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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 a three 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
£1515.50 yearly 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..... |
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Author: tonycooling
26-11-2019 04:13:40