Solar panels

[miasmum]

Someone on here was considering them, was it you Kaz?

what did you decide? Tim has someone coming round to discuss

[JanB]

We have a atracker and panels. Sadly, we were hit by lightning and the inverter was hot, which made us having a re-think.

Batteries only last about 15 years and ours were 14 years old, one was dead, and to replace them would be about 7,000€. And then to replace the inverter, the actual cost of it would take us about 13 years to recoup the money we spend on electric, so we decided not to bother.

Not at our age, anyway

[Workingman]

My son and dil recently bought a huge house, but as it is Grade II they cannot have them fitted to the house roof. They have opted to fit them to their new build greenhouse roof instead. They are not bothered by feed-in tariffs because they don't think there will be any given the size of the house. They will be used to supplement the mains, mainly for the ground floor underfloor heating and hot water. The house is all electric so they will probably be worth it.

[Kaz]

Yes, we’re having them installed in a couple of weeks. We’re having 15 panels, 11 at the back 4 at the front. We should recoup the cost in 5 years or less.

[TheOstrich]

We had them installed in September, MM.
Most older installations have 16 panels, but we have only 12, as modern ones are more efficient.
We are lucky in that the back of our house faces due south, so optimum performance (apart from one darn horse chestnut tree! )

Overall cost was £6.1K but that included de-commissioning our existing solar thermal panel system wot terminally malfunctioned.
If you get a quote, make sure it includes scaffolding costs .....

Add-on: We have an "Immersun" which takes any excess electric we're generating and uses it to heat our water.
Anything still left over then goes to the National Grid.
You can get paid for that under the Smart Export Guarantee Scheme, but there are hoops to jump through (well, certainly with EonNext ) before that happens.
We will look at it, but we are waiting on our MCS (Microgeneration Certification Scheme) paperwork before we tackle that.

We looked at battery storage so we could "store" energy for night-time use / electric car charging if it was ever needed, but the initial cost seemed too expensive for the use we'd get out of it.
That has to be "horses for courses"; depends on your individual circumstances.

Seemed easy enough to erect, took them 1 1/2 days on the roof, but we had a week's wait for the electrician to come and fit the final equipment.
The control panels are in the garage, on the wall. Looks a bit like Mission Control, Houston.
There's even a Big Red Knob we've been told not to touch ...

Early results: Caught it happily generating 3.6Kv (maximum output of inverter) on a sunny day, but down to say 200Kv on a rainy day.
This time last year, our electric usage was (31 days to 17/10/2021): 4.97 units per day.
Since commissioning the solar panels it's been (27 days to today): 2.25 units per day.

If you do go ahead and instal them you will find, however, that you revert to a sort of medieval rural existence!
For example:
Up at the break of day, and if it bodes sunny, out with the hoover!
Oven use: We've moved our main meal from 6.00 pm to mid-day.
Mobile phone charging during daylight hours only.
Etc.

[TheOstrich]

Not at our age, anyway

That was our dilemma, too, Jan ..... we went for it because it's "future-proofing" the house, especially if electric cars become a reality here, and it is also a requirement that the malfunctioning solar thermal panel "had" to come down. So it made sense to do it all as one operation.

[JanB]

Even with the high price of lecky over here, even with the pool pump going, we normally have a bill of around 34 - 60 euros a month. More than 54, I start to panic

Not looking forward to our bill for when the family were here Hairdryers, electric shower in the en-suite, shed loads of oven and gadgets

[miasmum]

Thank you, that was all very helpful

[TheOstrich]

Ooooh, forgot! And the pigeons!

Add-on: We had protective mesh fitted around the outside of our panels on the roof so the pigeons couldn't get under to roost

Before y'all fall about laughing, let me tell you a true story. A widowed lady quite near to us, well, whilst the husband was still alive, they had both solar PV and solar thermal panels fitted.
When the husband passed away, one of the first things the widow did was take an axe to the dovecot they had in their back garden , cos she was fed up with all the mess the flock of white doves used to make.
So the doves were homeless.

Guess where they finished up .....

Still there, the last time I looked earlier this week