We did but I can’t remember, I know that my power bill was almost $1,000 a quarter before. Government allowance for installation was about half the cost plus we get money back for what we deliver back to the grid. Our biggest issue is (a) batteries are still expensive and (b) state/fed governments keep changing their minds.
1 Like
It is annually. Below shows my cumulative usage (Electricity on top, then gas underneath) showing my last non Solar Panel year against my 3 Solar Panel Years
It used to be in the mid 4000’s as you can see below, but gradually changing things like LED Bulbs, CRT TV and washing machine had a big effect.
1 Like
I considered adding a battery to my solar system but at my senior time of life decided against it. The Tesla one costs about £8k so payback time is going to be long.
Had our system since jan 2011 and paid for itself a couple of years ago. Think of it as an investment paying interest of about 10% pa, That’s what mine is plus heating up the water so using less gas.
If you are getting electric cars there are charging points that take into consideration your generated solar power and use it to charge the car.
I’m using 15,200 KWh per year at the moment
Well @CautiousLip nothing cautious about your usage 
, Is that all the hot-tub, or do you also have an electric car, or swimming pool, or bit-coin production?
1 Like
Not sure I have much to add to the above - but battery storage has little financial benefit compared to the cost - a Tesla power wall holds about £2 of electricity (13kwh @ 15p). That said I want to get battery and solar - we already have a share in a wind turbine but an electric car, electric range oven and air source heat pump (we got rid of oil fired boiler and Rayburn in the last 12 months) have made our consumption pretty high at around 14000 kWh even with some supply from the wind turbine.
We live in the country and have occasional power cuts. A battery would keep us going which would be great - this is something new in the last couple of years
We have been vaguely watching battery prices for years - 2-3 years ago Tesla power wall was actually cheaper than anything else but now most others are cheaper than Tesla (as far as I can tell - not taken the plunge and got any quotes yet)
Probably about the same if not more, mostly winter usage.
I had an old Mac Pro that could virtually heat the room using maybe 600-800 W/hr - used to have it on 24/7 as a home server for various things. Intel Mac Mini uses considerably less power but an M1 Mac will use even less. Washing machine used every day - at least once a day if not several times for work/school clothing.
Naim kit constantly on.
Add all the gadget chargers, game consoles, tablets, laptops in the house - mostly not used by me.
Impressive - appreciate the eco-friendly benefit but is the installation proving cost effective?
Well I paid about £5.5K for the system a year before retirement, so it came out of main income, and so I can sort of consider that money gone, and start a new leaf where everything is gain, but of course I am doing the figures and I will be in profit after 10 years. In term of my Electricity Bill, I would now say the annual bill is about the same as I get back from my Feed In Tariff, so effectively electricity is now free.
When I finally get an electric car (~3 years), I will get one that allows you to use the battery to feed back to the house. I think only Nissan does this currently, but that should expand over time. Because I have a “solar power diverter” on my immersion, the hot water stored is effectively a battery, so I don’t believe I would get value from a separate house battery.
1 Like
Interesting, have always wondered about solar but suspect prices/feed-in-tariffs are not as favourable these days.
I suppose even if I have high consumption any saving helps if the outlay pays for itself in a reasonable timeframe.
Must admit to beiong rather wary of the practicality of heat pumps/electric cars etc living in an old Victorian property with more limited options for improving energy efficiency rating and little chance of an easy way to charge an e-vehicle if I frequently can’t park outside my house let alone off-road currently. Solar would be a less property dependent option (roof orientation aside) I suppose as you’d still get what you could per sq/m of panelling.
I had a brief look and the maximum feed in tarrif is 5.5p kw/hr, but dependant on supplier and how large your solar array. My current supply is 15p kw/hr……….so they take it off you and charge you an extra 10 p to give it back. Gone are the days of super tarrifs of 20 p kw/hr or more.
1 Like
Same here the give back is less than half of what it was a few years ago. There’s also now talk of charging you to use the wires to send the power back to the grid. There’s been pressure from the companies that paid big money a few years ago to buy the “poles and wires” from the government.
The FIT did drop a lot, but so did the prices of the Panels. I expect my panels would have been £20k when FIT’s started, so you needed the extra. I don’t think the FIT exists anymore, but with Gen 2 Smart Meters and the right tariff, then can now pay you what you actually give back to the grid, rather than the FIT where it was estimated at 50% of the Panels generation.
@Alley_Cat in case you didn’t know, you can go on websites and point them to your house in Google Maps and it estimates how much energy you can produce a year based on your house orientation and roof size
1 Like
Thanks, Interesting, though I’m not really in a position to consider installing any at the moment.
I moved into my new house three years ago and the builder had installed 9 solar panels giving appx 2.25kw. On average I’m paid about £30 for unused energy fed back to the network.
To make a battery system viable I’d have to at least double the capacity plus the cost of the battery system.
Until governments take this matter seriously I’m not sure battery systems will be viable on an individual basis.
4 Likes
I suspect we’d benefit from intelligent white goods appliances that could turn themselves on with a pre-planned wash for example under good lighting conditions in order to maximise use of locally generated energy rather than feeding in for a pittance.
1 Like
My Miele dishwasher has that. It can use warm incoming water, and stores heat from previous runs in an heat element. It also has a solar energy mode, which I don’t use yet.
It all appears not to be financially beneficial, but we contribute saving polar bears.
1 Like
Interesting thought. I do use the time on my washes to delay until peak light time. My washing is quite old and uses 2.4KW at its peak heating cycle, which limits you to needing no clouds during that cycle. I sort of assumed that the newer washing machines had a smaller heater and then just took longer, but just looked and found it had a peak of 2.2KW. Ideally you would want half this. A recent trick I have been doing to help this is to pour in a few jugs of hot water from the tap (this is free to me) onto the clothes which gives them a starting warm temperature.
So if it were “smart”, how might that work? I suppose it could pause itself when you are taking power from the grid, but then you would need an override otherwise it might take say a day to wash, with most time re-heating the water. No doubt far more cleverer people can solve this than I.
Sorry @Ardbeg10y just read your post - that’s interesting, I’ll have a look at that, thanks
2 Likes
I think it’s almost inevitable that goods will become more complex, responsive and probably expensive!
Not sure if dual energy tarifs are that readily available, but I’ve long thought it would be sensible to run washing machine/dryer/dish washer and any electric heating during the cheaper tariff periods but I gather companies are vague about the tariff times.
1 Like
The eco mode which we use during nighttime consumes 0,6 kw. The Miele app give us these statistics. It is not connected to warm water supply yet, but once we have a solar boiler we intend to connect it.
It’s all peanuts compared to heat the house in wintertime though.
2 Likes