Solar panel surprise

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At the back of our house & unfortunate for us , they are building a new estate. I say unfortunate as we had a wonderful view over the village & on to the Wind farm at Hook moor. Now we can see walls & roofs. Anyhow, quite a few of the detached & some semi's have been built with south facing solar panels. They cover the whole one side of the roof , so I guess in summer they should bang out some good figures. It's a shame no-one has come up with a storage solution for A/C, economically, without batteries & transverters.

Steve.

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Well it is great that you get something back. I know there was a scheme where you got money back. I was told by a double glazing guy recently that the money you get back is not as much as it used to be. Due to various government schemes etc. Is that true.

Steve.

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Hi all,

We have had ours for a few years now and get the full index linked tariff, currently 54p.

Just had our worst of the year quarterly payment on a 4kW array, came to £250; best quarter was £825 this year.

The yearly average since we got it is approx £2400- £2700 pa which is great for an initial outlay of £11k and 25 year contract.

The actual savings in our electric bill are harder to compute as the energy cost have gone up quite a lot.

Real no brainer though!

Cheers, Martin

Is that 54p per kwh. If it is that aint half bad. Imagine if you lived on a farm & had wind gen as well as solar. You could actually make some good money. I once looked at a property at the side of a pretty fast flowing river. I bet it could have sustained at least a 5kva or more water turbine. Just had a huge thunder & lightning strike here in Leeds. Weird weather we are having.

Steve.

Agreed, the FIT and money back is welcome yet there always seems another side to a benefit.

Our builder demanded another few hundred quid for software he was advised to install at the last minute. Apparently if you don't have the s/ware which shows how much each panel is generating then in the event of fall-off in generated power, it costs a substantial amount to find which of the panels is faulty. At least that's what all the new house purchasers were told.
Depending on your location and therefore amoount of "dust" in the atmosphere, you will probably need to have the panels cleaned annually. Rain doesn't seem to be very effective. Our window cleaner does ours - for an extra fee of course !
I'm surprised you were in net profit over the winter quarter. On the principle that all women have faulty thermostats, the heating in our abode is such that we (i.e. me) are net payers by a considerable margin during the winter months and also we have a big air-source heat pump supposedly reducing our power from the grid.

An awful image as it has been scanned from the phone but the aforementioned s/w is "SolarEdge".

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I had panels installed just before the payment was reduced and have kept a monthly record of the output. This allows me to check if there is any fall off in generation from one year to the next and so far the readings are about the same. I never clean the panels as we live in West Wales where the Atlantic weather ensures that the rain comes down with force. This morning the short, sharp showers of hail virtually blasted anything outside the shelter of the four walls. During the last 12 months I have had several offers from "cowboys" to reconfigure the panel wiring and fit a new converter as a way of guarding against failure. All those offers go straight into the bin.

Bill, I would like to know more about this solar boost box for hot water. I have not heard of that before and it would help a lot if it can be fitted to my system now. There may be a problem since every year I get a form from the electricity supplier to declare and alterations.

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I bought a pre owned Solar Boost controller via ebay for £90 when it arrived the the clamp on current transformer. and sender wasn't present. That was no problem as I looked on the net and phoned up Solar Boost and they supplied one for I think around £10 it was several years ago. As I intended to use the immersion heater, I disconnected it, and use the wiring circuit for Solar Boost. Our immersion heater has TWO thermostats, as all modern ones should have (well one and a over temp resettable trip) The clamp type current transformer is fitted around one of the meter tails, it must be clamped in the right or correct direction. Most of the time we have enough hot water for showers and domestic duties, and plenty in the summer months.

Similar to Ray above, we have had during the last 12 months, several offers from "cowboys" suggesting how they can reconfigure the panel wiring and fit a new inverter as a way of guarding against future failures. We keep a check ourselves and will know if things are OK or otherwise. We was an early bird on Solar PV and the income has more than paid for the installation,long may it last. John

Thanks for that Bill. I will look it up later but since I got rid of my tank when we installed a combi boiler it will need some investment to re establish a system but worth a go.

The chart above shows the output from my 3kW system located in North Derbyshire. The interesting thing is how consistent the output is over the years. The supplier said it would take about eight and a half years to recover the costs and I've done it in eight. I've got a solar boost unit on my wish list, interesting to read comments about it. Not so sure about needing to clean the panels, unless you can do it for nothing. I doubt you would recover the costs if you had to pay someone to do it.

Peter

I completly missed the boat with all the better tarifs due to being indecisive!

Installing now, does solar still repesent a decent investment, and has anyone installed panels recently?

Peter

Hi All,

Yes we get 54p per kWh. Plus 3p per unit based on 50% of each quarters reading for energy sent to the grid.

We are lucky to be in South Dorset and have an optimum incident angle and roof alignment for best "reception" of the incoming rays!

Our Fronius inverter works really well and has a removeable drive to allow monitoring of the statistics.

Cleaning never seems to be a problem.

The installation has a 10 year warranty for the panels, contract is 25years.

Now looking at a Tesla PowerWall now that the prices are coming down.

Cheers, Martin

Martin

I make no adverse comments on the marlec offering - I know nowt about what extras it provides - but a Solic 200 is rather less costly and just gets on with the job of diverting surplus generation to the hot water cylinder. No frills - they just work.

I use an "Immersun", think thats how its spelt, to divert power to the immersion heater. Two attempts to get one that worked properly, couldn't set the time on the first one, otherwise its been good.

Tesla's Powerwall, is it worth it?

John

Thank you NDIY and John MC for that information. I didn't realise that there are other alternatives on the market.

Peter