Cold called re free solar panels.

ohreally

As header, I was cold called today and offered solar panels at zero cost to me (really?). I don't accept unsolicited calls so rather impolitely disconnected the caller.

Now anyone explain what may have been on offer as its being creeping into my thoughts tonight.

If it matters, I use around 17kWH's per day and have a combi boiler for heating and DHW.

So, what’s the deal and am I a suitable candidate for PV?

Cardew

There are loads of threads on the so called 'Rent a Roof' companies.

There are some real cowboys and some good firms.

Presumably they would have carried out a Google Earth survey to check your roof was suitable - large enogh, South facing and not shaded.

Essentially you sign a binding legal 25 year 'lease' renting your roof to these firms - the lease would need to be accepted by anyone to whom you sell your house.

The firm get the income from the electricity generated and you can use as much of that electricity as you wish. It is very much IMO a one-sided arrangement in favour of the Rent a roof company.

How much you save will depend on your lifestyle, but around £100 a year would be par.

If your roof is suitable, you are far better off paying for your own system and get all the income. Plenty of advice on how to go about buying on this section of MSE.

SirFinch

I have to agree with Cardew on this one, unless you use a huge amount of energy during the day then the Solar company really is the only one who benefits the most. With there "FreeSolar Panels" schemes they get all of the money that is paid out from the Government Feed in Tariffs so all the unused electricity is sent back to the grid. If you purchase the panels yourself then you can store some of the power in battery cells and the rest you can send back to the grid and get paid for. You used to get about 43p per kw but i think the government have reduced the payments massively to around 16p now. Saying that the cost of solar panels has reduced by about 60-70% in the last 2-3years so they are still quite a good investment.

Martyn1981

ohreally wrote: »

As header, I was cold called today and offered solar panels at zero cost to me (really?). I don't accept unsolicited calls so rather impolitely disconected the caller.

Now anyone explain what may have been on offer as its beeing creeping into my thoughts tonight.

If it matters, I use around 17kws per day and have a combi boiler for heating and DHW.

So, whats the deal and am I a suitable candidate for PV?

Hiya ohreally, there are some threads on free systems. Presumably it was a rent a roof (RaR) but some companies are trying to sell systems on finance, then arguing that the income covers the cost - so no initial cost - hmmm!

If you were targeted randomly, then you can't draw any conclusions. If you were specifically targeted, then perhaps you have a PV suitable roof.

There is some general advice (compiled by PV'ers, not companies) here:

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/3872445

To assess your house, you'd need to consider roof space, orientation, location (and less importantly pitch). Easy to do, shout if you want help.

17kWh per day is pretty high. So that's a good starting point, in a bad way (if you see what I mean). But to maximise savings you'd need to make use of daytime leccy (as it's being generated). I'd normally suggest a modest saving of £100 (£70 - £150) as a starting point. Wifey and I used to import about 7.5kWh's per day before PV (total consumption has gone up as we've switched gas hob to leccy so now about 8 per day), but import has dropped to 5 per day, leccy savings for us are about £140 pa (based on the original 3.6kWp system, 2kWp extension not yet included in calcs).

The other income streams are the FIT subsidy, and payment for exported leccy.

Cost of a system, they keep changing. Very rough figure perhaps £6k or less now for a large (4kWp) install. Lots of people create a thread when they start getting quotes, and ask for comments.

All the best.

Mart.

ohreally

Thanks for that guys, appreciate it.

KeenToMakeSavings

I strongly suspect the cold-call was from a company who call themselves variously Ecoenergy, PV Solar UK, Helms, The Energy Trust (which they definitely are BOT) and whose URL is wwdotfreeenergy4dotcom. If so they are NOT offering a rent-a-roof scheme.

I had a cold-call from them in which they stated they had an arrangement with Barclays for a long-term loan to allow the customer to buy the PV system where the loan repayments were tailored to match the earnings from the FIT scheme thereby resulting in zero cost and zero outlay to the customer. As I'd been looking extensively into solar PV for some time but had found my intentions blocked by the need to take out a loan which would result in me being out of pocket for the first 5 - 7 years or so which I could not afford to be, I was naturally interested in hearing more. As we use about 8 MW of electricity per year, I already knew a 4 kWp system was the only size which made economic sense.

An 'advisor' therefore visited me. He told me the purchase price of the system was £8,678 and the Barclay loan was for a fixed term of 10 years at an APR of 10.1%, or 9.7% actual. The monthly repayments would therefore be £113.43 for the life of the loan.

He told me the SAP prediction for a 4 kWp system was 4,120 kWh per year and that I could assume that of this 2,000 kWh would be unused by me and would therefore be exported back to the grid. He therefore told be the FIT payments would therefore cover my loan and I would therefore never be out of pocket even in the first year.

After his visit, I obtained the current FIT payment rate which is the amount I will be paid for any electricity generated by me whether I use it or not. The rate is currently 15.44 pence per kWh, and for electricity which the system generates over and above my needs and is therefore exported back to the grid, there is an additional payment of 4.5 pence per kWh of exported electricity.

I then visited the SAP website where the figure for my property is only 3,360 kWh per year, not the 4,120 kWh the 'advisor' told me.

Because his figure precisely balances the loan repayments I have to conclude that rather than tailor the loan to match the FIT payments as I had been told, the SAP figure is being falsified to make it appear that the FIT payments will cover the loan when in fact they almost certainly won't.

If you have the cash to spare so you don't need a loan, its a 'no-brainer': buying the system outright will give you a return from day 1 of about 15% on your investment - much better than any ISAs etc.

If you have to borrow, be prepared to be out of pocket for several years until the increase in the Index-lined FIT payments in combination with periodic rises in the price of electricity gradually catch up with the loan re-payments.

Finally, your return is maximised if you vacate the property for holidays etc. If you turn off all your appliances but leave your master isolating switch to ON, ALL the electricity your panels general will attract the 4.5 p/unit export tariff in addition to the 15.44 p/unit paid for each unit you generate.

Because the export tariff is an additional payment, you should buy the largest system you can afford and which will fit on your roof in order to maximise your benefit from this payment. But shop around - 4 kWp systems are available for under £6k.

KeenToMakeSavings

Just noticed Martyn1981 says his system is 5.6 kWp. Be aware that anything over 4 kWp is classed as a commercial system for which the FIT rate is currently only 13.99 p/unit (the export rate remains at 7.1p/unit) so if you want to go larger than 4 kWp, you need to go sufficiently large to ensure your total annual income from the FITs is larger than it would be for a 4kWp system. To calculate the 'break-even' size, you need to be aware that a larger system will give you a bigger electricity saving and a larger export payment but will cost more to buy.

And the FIT rates reduce again on 30 April 2013 and will be reviewed every 3 months after that.

Don't forget that an Energy Performance Certificate with a rating of no lower than 'D' is required to qualify for the above tariff rates. If no certificate is provided or is lower than band 'D' the tariff falls to 7.1p for each unit generated for any size system up to 50 kWp. The export rate remains unaltered.

KeenToMakeSavings

Sorry - meant t say at the beginning "(the export rate remains at 4.5p/unit) not 7.1p/unit - an oops - too many numbers!

EricMears

KeenToMakeSavings wrote: »

Just noticed Martyn1981 says his system is 5.6 kWp

As he's casually mentioned here once or twice, Martyn has two separate systems - one at below 4kWp which qualifies for the highest rate of FIT payments and an additional one added later which gets a lower rate.

Martyn1981

KeenToMakeSavings wrote: »

I then visited the SAP website where the figure for my property is only 3,360 kWh per year, not the 4,120 kWh the 'advisor' told me.

Hiya KTMS, the SAP figure should not vary, so naughty of the company if they did that. The problem with SAP is that it's an average figure based on Sheffield, so properties above or below Sheffield should do worse or better (respectively).

Better to use PVGIS, and calculate for your exact location, mini tutorial here post#1 section 5:

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/3872445

One other thing, unless you have an export meter, which hardly anyone does, then your export is assumed/deemed at 50% of generation. So regardless of what you actually export, in your example of 4,120 generation, export would be paid as 2,060@4.5p = £92.70.

As for going over 4kWp. Eric is spot on, I installed 3.58kWp on the original tariff back in 8/11, then 2kWp in 7/12 under the 21p tariff, but at a combined 5.58kWp 'only' get 16.8p on the 2kWp extension.

The 10% difference on 4-10kWp now is almost small enough to ignore, especially as leccy savings and export are obviously not affected. So whilst I wouldn't recommend installing 4.01kWp deliberately, I would divide the total cost of any system into the estimated income to see if there is any major difference in the percentage return. After all the income drop is small, and the extra costs of going bigger, get proportionately less - but then we move into DNO limits of 3.68kW export ..... and the issue gets more complicated (fun!!).

Are you still thinking of installing? Looks like the 15.44p rate is safe till 1/8/13, but I need to check this out properly.

Mart.

KeenToMakeSavings

Hi Eric, As I've only just joined this Forum I was unaware of Martin's previous postings but thanks for the update.

Martyn, I agree with you entirely about the limitations of the SAP figures because they are only an average for the whole country, and the solar radiation level per sq meter varies considerably between Cornwall where it is greatest and the north of Scotland where it is lowest. In fact, as you recommended, I have for some time used the PVGIS calculator, entering my postcode and then selecting the Climate-SAF PVGIS radiation database in preference to the Classic database as its calculations are based on better and more recent data. I didn't mention PVGIS in my original post in the interests of brevity. But thanks for the pointer anyway - better to duplicate than to omit possibly useful info.

Your other data are interesting and are obviously correctly apply to your set-up.

I obtained the 'expiry' dates for the present FIT rates from The Energy Saving Trusts website but the info is also available on one of the .gov websites - I forget which one just now - both state the present tariffs are valid only until 30 April and will be reviewed and adjusted then and at 3-month intervals after that, The Energy Saving Trust's website states the rates after that date "will be revised according to deployment rates" whatever that non-committal and uninformative statement means.

Re export meters, the man from PV Solar UK stated they fit a bi-directional meter next to my present import meter but I have to say I'm sceptical as I know many don't bother as this reduces the system purchase cost.

I am very keen to install a system but being a pensioner on a fixed (actually a reducing income) with insufficient free capital, I can only afford to do so if I can get a deal where I break even immediately on installation. So far I haven't found one but the just announced (today) second phase of the Government's Green Deal might just be of use - I intend to have a Green Deal survey done to find out.

Keep saving,

Ian