Solar

[TheOstrich]

There arenew houses being built about half a mile away but none of them have solar panels fitted. Shoudn't this bep;art of modern planning requirements?

I think it ought to be, Cruiser, and some new estates around here do have them fitted from new. I'm minded of a new development next to Middlezoy football club where I went last year.
Their Chairman told me when I was chatting with him before the game that many houses in that development also had heat pumps (as well as solar panels) fitted as standard - but that there were at least two cases that he knew of where the heat pumps had failed completely and were having to be replaced from scratch .....

[Kaz]

I believe in Scotland there are grants towards this, and that around three quarters of new builds with pitched roofs are having them installed with the build. We should be doing this.

[Workingman]

We should actually be building the 16 small modular nuclear reactors (Rolls Royce) that only take 2-3 years to build and would give us baseload electricity 24/7/365 even when the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing (or blowing too hard). Unfortunately many of us have been conditioned that "nuclear is bad" - that is what is holding us back. That and the political preoccupation with big ticket items such as Hinkley and Sizewell. Got to have a photo in a Hi-Viz jacket and a hard hat as the ribbon is cut.

Ah well, I'll get me coat.

[Kaz]

I won't disagree with you about nuclear power Frank, we definitely should have been going down that road - like the French - but we are where we are

[Suff]

WM, we should be doing both.

I have some disincentive to put in solar as in the fact that 30km down the road is a sodding great Nuclear power station. I can't even virtue with solar as it will make not one iota of difference to the CO2 emissions.

Well I say that but we do get power outages every month or so, so we'd reduce the amount of time I have to run the genny.

If I put in Solar here (Mrs S has capitulated and said we'll do it this year, believe it when I see it), I will need to go off grid to truly save. The standing charge is high and if you don't use a state subsidised package (I won't they don't fit my size of property), EDF and Energis charge you €8k to connect to the grid.

The obvious solution is to go totally off grid, switch off the connection and the standing charge, flip the middle finger and carry on. But this means storage and quite a lot of it, plus about tow to three times the normal panel layout. Which is even more expensive. Although I can get x4 the normal panel layout for only half the cost of connecting to the grid.

The cost of storage is, finally, coming down.

My most recent foray into what it will all cost net's the following changes since the early 2000's.

Then and now.

Inverters, 15kw £25,000 £1,500
Storage, 15kw £15,000 £3,600
Panels, 15kw £30,000 £3,000

Fittings, rails etc, still cost around £2,000 if you are really digging into sites and buying components to build your own kits. Nearly £6,000 if you take a kit.

As you can see I'm just over the cost of connecting to the grid. But it takes quite some time to get back £8k in investment. Even with the much higher power draw profile that I have.

[Gal2]

Roof at front faces east, roof at back faces west. So panels would only get lighyt for part of day.

Same for us, back of the house gets very little light at this time of the year as by the time the sun reaches there, it has started to go down so the hedges and rooftops cast shadow. I hadn't realised how expensive solar panels are to install - that seems a b=very high figure