high rate then I agree this is definitely a great way to go, BUT my current mortgage is 1% above base for the balance (18 years) so without wanting to raise any angry comments, its actually not worth paying that off yet.
Also, to make having a full system (in my honestly anything less than 2.5 KW just doesnt justify the returns) installed it is also fair to say you HAVE to have the cash readily available.At no time would borrowing any funds be advisiable to do so.
So if you have the funds free, have an optimal installation location, and arent planning on moving for a few years, I think you should deinfely look at this if you can get it fully installed and all documentation completed before the 12th.
And even if you do move, recent estate agent studies have shown that with the saving made and the flow of FiTS funds towards the property, the full installation costs are easily clawed back.
My flame suit is on for any objective replies.....data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7
My installer is loving them data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7they get the feed back, not me data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7
6kW today, against an average of 9kW a day since they were installed at the end of June.
~£650 in tariff for them so far...
I've been logging the generation regularly since October to see how it falls off and will report back as and when people are interested.
That's a fantastic number for early December... I presume you are darn sarff and completely south facing with no obstructions.
Have you seen this site?
http://sunbird.jrc.it/pvgis/apps/pvest.php
Phil
I managed 10.1 KWS today. Couldn't believe it. I had the underfloor heating on and it cost nothing. Thanks you sunlight. Been going for 10 day now ad hit 60.9 KWS do far so extremely happy with that
10kw is good for yesterday.
For reference I had my system installed end of October. It's 4kw and cost me £10,950 all in... definitely made the right move getting in before the FIT was halved so couldn't be happier with my investment!
Well, central southern England, just south of Oxford.I hadn't seen that site so thanks data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7
7.73kW today data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7