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Tell me about solar panels

deebster

deebster

Half Man Half Biscuit
The current spiralling energy prices have got me thinking about getting solar panels installed on the house.

I think I'd rather do this by buying them upfront than through any lease-type deal, but I know I don't know too much about the whole shebang yet so would appreciate the pfm massive's take on them, what to do, not to do and anything else worth thinking about.
 
We put on solar pv panels a few years ago - while our house is in the US, I would think the first thing to do is assess your current and future electricity needs (e.g., planning on getting an electric vehicle?). So a year’s worth of electric bills to calculate kWhs needed. I seem to recall there were online calculators that can give you estimates of the average number of hours of sun based on location, from which you can estimate size of the system needed. Then you need to figure out if you have enough suitable roof area based on number of panels. In the US we are on net metering - you want the average output of the year to match the energy used. I don’t know if that’s the same as in the UK, where you may have to buy at retail and sell at wholesale.
 
The USA has a big advantage over the UK for solar panels. All of it is somewhat further South than the UK and gets a lot more sun.

Silly fun fact that many people do not understand….Canada’s Vancouver, regarded as a somewhat northern place, is on the same latitude as Paris.
 
I was surprised to read in the past month that "solar clouds" are now available, at least in Germany where I live, which means you can produce solar power in the summer send it to the cloud and use your electricity in winter when you need it.
 
4kwp current price circa £5k installed will power a large house
you do not want to rent your roof out to a 3rd party. not had a power bill in 10years myself
 
If you get them also consider a diverter to use the excess. The myenergi eddi can chuck excess solar into an immersion heater in a hot water tank or something like a Sunamp to replace gas usage.
 
Never lease solar panels, the company will own your roof and make house very hard to sell . Mortgage companies don't like it at all
 
hifinutt said:
Never lease solar panels, the company will own your roof and make house very hard to sell . Mortgage companies don't like it at all
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Rubbish.

Our house had them when we bought it, and a decent solicitor had no issues with them at all. All they needed was a copy of the relevant paperwork, and a few days later all sorted.
I hear all sorts of BS about this and that making mortgages difficult or impossible. A bit sad really, because some poor bugger might believe you and not find out for themselves.
 
daytona600 said:
4kwp current price circa £5k installed will power a large house
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Hmmm! Cheaper than I thought and almost twice that for my south-facing roof some years ago when G.B. ended the first (and overly generous) feed-in tariff (10+ years?) urely there are maintenance costs though and how long are insurance-backed guarantees?
 
hifinutt said:
Never lease solar panels, the company will own your roof and make house very hard to sell . Mortgage companies don't like it at all
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They don’t own your roof but the fact their property is on it has caused problems in the past. Best to avoid if possible.
 
dan m said:
https://re.jrc.ec.europa.eu/pvg_tools/en/tools.html

Playing with this tool, it looks like what you can produce in Colorado with 6 panels would require 10 in Yorkshire. But the installed cost isn’t necessarily linear with the number of panels.
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Ha, when I clicked on that everywhere looked a nice, warm shade of orange. But as I scrolled up to the UK it all went rather blue :D

Some helpful stuff up there, thanks chaps.

It's a largeish house, 80s built with gas central heating. I'd like to be able to provide all of our energy from solar, including heating, but am not realistically expecting to be able to do that easily.
 
For heating, insulate the house to the best standard you can in terms of value for money. That approach will lower your energy requirements.
 
Stuart Frazer said:
For heating, insulate the house to the best standard you can in terms of value for money. That approach will lower your energy requirements.
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Agreed. That was our approach - switch out windows, add lots of insulation and do a blower door test to find the leaks. Also added an ERV unit to bring in fresh air but use the exhausted to heat it up (I think they are supposed to recover 80% of the energy). Only after all that did we add the PV.
 
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