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Solar Panel Guide Discussion

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  • zeupater
    zeupater Posts: 5,389 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Name Dropper Combo Breaker
    partist wrote: »
    If you've got £10,00 to invest you're much better off investing it in shares of Scottish & Southern Energy.

    With solar panels you get a return in free electricity and selling to the grid. But your £10,000 is just about worthless - it's a wasting asset. In 10 years time your £10,000 is worth little or nothing.

    But in SSE shares in 10 years your £10,000 should be worth a lot more than £10,000 and you can cash them in whenever you need to. And of course they pay dividends.

    If you are putting up panel because you think power prices can only go up, that's even more reason to put your money into power company shares.
    Hi

    I suggest you read up on the FiT scheme a little more .... also when placing a value on the share asset would there be any chance of a falling price ?. The mentioned shares are around 20% lower than 5 years ago and are currently returning around a 5% taxable dividend return .... yes the capital value of pv should be written off, but it's the return from the capital on a tax free basis which makes the difference.

    HTH
    Z
    "We are what we repeatedly do, excellence then is not an act, but a habit. " ...... Aristotle
    B)
  • lanstrom
    lanstrom Posts: 204 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 100 Posts Name Dropper Combo Breaker
    Do you know if there are many sites/blogs giving a daily yield ?

    I have found one but its in Wiltshire which is quite a bit further south than me.

    I would like to compare to a 3.84 kWh system :)

    Thanks.
  • keith_r59
    keith_r59 Posts: 255 Forumite
    partist wrote: »
    If you've got £10,00 to invest you're much better off investing it in shares of Scottish & Southern Energy.

    With solar panels you get a return in free electricity and selling to the grid. But your £10,000 is just about worthless - it's a wasting asset. In 10 years time your £10,000 is worth little or nothing.

    But in SSE shares in 10 years your £10,000 should be worth a lot more than £10,000 and you can cash them in whenever you need to. And of course they pay dividends.

    If you are putting up panel because you think power prices can only go up, that's even more reason to put your money into power company shares.

    If you feel that you can make more money by investing in energy company shares then go for it.

    It is your money after all.
  • From today's email:
    http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/latesttip/#solar
    "Urgent! Free solar subsidy could be slashed"

    Some good news - and while this bit is correct:
    Rumour. Feed-in tariff being slashed. These are strong mutterings it may cut by 50% for those installing panels after 31 March 2012 though not for those already signed up. This isn't surprising, as the cost's effectively covered by higher energy bills, so is a bizarre poor-to-rich subsidy. If you want to take advantage, as it takes time to sort, hurry. It could mean the end of free solar.

    I'm not so sure about this bit:
    Electricity savings c. £90-£180/year - according to the Energy Saving Trust. Solar panels require a roughly south facing roof, and daylight (not sunshine, thankfully).

    It's actually been agreed by EST and Which that an average of £70 is more likely
  • keith_r59
    keith_r59 Posts: 255 Forumite
    From today's email:
    http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/latesttip/#solar
    "Urgent! Free solar subsidy could be slashed"

    Great news for the Solar PV companies - a potential increase in orders between now and April 2012 based on "strong mutterings".
  • thenudeone
    thenudeone Posts: 4,462 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Combo Breaker
    partist wrote: »
    If you've got £10,00 to invest you're much better off investing it in shares of Scottish & Southern Energy.

    Ahh. I must have missed something. Do S&SE shares now offer a 10-12% index-linked tax free income for 25 years, like solar panels?
    We need the earth for food, water, and shelter.
    The earth needs us for nothing.
    The earth does not belong to us.
    We belong to the Earth
  • dafranmo wrote: »
    Say £12,000 outlay grosses £27,500 over twenty-five years... [etc. etc. etc.] ...but it does show that the argument isn't as cut and dried as some would suggest.

    dafranmo, Your figures are misleading. For instance you ignore the fact that the return on solar panels will come to you tax free, whereas the return on a savings account will attract tax at your highest tax rate. Over 25 years, this will make a big difference to your conclusions.

    You also make numerous other assumptions which are just that, assumptions - and, I suspect, assumptions that are just as questionable (in reverse) to the assumptions that some over-zealous solar PV salesmen employ.
  • hi im new and found this thread as i was searching for answers. our local council was to install these solar panels on our property but today recieved a letter that due to the goverment changing a crucial part of the funding package we would no longer be getting them only 185 homes where they are needed most because there is no mains gas " we have no mains gas here either " I did notice that the main offices have many of them fitted all over it did they nick um all!!! lol
    can maybe someone enlighten me as to what has happened in regards to this whole thing

    thanks :)
  • zeupater
    zeupater Posts: 5,389 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Name Dropper Combo Breaker
    keith_r59 wrote: »
    Great news for the Solar PV companies - a potential increase in orders between now and April 2012 based on "strong mutterings".
    Agree ..... they did exactly the same thing for the spending review at this time last year ...... if you look back at the posts from that time you'll see the discussions ...

    I really do think that it's on the cards though .... note this previous post for reasoning ....
    zeupater wrote: »
    Hi

    Welcome to the forum ... :)

    This has been discussed a few times as it raised it's head in the press every few months. Effectively, there is no guarantee on anything if the government change the rules retrospectively, but there would certainly be a case for conducting a number of reviews or even some court cases and knowing how long these things take I would guess that my system would be well on the way to paying for itself before the scheme was stopped (I hope :)).

    It's far more likely that the FiT would be addressed and the tariff paid to new entrants would be seriously reduced, possibly in line with materials spot prices movement or averaged competitive install costs. The FiT is already due for a reduction for new installations in spring next year, so I would expect that there would be a further reduction above what has been published at this point in order to avoid adding complexity to the payment mechanism. A system which cost ~£20k when the FiT payment scheme was developed now costs in the region of £12k and the original payback logic would still apply, so it would make a lot of sense to expect the 43.3p/kWh to be reduced to somewhere between 25p and 30p instead of the anticipated 8.5% reduction to 39.6p/kWh (all before index linking).

    If a reduction it's not done next spring it almost certainly will be by the year after, other countries have taken this approach. Germany in particular changed their system last year but made the mistake of giving far too much notice which resulted in an installation frenzy to avoid the change deadline, and the UK gave a period of notice of change to 50kWp+ systems earlier this year which had a similar effect on large installations, so don't expect the government to signal any future change. In March this year France announced a change to their payments for larger ground mounted systems where the new rate became applicable on the day of announcement and in my opinion this is the likely model for future UK announcements ;)

    Just my guess ..... :D

    HTH
    Z

    HTH
    Z
    "We are what we repeatedly do, excellence then is not an act, but a habit. " ...... Aristotle
    B)
  • BornAtTheRightTime
    BornAtTheRightTime Posts: 407 Forumite
    edited 19 October 2011 at 3:34PM
    It's the figures outlined here, amongst other places, that have got the media in a spin this last week. In essence last year's spending review introduced a budget, and therefore cap, for FiT payments in 2011. It erroneously assumed an increased in FiT-qualifying PV generation of 86MW. In fact in the first 6 months of this FiT year, the FiT register shows that figure has been exceeded two-fold and recent projections are that 500-550MW of PV will be installed between April 2011 and April 2012.

    Clearly with this size of budget overrun it is likely that some measures will be taken to address it. Whether that will be an increased reduction in the April 2012 FiT payment or an increase in next year's budget, or a mixture of both, remains to be seen.
    3.9kWp solar PV installed 21 Sept 2011, due S and 42° roof.
    17,011kWh generated as at 30 September 2016 - system has now paid for itself. :beer:
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