Solar Panels

irishcol

justjohn wrote: »

The cost of them have halved in price in the last 3 years. They reckon it takes 8-12 years to pay off/break even

Heres my question how much will they cost in 5-8 years and how much more efficient will they be?

They may well be much cheaper and much more efficient, but that is why the feed in tariff is being reduced significantly over time. The FiT was designed to help the "early adopters" of an expensive green technology - when the market has driven the cost down, there is less need to subsidise the product.

Althoguh they handled it attrociously, the government were right to slash the FiT last year - it had got to the stage where the cost of the panels had dropped, while the FiT hadn't - this meant that it was returning a ridiculous ROI, significantly in excess of anythign else around. the reduction sought to balance the return on investment to an acceptable level - i.e. the 8 - 12 years that you mention.

In a couple of years, you might well get 20%+ efficient panels, for half the current price. but you won't get 43, or even 21p/kWh FiT guaranteed for 25 years.

00ec25

the people in my street who fitted them could not give a txss about the savings on their bills. To them it was simply a simply a financial investment product ... compare the rate of return on leaving £10k in the bank and earning 1 - 2% interest or investing £10k on panels and getting a 10% rate of return, complete no brainer (if you have the money to start with of course!)