The Great 'Get Paid To Generate Energy' Hunt

zeupater

juliusceasor wrote: »

Indeed the average install cost per watt is lower in Germany, but that is for larger sized arrays. For the the typical 2-4kW array size here there is a 10% approximately rise in the cost per watt.

The flip side of this is that there are a number of companies and installers without work or working only for a wage at the present time. The result of too much competition and reduced level of installations.

The effect in the UK would be to limit the number of installers and therefore decrease competition if prices fall too quickly here in the UK, because it will limit the incentive to do so either by a fall in FIT or a fall in profit.

There is a high cost to entry to the market and to remain professional on going cost. Given that the FIT payment made to a client covers the cost of install in around 10 years then I believe the original 2012 review date was a reasonable timescale to review the fit Payment to drive down £/w.
Competition is driving down the prices currently and I suspect you could find prices below the £14.5k you mention now.

There are no real losers in the PV market at the moment, yes there may be a barrier to install for some due to cost but the barrier will reduce within a 12 month period along with the FIT.

SMA - to all those reciting high cost of maintenance over the 25 years of the FIT reducing the ROI well I have good news, SMA predict a 50% fall in the price of their inverters within 5 years, due to improved design, lower cost of production and other factors, in response to Cheaper foreign products, but without the loss in quality and performance.

Hi

I hope you enjoyed your trip to Germany over the weekend. Can you provide any source to support the 10% difference between typical size installations in the UK v Germany. As stated on the other thread where you raised the German visit .....

zeupater wrote: »

Thanks, that would be quite interesting .... I could compare it to what a number of friends paid for their systems to see if prices have dropped even further, it'll be good to wind them up ....

Regarding the average size of systems in Germany (~32kWp) being far larger than the UK, this is very much skewed by a few massive systems such as the 80.7MWp plant at Finsterwalde, equivalents of which have not yet been been built in the UK. The Finsterwalde plant alone is the equivalent to adding ~350Wp to every other installation in Germany.

A good idea of what typical German installations look like is available on the SolarWorld website .... http://www.suntrol-portal.com/en/plant/search/browse

HTH
Z

... I know a number of people in Germany who have had solar pv, their systems are definately not larger than what you would see in the UK (One of them is on the SW site referenced on the post above) and my understanding is that not one of them paid anywhere close to current UK pricing. If I attempted to wind any of them up by proposing that there was now only a price difference of 10% between the UK and Germany the laugh would be on me :rotfl:.

I agree that £14.5k/4kWp system (~£3.62/Wp) can be bettered in the UK, the lowest price I have seen on this site is £3.01/Wp, but this is not typical as it seems that many who seek advice on the forum are still posting about systems priced at around the £4/Wp mark, or higher. Compare this with the German averaged price of £2.32/Wp, add 10% would be £2.55/Wp, the £3.01/Wp would be 30% higher, £3.62/Wp 56% higher and £4/Wp 70% higher. I also understand that the price in Germany of £2.32/Wp is an average for 2010 installations (not 2011), however average means that some will be paying more and some less, so the only direct comparison would be to average prices available in the UK during 2010 which would reasonably be £14.5k for a (large) 4kWp system, or around £3.62/Wp.

Z

juliusceasor

zeupater wrote: »

Hi

I hope you enjoyed your trip to Germany over the weekend. Can you provide any source to support the 10% difference between typical size installations in the UK v Germany. As stated on the other thread where you raised the German visit .....



Z

I wasn't clear or you misinterpreted. The average you suggested for Germany is correct but based on a typical UK installed size adding 10% to the average price would be about the price per watt paid in Germany £2.59 -£2.69
As I said this is to earn a wage not to earn a profit let alone invest and grow a business which is what is needed here; to grow the industry.

The trip was great, visited Bremen and Frankfurt for IHS. As to my source it would be a large distributor of PV equipment which provided the information.

zeupater

juliusceasor wrote: »

I wasn't clear or you misinterpreted. The average you suggested for Germany is correct but based on a typical UK installed size adding 10% to the average price would be about the price per watt paid in Germany £2.59 -£2.69
As I said this is to earn a wage not to earn a profit let alone invest and grow a business which is what is needed here; to grow the industry.

The trip was great, visited Bremen and Frankfurt for IHS. As to my source it would be a large distributor of PV equipment which provided the information.

Hi

I've been to Frankfurt a number of times, platters of pork & pitchers of apple wine .... just my kind of diet

Regarding the price for a UK sized array, I suppose that if the average UK array was considered to be in the range of 2kWp to 3kWp then a higher cost/Wp would be charged, both in the UK & Germany, this is the reason why for comparison purposes a 4kWp system was proposed ... one of the systems I referred to earlier is a 4.4kWp system installed mid last year and the price was still lower than £2.59/Wp at current exchange rates ... perhaps the distributor you were talking to had a vested interest in maintaining a margin when talking to a potential UK based customer ....

Whether the German prices are in the region of £2.32/Wp or £2.59/Wp, what is really clear is the margins which are being worked to within the UK, both by the supply chain & the installers when somewhere between £1/Wp & £2/Wp extra is being added to margins. To a small UK installer working on on an average of just one install per week this adds well over £200k/annum into the support costs for growing a new industry, which should easily cover any new business set-up costs, including everything associated with MCS and other trade body accreditation. Many installers manage multiple installations per week, and/or have been installing for quite some time, therefore their setup costs have been/are more than covered, so why would they need to maintain the current UK/German pricing differentials other than for maintaining, or in the case of Te5co etc, even increasing margins ?

Z

juliusceasor

zeupater wrote: »

Hi

Many installers manage multiple installations per week, and/or have been installing for quite some time, therefore their setup costs have been/are more than covered, so why would they need to maintain the current UK/German pricing differentials other than for maintaining, or in the case of Te5co etc, even increasing margins ?

Z

Quite true, but profit is what drives business and for new start ups to enter the market then they need to be incentivised to invest. I agree the Likes of 5hiseCo are taking the cream, the installers work on tight margins, but blame government for that because it is the government minister who wants the likes of 5hiseCo to do the installing...
As I said earlier within a year prices will fall with reduced FIT even if they haven't already.

As to your price differential then one will always get variations against the average which is what was discussed, end of line panels etc, cancelled jobs clearance panels, but the comment was installers are struggling in Germany. Ok the fly by nights in for the quick buck have left the market, but that will always happen.

It is a big financial commitment for anyone to start up a business especially in a new field and risk returns need to match, made all the more riskier now the FIT is being tinkered with prematurely.

Actually I found Vapiano for food was great not very German though but freshly cooked and washed down with a Cold German Pils

zeupater

All

Price analysis for European manufactured panels is now available for last month and shows that prices continue to fall at a steady rate .... another 3.6% in March to €1.61/Wp, however, the bad news is that the euro has recently strengthened against the pound by approx 3% thus only changing the sterling spot price for european manufactured panels from approx £1.42/Wp to around £1.41/Wp ......

The pound/euro movement shouldn't effect components in the short term as it's likely that the supply chain will have forward contracts on currencies in place

link .... http://www.solarserver.com/service/p...v-modules.html

Z

Doc_N

Tesco's price for a 3.96 kWp system is £14,499 - exactly where it was around a year ago when they first entered the market. You'd have expected some downward movement by now.

But then, maybe not.

John_Pierpoint

Has anyone got a price for approaching "The Mark Group" directly?

Equaliser123

John_Pierpoint wrote: »

Has anyone got a price for approaching "The Mark Group" directly?

No - only through Enact, M&S and Tesco.

However, their website quotes a price from £4k per kwp installed. Doesn't sound very competitive although perhaps they have simply not update their website.

Doc_N

Just out of curiosity, what are people getting out of their systems in this consistently sunny weather? Mine's a 4 kWp system, capable of producing around 3.6 kW at max, but it won't go, at the moment, beyond around 3 kW at best - not sure whether that's because the sun isn't sufficiently high in the sky yet or whether there's a fault.

Producing around 21-22 kWh a day at the moment.

Dave_Fowler

Doc_N wrote: »

Just out of curiosity, what are people getting out of their systems in this consistently sunny weather? Mine's a 4 kWp system, capable of producing around 3.6 kW at max, but it won't go, at the moment, beyond around 3 kW at best - not sure whether that's because the sun isn't sufficiently high in the sky yet or whether there's a fault.

Producing around 21-22 kWh a day at the moment.

My 2.96kWp system has run below full capacity for most of the current sunny weather - about 2.3kW in full sun. There is a lot of very high thin cloud which is causing the lower output. Just occasionally the output has risen to my peak of just under 2.7kW but it has only been for a few minutes.

This lower output, even when the sun is shining brightly, adds justification to the use of an inverter which does not necessarily handle the maximum panel output - it is very rare you get full output as there is always some thin cloud even on the best of days and the loss of income is far outweighed by the lower cost of the smaller inverter.

Dave F