Solar Power ?

sev112 · August 2023

Our local authority has a community solar power scheme (Solar Together and Wokingham council)

they are offering 16 panels on our roof, fitted for £6k.

seems a reasonable deal. Could have battery storage for another 2k

any thoughts, experience etc, it seems like a good deal and the right thing to do ?

Dontgiveupyourdayjob · August 2023

I did it last June and haven't regretted it for a second. My original post on it was here - https://www.thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/229902/nspd-new-solar-panels-day/p1

I actually did some sums after my first 12 months of ownership. Bear in mind that I charge my electric car at home which obviously uses a fair whack of electricity.

Total electricity imported/used from the grid in 12 months: 694KWh. Obviously energy tarries differ, so I'll let you work out how much that roughly equates to base on your current tarrif.

Total of completely green, carbon-free energy exported to the grid in 12 months: 2,588KWh. I'm on a deal called 'Octopus Outgoing' which gives me 15 pence per KWh exported, so that means I've earned £388.20 from exporting energy.

The money 'earned' goes straight onto my account balance. Obviously I'm still paying for gas for the central heating, so that exported energy helps to offset what I pay for the gas, and I'm basically paying absolute peanuts for my electricity.

As of today, in the 14 months of having the panels I've generated 6.2MWh of energy.

In short, if you can afford it then do it.

Chalky · August 2023

Most folks I know are put off solar because they seem to be sold like double glazing - they charge as much as they think you can afford and could disappear at any time. But what you describe sounds like a respectable well-organised scheme at a fair price!

sev112 · August 2023

Thanks both, and yes it does seem a sensible community scheme with lots of buying power driving down cost

stickyfiddle · August 2023

I do this on a utility scale - I’m currently procuring solar and batteries for Abu Dhabi!

From an economic standpoint I’d want to be sure if my expected energy yields in advance - you should be able to get an estimate if this fairly easily to calculate cost savings per year. Plus run some scenarios on that… eg what if energy costs drop? Will I be kicking myself?

Then I’d want to understand my own usage enough to work out whether the battery would be a good idea - this is about both having enough usage after dark to justify the cost, as well having enough surplus energy in the day to charge it.

Then finally I’d want to know how the panels would be physically fitted to my house, to make sure they’re not buggering my roof and it won’t start letting water in.

As a bonus I would like to understand if there’s any ability to feed energy back into the grid. This would be a bonus because who knows if it’ll last forever, even if it exists now.

Those prices sound pretty good though assuming a modern system with efficient panels and fully installed etc.

CavemanGrogg · August 2023

16 panels and a battery installed for £8k, even with the mass buying power of a community scheme, sounds extremely cheap to me, yes the panels have come down a hell of a lot in price, however batteries have not - they've actually increased in price, and are extremely expensive. Personally I would want a hell of a lot more information before I made any sort of commitment, things like type, brand, efficiency, life expectation, warranty - covered by who and for how long and is it guaranteed if the supplier closes shop within the warranty period, who carries out the actually installation are they covered by insurance is any and all work they do insured, warranty for work done - again covered by who and for how long and is it guaranteed if they close shop within the warranty period. 8K just sounds far far too good to be true to me, I'd expect to pay close to that for a decent battery alone, never mind installing it or the solar panels - it cost a lot more than triple that to upgrade the solar and batteries in my cousin's new place.

The problem with these sorts of schemes is, that they tend to attract the scammers and cowboy builders, more so when government/tax payer money is involved and the more money involved, the more scammers and cowboy builders become involved in it, so you really need to basically expect to be scammed and be on your toes for it. The company I used to work for before the owners decided to close shop, actually stopped bidding for these type of contracts as we couldn't compete on prices given by cowboy builders and scammers - there's simply no way to compete on price when your competing against people gung ho set on screwing over the system with no intentions of carrying out the work they tendered and won contracts for but rather see it as a easy way to get the cash for a new flash car foreign holiday or house.

ewal · August 2023

I've thought about it, but stupidly feel slightly self conscious if we're the first house in the area to get them. We live in quite a poor area with mostly council houses, ex council and private rented houses nearby.

Also our house has an old slate covered roof - potential can of worms having it messed with. Suspect significant roof work would be required.

Rich31k · August 2023

We had 22 x 420W panels + 8kW solar edge inverter, and 9.5kWh (GivEnergy) battery (with 3kW inverter) commissioned on Monday.

It’s been great watching the energy being generated. But the battery isn’t working properly at the moment, so it’s been a bit of a faff. But I don’t regret it.

Just need to sort out feed in, and teething problems with the battery.

On the face of it, £8k sounds great. Check out the details. What panels, battery and inverter(s) are they offering?

Benm39 · August 2023

The panels are ridiculously light these days so work to the roof is likely to be pretty minimal. The price seems reasonable - we had a 12 panel installation with 5kw battery for around £10k last year near Winchester and the system has been great as we're now on a tariff where any surplus generation goes back to grid (albeit for a pittance price at present) and any generation above 250w also diverts to heat the hot water tank thereby further reducing the extent we have to use the oil boiler to heat water (no mains gas in our village).

As Grogg says, I'd definitely get some more details - a good installer will be able to generate estimates of likely typical annual generation based on the roof direction etc and should be happy to provide tech details of the kit and support proposed to be installed.

sev112 · August 2023

Thanks all.

westford · August 2023

We had solar panels installed earlier this year and that’s why the weather has been crap this summer. We paid about £11k for ours (8 panels and battery) through a similar scheme. There wasn’t much uptake and then there was a shortage of parts, so the initial price we were quoted went up a fair bit. Worth doing though.

Halls66 · August 2023

Great timing for this topic!

I'm just going through the same scheme in Surrey. For comparison, I got a quote for 12 panels + 4.6kWh battery for 8.6k 4 panels extra would be a further 1k. So your offer seems very good. For context I have been quoted 'Exiom 425W Mono All Black Module' panels and Growatt inverters and battery. If you got the same then it looks like your local authority scheme ended up negotiating a better price than Surrey.. and shows that prices could still be better, at least for me.
I'm personally keen to proceed, but the fact that perovskite panels, which better efficiency, are about to hit the market makes me a bit hesitant

AntonHunter · August 2023

£2k sounds great for a battery!

We paid around £6k for ten panels, but the batteries they were quoting were £12.5k. These were Tesla Powerwalls, but the company we went with didn't do any other batteries (and we found it hard to find an installer to be honest, everyone's really busy!).

Would love more info on which batteries people are getting, I'm thinking I might add one later, once I've got a year or two's worth of data so can be sure about what we'd need.

Worth mentioning that the battery would have VAT on it if installed by itself, but if installed as part of a solar panel installation I think they're VAT exempt. That's what our guys told us, but I didn't have a spare 12 grand lying around so it didn't make any difference to us at the time.

Halls66 · August 2023

the batteries available in our scheme are these: https://infinity-renewables.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/ARK-LV-Datasheet.pdf

Neilybob · August 2023

I'm considering the same scheme. Looks pretty good.

JayGee · August 2023

stickyfiddle said:

…I’d want to understand my own usage enough to work out whether the battery would be a good idea - this is about both having enough usage after dark to justify the cost, as well having enough surplus energy in the day to charge it.

[…]

As a bonus I would like to understand if there’s any ability to feed energy back into the grid. This would be a bonus because who knows if it’ll last forever, even if it exists now.

Battery is always a good idea, and more battery than you need to cover your own usage, and even more battery than you can charge locally during the day is a bonus.

I really don’t see export tariffs going away and I know a number of people who are able to make a few quid out of buying electricity at off peak rates in addition to what they can store during the day, and then selling it back into the grid at peak times. If you’re on a dynamic “spot” linked tariff like Octopus Agile it’s actually possible to be paid for taking power off the grid and then paid again to sell it back - this may sound crazy, or even like a scam but it’s increasingly being seen as a useful part of the arsenal for grid balancing.

Winny_Pooh · August 2023

<ADMIN: Image removed. Dude, c'mon...>

revsorg · August 2023

We have an East-West oriented roof so when we had our first set of 16 panels installed in about 2010 it required two inverters, we benefited from an excellent Feed In Tariff and although we (well, our company to be precise) paid an awful lot for it, it broke even in the anticipated 12 years. We also had solar thermal installed at the same time and getting "free" hot water in the summer has always been great. There are more moving parts in that system so it has required servicing while the solar electric panels have just sat there doing their job.

In 2019 we doubled our array, paid £7000 for 14 more solar panels on a completely independent system. These use micro inverters which have theoretical advantages, but in our systems because we've had zero problems we have yet to perceive any practical difference. Also in 2019 we added a Tesla Powerwall and immediately wished we'd done it years earlier, there are so many advantages. It takes a whole load of thinking away from the job of owning solar panels, you end up consuming almost all the electricity you generate which is very tricky to do without it. Also, it is very easy to set it to fill itself up on cheap electricity at night, for use later when electricity prices go up during the day through autumn, winter and spring, which as @JayGee said above you can do on an Octopus Agile tariff.

In 2019 we also got our EV and it is really nice being able to charge it from the sun. About three years ago we got air conditioning for two of our rooms and at the time were worried that this would consume all our solar electricity but these fears were unfounded - we've never used any electricity from the grid while the aircon is running, it ticks over at about 300 Watts which is a fraction of what our solar panels generate, and we power it from the Powerwall all night no problem.

Last year we replaced our gas oven with an electric, and this year we replaced our gas boiler with an air source heat pump, careful to select a reliable company to specify and install it.

We did all this to reduce our carbon footprint, but I'm fairly confident that the long terms costs are going to prove to be beneficial.

Finally, the one thing I'd recommend is to ensure you have anti-pigeon netting of some description. We forgot this when we had our second set of panels installed and for a year had about 50 pigeons living under them which was awful. We got a company called Integrum services to solve the problem and they were great.

One last thing, I got an email from Tesla recently saying they were offering a £500 cashback for buyers of a Powerwall until (I think) December. I'm sure there are cheaper batteries, but the Powerwall is a very well conceived thing. Every now and then we mull over the idea of adding a second one, but really can't justify it economically.

CavemanGrogg · August 2023

revsorg said:

We have an East-West oriented roof so when we had our first set of 16 panels installed in about 2010 it required two inverters, we benefited from an excellent Feed In Tariff and although we (well, our company to be precise) paid an awful lot for it, it broke even in the anticipated 12 years. We also had solar thermal installed at the same time and getting "free" hot water in the summer has always been great. There are more moving parts in that system so it has required servicing while the solar electric panels have just sat there doing their job.

In 2019 we doubled our array, paid £7000 for 14 more solar panels on a completely independent system. These use micro inverters which have theoretical advantages, but in our systems because we've had zero problems we have yet to perceive any practical difference. Also in 2019 we added a Tesla Powerwall and immediately wished we'd done it years earlier, there are so many advantages. It takes a whole load of thinking away from the job of owning solar panels, you end up consuming almost all the electricity you generate which is very tricky to do without it. Also, it is very easy to set it to fill itself up on cheap electricity at night, for use later when electricity prices go up during the day through autumn, winter and spring, which as @JayGee said above you can do on an Octopus Agile tariff.

In 2019 we also got our EV and it is really nice being able to charge it from the sun. About three years ago we got air conditioning for two of our rooms and at the time were worried that this would consume all our solar electricity but these fears were unfounded - we've never used any electricity from the grid while the aircon is running, it ticks over at about 300 Watts which is a fraction of what our solar panels generate, and we power it from the Powerwall all night no problem.

Last year we replaced our gas oven with an electric, and this year we replaced our gas boiler with an air source heat pump, careful to select a reliable company to specify and install it.

We did all this to reduce our carbon footprint, but I'm fairly confident that the long terms costs are going to prove to be beneficial.

Finally, the one thing I'd recommend is to ensure you have anti-pigeon netting of some description. We forgot this when we had our second set of panels installed and for a year had about 50 pigeons living under them which was awful. We got a company called Integrum services to solve the problem and they were great.

One last thing, I got an email from Tesla recently saying they were offering a £500 cashback for buyers of a Powerwall until (I think) December. I'm sure there are cheaper batteries, but the Powerwall is a very well conceived thing. Every now and then we mull over the idea of adding a second one, but really can't justify it economically.

Long term there's going to be more than environmental and costs benefits, the property will be sellable to people who can't afford to buy it outright without taking out a mortgage, I can't remember off hand, but in the very near future people will not be able to get mortgages on properties that don't meet ever increasing energy efficiency and green standards.

ROOG · August 2023

My neighbor has a PV + Battery scheme and he is very happy with it and the quality of the installation. I have copies of the documents which his installer prepared for him prior to installation and it looks thorough. At this point I was very keen especially as my roof faces South and sufferers no shading from morning through to say 4pm.

Another friend has much the same type of scheme installed on his recently re roofed home and the installers managed to puncture the internal membrane in over a dozen locations. He is now in dispute with the PV installer to have his roof repaired.

Another neighbor had his scheme installed 2 years ago to much fanfare by him, I noticed that one panel didn't match the others, that then disappeared leaving a gap in the array and has yet to be replaced, I found out last week that his scheme has never worked properly (his words not mine) and he hasn't exported any energy.

This has made me less enthusiastic especially as my roof is almost new and has the original developers warrantee.

It seems to me from my limited experience that the outcome is largely dependent on who turns up to do the work.

DiscoStu · August 2023

My local authority are running a similar 16 panel scheme. My next door neighbour got his installed last month for free, he only had to pay for the batteries as an extra.
I've applied too as a result and have passed the application stage and am awaiting a home survey.

Neilybob · August 2023

I still don't get why newly built houses don't all have solar panels!

stickyfiddle · August 2023

Neilybob said:

I still don't get why newly built houses don't all have solar panels!

Because the government are dickheads?

AntonHunter · August 2023

stickyfiddle said:

Neilybob said:

I still don't get why newly built houses don't all have solar panels!

Because the government are dickheads?

This.

Our installers were saying they do loads of new builds, but the developers won't let them in until they're finished. Cheaper to build everything to the same spec, rather than fit the solar at the same time and integrate everything. He was saying they even have to book their own scaffolding to do the panels once the house is complete.

TTony · August 2023

stickyfiddle said:

Neilybob said:

I still don't get why newly built houses don't all have solar panels!

Because the government are dickheads?

That's the answer to so many questions.

stickyfiddle · August 2023

AntonHunter said:

stickyfiddle said:

Neilybob said:

I still don't get why newly built houses don't all have solar panels!

Because the government are dickheads?

This.

Our installers were saying they do loads of new builds, but the developers won't let them in until they're finished. Cheaper to build everything to the same spec, rather than fit the solar at the same time and integrate everything. He was saying they even have to book their own scaffolding to do the panels once the house is complete.

Sounds about right. The majority of developers won't want to take on the extra Capex, or the extra liability, even if that meant slightly higher selling price. Making the solar guys come in entirely separately probably gives them room to try and wiggle out of warrantees on roofing etc as well.

Which is exactly what always happens under capitalism and exactly why we need sensible regulation from government to force companies to do the right thing and retain a level playing field. Le sigh

Cranky · August 2023

Does the UK, or any region in the UK, have a maintenance or recycling program for solar panels and batteries?

That’s an issue that always eats away at me. Individual households are taking on the responsibility for, yes, “free electricity” and clean energy. But it seems like an ecological disaster knowing that so many panels are inevitably going to have to be replaced (thrown out) in 10-15 years, and then a lot of put-off expenses from all that free electricity get put into new panels that we might or might not be able to retrofit.

Without a well-managed update/recycling program, I don’t trust humans to properly dispose of all the waste.

Luckily, the energy grid where I live is already clean. I’m fine paying a monthly bill.

stickyfiddle · August 2023

Cranky said:

Does the UK, or any region in the UK, have a maintenance or recycling program for solar panels and batteries?

That’s an issue that always eats away at me. Individual households are taking on the responsibility for, yes, “free electricity” and clean energy. But it seems like an ecological disaster knowing that so many panels are inevitably going to have to be replaced (thrown out) in 10-15 years, and then a lot of put-off expenses from all that free electricity get put into new panels that we might or might not be able to retrofit.

Without a well-managed update/recycling program, I don’t trust humans to properly dispose of all the waste.

Luckily, the energy grid where I live is already clean. I’m fine paying a monthly bill.

Why?

The capacities will degrade, but it's something like 0.5% a year on modern panels. By that point they'll have more than paid for themselves and will still be giving you free clean energy.

In any case, we always have to find ways of dealing with waste for any new technologies, and recycling of panels & batteries is a massive growth industry. In any case this is a problem we have plenty of time to solve, whereas the climate is already demonstrably in the "definitely dealing with it very late" stage.

AntonHunter · August 2023

stickyfiddle said:

Cranky said:

Does the UK, or any region in the UK, have a maintenance or recycling program for solar panels and batteries?

That’s an issue that always eats away at me. Individual households are taking on the responsibility for, yes, “free electricity” and clean energy. But it seems like an ecological disaster knowing that so many panels are inevitably going to have to be replaced (thrown out) in 10-15 years, and then a lot of put-off expenses from all that free electricity get put into new panels that we might or might not be able to retrofit.

Without a well-managed update/recycling program, I don’t trust humans to properly dispose of all the waste.

Luckily, the energy grid where I live is already clean. I’m fine paying a monthly bill.

Why?

The capacities will degrade, but it's something like 0.5% a year on modern panels. By that point they'll have more than paid for themselves and will still be giving you free clean energy.

In any case, we always have to find ways of dealing with waste for any new technologies, and recycling of panels & batteries is a massive growth industry. In any case this is a problem we have plenty of time to solve, whereas the climate is already demonstrably in the "definitely dealing with it very late" stage.

There's also a burgeoning 2nd hand market, as solar panels drop below required efficiency for commercial solar farms but still more than fine for home use.

Snap · August 2023

CavemanGrogg said:

I can't remember off hand, but in the very near future people will not be able to get mortgages on properties that don't meet ever increasing energy efficiency and green standards.

This is not true.

Sporky · August 2023

Snap said:

CavemanGrogg said:

I can't remember off hand, but in the very near future people will not be able to get mortgages on properties that don't meet ever increasing energy efficiency and green standards.

This is not true.

To be fair that should be in Grogg's signature.

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