Solar Panel Guide Discussion

beedydad

The appalling issue is that the latest Ofgem Report states that in the first year 28,608 soler PV kits were installed. A further 10,000 odd in next 3 months.

So even with all the publicity and the main USP that you can have "free solar" or r-a-r that we (the UK) have installed a nats peeeee's worth of solar.

Given as stated that there are 25million or properties and if you discounted to those who could possibly have solar ie due to orientation and roof size, that you could say 20% are worthy ie 5 million solar pv kits - 40 odd thousand is nought really worth it.

FIT payout also seems strange it equates to around £155 each given that less than 30,000 would have recieved it in first year. Looking at the info they would have had the kits on average of 6 months so could it be that the yearly FIT's would be around £300 ish? so where are all the big kits earning mega amounts?

Regards

celerity

lanstrom wrote: »

Hi Adam,

I see on your web site it says the data is pulled off your 'energy monitor'. Can I ask what model that is please ?

I would want something that I could data log with if I had a system installed

It's the freebie energy meter that Eon sent me out (cue people on this thread whinging about an appalling exploitation of the poor who are subsidising these giveaways )

You have to buy the "bridge" adapter for it to connect to the web without a PC running though, and I had to write some custom code that runs on a webserver to get this to display on my website. Once I did that it wasn't much more effort to add some fun outputs, hence the silly "This is enough power for x microwaves or y iPads" messages.

If you don't need live web info without a PC, you can do away with the Bridge unit and just connect the energy meter to your PC. This would provide you with all sorts of graphable data.

Additionally, I have the Sunnybeam bluetooth display unit (an extravagance I admit) which I can use to pull off a huge amount of data. This is what I use for my monthly reports, which are far more detailed than the ones I publish on the web (you can see outputs for every ten minutes for example).

It's only too easy to get a bit anal with solar PV reporting (as many of us on here will attest to!) but there is a serious side to it - if you don't know whether your system is performing within the estimates of the installer you can't really comment on whether it is worthwhile or not.

/\dam

darkpool

celerity wrote: »

Businesses need power *for all sorts of reasons* - for example refrigeration, which has peak demand during the summer months.

I've never claimed solar PV is suitable for all people - in fact quite the opposite. Nevertheless, there are (conservatively) hundreds of thousands of commercial and domestic properties in the UK that could benefit. At the moment this is only true due to the FiT - in the future the hope is that it will be true without the FiT - but nobody can say for sure whether that will ever happen.

/\dam

Do you not think FIT is bad for business? It increases electricity prices causing UK industry to move abroad to places like china. I don't think you can say FIT is good for UK industry

I also don't think solar panels are a good investment

Dave_Fowler

celerity wrote: »

If it helps, I use JSunnyReports to check my output against prediction, and it has both April and May as being more productive than June, which suggests your experience is typical.
In order of lowest to highest for the warmer months, it has:
April, June, August, July, May - but... the first three months are almost the same.

My monthly stats compared to predicted levels are here if you are interested.

What did your installer tell you your Year One predicted output was? Mine is 3,356kWh and I have a 3.91kWp system. So far I'm hopeful we will hit the target, but we've only had it for two months.

/\dam

The installer stated around 2300kWh during negotiations, but put only 1938kWh on the MCS certificate. Either way 2666kWh for the first year is very good. The PVGIS site suggests 2566kWh for my location. The great disparity between what my supplier predicts and what PVGIS predicts is probably due to slip-shod office work in their offices. Their final survey said I have 20% shading. I can account for a maximum of 5% for less than half the day.

Dave F

grahamc2003

celerity wrote: »

As someone else said on here (k4blades?) it's not true that people in rented accomodation won't benefit, as some landlords are likely to invest in solar PV.


I sincerely think people should get some perspective. I can empathise with people criticising the FiT as it is by no means perfect - but I can't get my head around why some people are seemingly so incredibly agitated (a general point, not directed at Cardew).

/\dam

I really wish this 'the poor can benefit too' argument could be knocked on its head. I think it's just a given fact that, in general, mostly, by far the majority, almost exclusively, all but a handful or whatever phrase you want, that the better off gain at the expense, in part, of the less well off.

People pointing out one poorer off person who may have very indirectly gained (from cheaper electricity rather than the fit) does not alter that argument one bit. Fits go to panel owners, and private people owning panels also own the house it's on so they are likely to be in the better off category.

As to getting agitated - I think I've only seen one person doing that, and he or she was from the (very very) solar supportive camp.
Subsidies in general are just a fact of life - where they help along efficient systems, or systems of benefit to the country, or have other redeeming qualities and otherwise wouldn't come about, are OK imv.

It's when subsidies go towards encouraging political ideologies with little or no gain to society which I think is a shame, when those same resources could be deployed to help society rather than hinder it (e.g. 'green jobs' help one person, but throw 2.5 others on the dole, which overall is a hindrance to society).

darkpool

I think with solar we are all worse off it increases electricity bills for everyone and causes investment in a technology not really suitable for the UK.

even for the people with solar panels on their roof it's not really that good an investment.

GIOvGIO

These are cheapest I have found was on the trueshopping website.



VAT included at 20% so an installer can buy for you and claim 15% of the VAT back.

K4blades

zeupater wrote: »

Hi

Thanks for the reply. Looking at the figures it seems that you have a large atypical baseload, with a six-monthly consumption close to the national average for a whole year. The level of usage would also suggest that electricity is not the main form of heating (?). Using over 70% of total annual generation already within the house wouldn't leave much scope for being able to charge a vehicle, with the unused ~1000kWh being almost certainly being limited to summer that would only provide around 5kWh/day, even if you could control the charge to match the pv production ..... maybe that would be the time to look at 'off peak' electricity if the car is to ever expected to leave the drive

As a direct comparison, my household consumption was gradually reduced from circa 4500-5000kWh.y, which already included a number of energy saving features, to ~2800kWh.y in the five years leading up to installing pv, and has been reduced by a further ~200kWh.y since. Most of the energy savings resulting from pure common sense changes aided towards the end by using energy monitors .... my strong belief is that taking this approach will save anyone more than 'r-a-r' pv ever would. Only once the energy consumption was minimised was a grid tied pv system considered, although I have had a small 'off grid' system for a number of years. The main advantage of having addressed & reduced energy consumption behavoir prior to installing pv is that any further savings can only be related to the installation.

Additional savings have also been made in the energy required for heating .... gas usage has reduced from a rolling 12 month total of ~25000kWh five years ago (used to be 34000kWh+ before that !) to a rolling 12 month figure of just over 7000kWh now ...... some of this is attributable to a HE condensing boiler, but that wasn't even looked at until we'd insulated until it hurt, then insulated some more !!, the result being a property which now far exceeds the energy performance of almost all new builds .....

HTH
Z

Hi,
I'm not sure how typical my usage is overall but from looking at others it does seem typical for our family set up.

I don't think 70% of generated power has come into the house, its less than 50%, (the figure used by BRE). Much of our reduction comes from behaviour changes. (With a warmer spring this year, we have been out of the house more) (We also watch our usage more carefully, such as our son will only go to bed with the light on, which used to be on most of the night, but now we switch it off once he's asleep). I think behaviour change contributes a lot more than is credited when it comes to savings from domestic PVs.

I totally agree that the first thing people should look at is insulation
We live in a fairly new house and there is little we can do in that context, but if I was building from scratch or developing a property, I would go very high spec on insulation.
We don't have a condensing boiler, (but it is gas), and as its been relatively new, changing it was not cost effective though as it gets older in the next couple of years, this would make sense...I might get one through Green Deal...ha ha

As for electric car, I would never get one thinking I could power it solely from the PVs. The cost comparisons would be between petrol and grid electric, but my point being that if we did get one, any PV contribution would be an added bonus if we used it instead of exporting it.

K4blades

celerity wrote: »

Why don't people seem to realise that most businesses need power during the day, not during the night? I know plenty of small businesses that use over £500 of electric per month. Once the price of panels comes down a bit I fully expect solar PV systems > 4kWp to become more widespread, precisely for this kind of usage.

For domestic users that barely use any power during the day, the system still feeds back into the National Grid where it is used, not wasted, so what's the problem?

/\dam

Absolutely.
And this also ignores the fact that the population is getting older...more retired people means more peope at home during the day,
more people are working from home...this will carry on growing,
and technology will advance such as storage devices and smart control units.
Also, there will be more demand, eg in 10 years time there could well be 100,000s of electric vehicles on the roads, with electric hook-up points every where. (Thanks to subsidies there too.)

Its almost like saying we shouldn't have invested in a gas grid as most people only use their boiler in winter.
Times change and that means investment is needed to keep up.

K4blades

keith_r59 wrote: »

Ofgem produce a quarterly newsletter.

http://www.ofgem.gov.uk/Sustainability/Environment/fits/Newsletter/Documents1/Feed-in%20Tariff%20%28FIT%29%20Update%20Newsletter%20Issue%204.pdf

During the first year of the scheme a total of £4,714,129.01 was paid out in FiT payments.

If you use the assumption that there are 25 million homes in the UK this works out as 19p per household but obviously this figure will increase as more systems are installed.

I don't think that figure is the total for the first year, but your point is correct, from the report I read, (which I think is just the basic speadsheet that ofgem have taken their information from), it worked out at around £1.00 per household, so it does pale into insignificance compared to the massive increases we are getting due to higher costs of wholesale gas and oil.
As the number of installations grow, this figure will increase, but no where near as much as oil and gas will...they will keep going up, but over long term FITs will diminish....and all that assumes that the cost is split only across domestic homes and not business, just to allay Darkpools concerns.