I’ve just ordered a 2.84 KW system for £3875. So they do exist!
It’s only a small 7 panel system being installed on a long garage at the end of the garden as we didn’t want them on the main house as it would have looked very unsightly due to the size and pitch of the roof. No scafolding is required for the garage which helps a bit with the price.
I need to wait until the end of December or early January for installation, so the installers must be doing well.
My 8kW solar system was fitted in May, cost £7600 and 13kW batteries were £6k fitted.
The info they gave me at the time suggested that the payback period (for both) was about 7 years, at an assumed tariff of 25p kWh with a 5% annual increase. Obviously with the price increase we’ve had (and the further ones expected) I’d expect that pay back period to be reduced.
Its a good investment isnt it.
My 9KW system went in last April ( autumn for me in Sydney) and payback was estimated at 6.7 years - my assessment now with price rises is under 5 years.
We are entering the more exciting times now as spring is just around the corner and we have started to have 20KW production days ( our roof is partially shaded).
It certainly seems to be - it’s early days, but so far so good. Being in the north of England, we get very long days during summer, coupled this year with unusually long bright (cloudless) spells, I need to remind myself that the amount of generation will be significantly lower in winter!
For the last 4 weeks I have been averaging about 30kW per day, with a pb of just a shade over 40kW.
Also, with a tariff that allows for cheaper energy overnight, I set the batteries to charge up overnight and discharge as needed during the day. My daytime energy use from the grid over the last month has been extremely low!
We hit 34kWh produced one day last week. I’ll report back when it stops raining……
Thats a great outcome from your system- I will only reach 34KW per day in summer here - again because roof is partially shaded from trees. Mike will be hitting huge numbers in summer from NZ
I haven’t gone down the battery route , reported earlier in this thread, but I bumped into a near neighbour of mine the other day - only because I covet his 70’s motorbikes - and he is now completely off grid - large solar system and 3 Tesla batteries - quite an investment
How do you manage this so that you don’t end up underusing solar the next day if it’s sunny and you have fully charged the battery up from the cheaper night rate?
From the various scenarios I’ve run, I can’t see how adding a battery can save more than about $1,000 a year due to lower night rates and reasonable buy-back rates. I think I need a years data to try to understand it better. Though, the idea of battery storage is quite appealing, if not fully economic.
The roof that my solar panels are on faces south west (ish), so I only start generating heavily mid to late morning. This means we’ve had the breakfast usage etc. which takes a bit from the batteries. Plus I have an electric Aga, so that is a fairly constant draw.
My house is all electric and quite power hungry (I use about 25,000kWh per year), so even though I have a reasonable solar system, I am still using a lot from the grid. The other benefit of the batteries is to offset power cuts.
I’ve been waiting since February for installation at the end of January! The installer is well respected and been in the business for many years.
Phil
We had a 40 minute power cut about 8pm on Tuesday. The strange thing was our daughter near Atherstone had a power cut 20 minutes after us. Made me wonder what the cause of the HV problem was. Perhaps the grid was overloaded! The DNO restored power at the substation link by link guessing by the time they quoted to fix the problem - luckily ours was earlier than planned.
Worryingly the mobile internet seized up under the extra load ! I guess and hope the fibre has power backup.
Phil
Powercuts for us, touch wood(!), seem very infrequent, but you never know. Plus with >40% of uk electricity production currently coming from gas powered power stations, the risk is seemingly increased at the moment.
Anybody with an array know how actual generation compares with some of the more widely available models.
The estimate from loop.homes (4kw array) is 1038kwh/year.
Using the energy savings trust calculator for the same size I get 2949kwh/year. (https://www.pvfitcalculator.energysavingtrust.org.uk/ )
Big difference. The EST is about 6 years to pay back, 3 years come January’s rate rise. Which is attractive.
The EST model asks for slightly more info - roof orientation, more precision on slope - so I’d hope is the more accurate.
But it would be interesting for someone to run their existing array through the est calculator and see how it compares!
I understand when you get to the stage of receiving a production forecast from an installer that they all use similar software to make those forecasts.
Many in my part of the world use opensolar
Shade levels and roof orientation will be the main factors in determining production - so I wouldn’t trust any forecasts that didn’t factor those elements in
Never heard of Open Solar, only to see one of the testimonials is from my ( soon to be) installer.
Tried this, with an annual saving £545, and a cost of £6,928 for a 5kWh system, so over 12 years. However I’m looking at under 10 years based on the its current age of 3.5 years.
The CO2 savings shows at just 985 kg / year, however my installer quoted 3,234 kg / year, so doesn’t really add up
My 4kW array produces an average of 3.1MWh. We get around 875solar hours annually where we are in Aberdeenshire. This aligns pretty closely with the PVGIS Sarah database predictions.
Regards
Richard
A report today states that on Friday - solar briefly overtook coal as Australia’s main energy source.
It was for just a 30 minute period - but reported as significant as it occurred outside the main summer season- interestingly the majority of the solar generated was from domestic installations rather than solar farms
I might try dangling a mains cable down the rabbit hole to help you out with any excess electricity.
Hope you’ve got a pretty long extension lead.
