Solar Panels

Smurfin

That's more realistic.

Smurfin

A payback period of 8-12 years, no guarantee of the government changing the "rules" in the future, and potential failures....I can't see how "way on top" relates to any of that.

Most people have mortgages, so paying off a £12k chunk of said mortgage gives a completely different view compared to the money sitting in a savings account...

IronGiant

How do the "free" ones work i.e. whats the benefit to the homeowner and what are the terms?  There must be some kind of restrictive covenant which is then built into your house deeds, and what happens if the supplier goes bust?

Philly112

10kWh a day free electricity if you can use it. You have to leave them there for 25 years. If the company goes bust they either come and put all the scaffolding up and take em away or you continue to get free use of them.  Or throw them away?

Smurfin

Just an update.
Due to shading on part of the roof, it now looks like the best we can do is a 3kw system. Can't believe that the first two guys who came round didn't spot this.
Waiting for a quote on this, although the returns might not be enough for us to go ahead.
Phil

Philly112

I've been looking into this some more, and tbh the only circumstances where solar panels stack up are if you don't have a mortgage (that I can see).  If you pay off a lump sum of £12-£13k, the return on investment is much higher (both in terms of interest saved and how quickly the mortgage will be paid off) than anything solar panels can yield.  Of course it also depends on the size of your mortgage, but to me it's a no brainer.

In reality, most people's homes are empty during the day, and it's only at weekends where I can see a benefit in terms of free electricity (except it's not really free).  And I don't know about anyone else, but I don't run lights or many appliances during the day anyway?  Struggling to see the benefit although I still love the idea of panels.

Now if there was a way to store that energy for use when you're home in the evenings, that would be a different story...

Philly112

No mortgage here. Work from home during the day. And for most people, just a timer fitted on the washing machine and dishwasher to come on at say 1100 and 1400 would give them free use of those appliances.
I was looking at this as an alternative to an annuity for part of my savings. 25 years of tax free index linked money. I am fully aware of the potential problems - but there really aren't enough of them to stop this being a very good deal for people in my position.
And yes I agree - I would certainly be paying off debts before installing solar power.

Phil

the-demi-god

Yes, that would be nice.
However, our electricity bills are around £550 year. Not a lot - two people in a 4 bed house. The FIT is more than double that for a 4kw system.
So if I had free electricity, but no FIT, it would only make sense if the system costs were a lot lower than they are now.
It's the FIT that drives this, not the reduced bills.

Phil

IronGiant

You have to take into account the background appliances like fridge and freezer that run all the time, most people run the washing machine during the day too whether they are in or not, in fact the folk I have spoken to suggest you should try to stagger when you use appliances so that you are almost always using the electricity free, and it seems that at the moment anyway you are being paid 43.1p per KW for what you generate whether you use it or it is fed back into the grid. So if you are out the generated electricity will feed into the grid and you will earn 43.1pKW and when you use it from the grid at night it will cost you 12/13p per KW (I think) at the moment you cannot loose I was told that payments had been guaranteed for 25 yrs, not sure that I believe that, but we are commited to reducing our carbon emissions and are behind in the targets so they might keep it to encourage people .

BISHI

Just got my 3rd cheque - £263.27. So thats nearly £500 for 3/4 of the year with one more to come. Not bad really...!