Solar Panel Guide Discussion

anselld

alterego wrote: »

Or, as it used to be known, having your cake and eating it.. :-)

Indeed ..... and it's a tax-free, index-linked cake!

orrery

alterego wrote: »

It's not an investment, it's robbery.

No, it's a Private Finance initiative. I'm being offered a ongoing guaranteed payment to put up the capital for, install, run, maintain and insure a solar generating station so that the government can meet its treaty obligations. You can't argue that the payment is too high as I haven't exactly seen a rush to cover every roof with the things and when I enquired I could get it installed in a few weeks. As has already been pointed out - some people think it a bad deal as we'll be out of pocket for near on 10 years.

grahamc2003

orrery wrote: »

As has already been pointed out - some people think it a bad deal as we'll be out of pocket for near on 10 years.

I doubt many think it's a bad deal for that reason.

It's a bad deal because electricity customers are being forced to pay something like 46p/kwh for something others can produce for around 4p/kwh.

My view is that the subsidy to pay this should be taken from the accounts of those who think it's a good idea, and not the ones who see the obscene waste of resources these schemes entail, currently paid for by many who are in fuel poverty and paid to many who are not.

Istr recent government statistics showed that around 3000 vulnerable people die each year due to insufficient heating, and it doesn't take a great leap to see that the higher energy prices, the less those vulnerable people will heat their homes.

zeupater

Hi All

I think that the size of the FiT pot and it's effect on society as a whole needs to be brought into perspective by viewing it against other initiatives such as the EU's CAP and farming subsidies (in whatever form), windfarms, nuclear etc and, of course, the other big one PFIs. In context, a number of schools in this area which were built in the 60's & 70's (so not that long ago) were closed down and a new architect designed PFI complex built which, after allowing for the recovery of the build cost, will unnecessarily transfer around £9 from every household in the country (including the vulnerable) to the organisation which runs the scheme over 25 years ... another way of looking at it is that over 25 years the school building alone will cost over £50k per pupil attending (intake ~210 to 220/year). Remember, this example is just one PFI project amongst literally thousands .... no wonder our taxes are so high and the national debt is rising so quickly ....

HTH
Z

Cardew

orrery wrote: »

No, it's a Private Finance initiative. I'm being offered a ongoing guaranteed payment to put up the capital for, install, run, maintain and insure a solar generating station so that the government can meet its treaty obligations. .

If the reason for this absurd scheme is for the government to meet its treaty - with solar at our latitudes - it is just a joke to have thousands of tiny systems dotted on roofs all over the country; in the North of Scotland and unsuitable roofs.

Accepting solar is a 'must'(which I don't) for treaty obligations, then surely it would make sense to have huge solar farms in Devon and Cornwall on the roofs of supermarkets, factories, office blocks and brownfield sites. More green energy for a fraction of the price that we pay for the highly inefficient systems being installed.

keith_r59

Nice to see that this thread is continually going round in circles debating the pros and cons of small scale solar PV. If only we could harness the wasted energy being expended repeating the same tired old arguments time and time again we would all be rich.:D

zeupater

keith_r59 wrote: »

Nice to see that this thread is continually going round in circles debating the pros and cons of small scale solar PV. If only we could harness the wasted energy being expended repeating the same tired old arguments time and time again we would all be rich.:D

Hi

Considering that new contributors wish to take part in the discussion that will always be the case. I suppose that the alternative would be to ignore any new contributions or inform the contributor that their input is unwelcome or simply be very rude by instructing every new contributor to read the entire thread and every other related thread before anyone would take notice of their post .... in the meantime, if anyone wants to discuss, why not allow discussion even if it does mean that the same ground is revisited ..... afterall, it is a discussion thread .

HTH
Z

Cardew

keith_r59 wrote: »

Nice to see that this thread is continually going round in circles debating the pros and cons of small scale solar PV. If only we could harness the wasted energy being expended repeating the same tired old arguments time and time again we would all be rich.:D

However the same 'tired old arguments' are still valid, even if unpalatable for vested interests.

geriann

do you have to have a roof that faces south to make solar panels worth while?

the sun rises at the back of my house, which has a large roof.
the sun sets at the front of my house, which has quite a small roof.

zeupater

geriann wrote: »

do you have to have a roof that faces south to make solar panels worth while?

the sun rises at the back of my house, which has a large roof.
the sun sets at the front of my house, which has quite a small roof.

Hi

What you seem to be describing is an East/West roof. As the orientation of the roof moves away from South the annual generation falls away, however it's generally still worthwhile having a system until you face somewhere North of the E/W divide.

If it is a true E/W roof you could have a split system with panels on both roofs, which will need an inverter with two MPPTs, or two inverters. The advantage of doing this would be the ability to make use of both morning and evening direct sunshine. Twin MPPT inverters are normally only available for larger systems, but assuming that your roof is E/W and is large enough you could place say 10 panels rated at around 250W on the large roof at the back (E) and a further 6 on the front (W) which would give you a 4kWp system. This split array layout would be ideal for a SB4000TL inverter. For information on whether this number of panels would fit, each panel would be around 1.6m to 1.7m by around 1m, so you'll need to do a little measuring.

If one of the roof planes faces significantly further South than the other it would probably be better to only have the panels on that side of the roof.

HTH
Z