Solar & Economy 7?

Andy_WSM

I'm on the cusp of going PV Solar at the moment and was wondering if switching to an Economy 7 supply at the same time would be a smart move?

Train of thought - House, all electric.

Economy 7 = cheap electricity between ~12:00am & 7:00am
Peak electricity from 7:00am to 12:00am would be partially met by solar output between say 8:00am and 4:00pm, so only a few hours each evening would be payable at higher peak rates.

Anyone with solar done this?

peterstyles

I went through this comparison myself three years ago when the capital cost of solar would have been about £8,000. The return on investment against savings on peak rate electricity/calor gas gave a payback period in excess of sixteen years. Instead I bought cheap storage heaters off eBay and had a white meter put in.

However this was not witout problems as E.on failed to inform me of the actual hours that the meter used for cheap electricity and this cost me some £200 over the three years due to incorrect clock settings. I have now switched to nPower.

Andy_WSM

peterstyles wrote: »

I went through this comparison myself three years ago when the capital cost of solar would have been about £8,000. The return on investment against savings on peak rate electricity/calor gas gave a payback period in excess of sixteen years. Instead I bought cheap storage heaters off eBay and had a white meter put in.

However this was not witout problems as E.on failed to inform me of the actual hours that the meter used for cheap electricity and this cost me some £200 over the three years due to incorrect clock settings. I have now switched to nPower.

Thanks, but this wouldn't be the case any longer as the F.I.Ts would provide the means to pay for the system.

The question applies really to anyone that has solar - would you be able to use cheap electricity at night in addition to free power in the day - enough to make the higher peak rate costs worthwhile?

Feebiedog

Did you come to a conclusion over this - whether you could combine using Economy 7 at night for heating/hot water with free solar electric during the day? We are considering solar panels at the moment, but wondering if the two are compatible. My concern is that most of our electricity consumption is during the night and so we won't get the full benefit of the free electric during the day - unless we were to switch the timer on the immersion to work in daylight hours perhaps?
I realise the feed in tariff is much lower now, as well as the annual payments, but the cost of the panels has dropped by half too, so it still seems to be about a 10 year payback period before actually 'making' money out of them.
Would appreciate anyone's thoughts on this.