Solar Panels

saverbuyer

motorguy wrote: »

We've solar water heating and i was surprised to hear the pump kick in on saturday. The reading on the tubes on the roof was 50 degrees which bodes well for photovoltaic during autum / winter months.

I would take the jump to solar water after the Renewable Heat Incentive has been sorted out here.

motorguy

saverbuyer wrote: »

Need to take account of the loss of capital cost but still less than ten years is much better than I expected.

In fairness, yes you do - you're right. At 2% its 8 years, at 5% its 9.6 years or something.

saverbuyer wrote: »

I was reading the other day that panel costs have dropped 50% since 2009. If that trend continues I'd definitely consider solar PV.

Its one of my only regrets of when we built the house. We looked at PV but the crowd who did our biomass boiler install, water panels, and zoned underfloor said that they expected cells to be twice as efficient and half the price within 5 years or so which seems to have been bang on.

They're also the crowd who said 7 years ROI that i quoted (and they were looking just at capital V return) when i spoke to them again earlier this year so again they'rve not been a million miles off.

I'd definitely had found the extra at the time had it been around £7K, but £15K for something that wasnt hugely effective and was going to be half the price made it unrealistic.

motorguy

saverbuyer wrote: »

I would take the jump to solar water after the Renewable Heat Incentive has been sorted out here.

It definitely seems to work. We've seen it work from March to November as it needs to be able to heat the water to above 40 degrees, and during the winter months it cant do that.

The advantage for us is we switch the rest of the system off entirely May -> October so our hot water for showers, etc, is effectively "free" during that time.

saverbuyer

motorguy wrote: »

In fairness, yes you do - you're right. At 2% its 8 years, at 5% its 9.6 years or something.



Its one of my only regrets of when we built the house. We looked at PV but the crowd who did our biomass boiler install, water panels, and zoned underfloor said that they expected cells to be twice as efficient and half the price within 5 years or so which seems to have been bang on.

They're also the crowd who said 7 years ROI that i quoted (and they were looking just at capital V return) when i spoke to them again earlier this year so again they'rve not been a million miles off.

I'd definitely had found the extra at the time had it been around £7K, but £15K for something that wasnt hugely effective and was going to be half the price made it unrealistic.

The in-laws are getting a similar system fitted, biomass, solar heating and under floor. Again, if the RHI ever gets implemented here, it would be a great way to go.

motorguy

saverbuyer wrote: »

The in-laws are getting a similar system fitted, biomass, solar heating and under floor. Again, if the RHI ever gets implemented here, it would be a great way to go.

Just some feedback if it would be of any use to them (and they can learn from our mistakes!!) -

One thing i would say is the best conductor of heat is a tiled floor, probably some types of wood, then carpet without underlay, then carpet with underlay being the worst.

Also, if you a room with a lot of floor space covered - for example with rugs or a large suite, this will impact the heating too.

Its also very slow to respond to a *need* for heat, so its best to have it set to come on a couple of hours before you enter the room, rather than trying to heat it once you're there.

Also, get as many zones as they can - one for each room ideally.

Dont have it trying to heat too many rooms at once, as this will drop the water temp overall and slow it down. Plan ahead and heat only a couple of rooms at a time, eg kitchen and lounge, then bedrooms.

Keep all doors closed - my wifes parents live in a granny flat on our house and *love* to leave the lounge and kitchen doors open, and then cant understand why the room isnt warm.

Consider having a backup heat source. Our boiler can only be worked on by one company here in NI and parts come from Scandinavia or somewhere equally non local. We've had two instances of needing parts and thus have had no heat for several days. We've since rigged in an oil boiler which kicks in if the biomass is off.

Look at the pipe between the boiler and the house. You could easily lose 10 degrees across a back yard - which means the water has to be 10 degrees hotter before it leaves the boiler, which is a lot. A fully insulated pipe is expensive but you can get the drop in temp down to a degree or so.

davidanddeirdre

We paid c. £7950 for 10 solar PV panels in March 2011 so have nearly 3 years under our belt. We don't have an ideal aspect, slightly east of SE but it is unimpeded. So we don't get as much juice as a south facer. OK the Feed In Tariff was about 43p per unit then, & has now gone down a lot, but on the other hand the cost of such a system will also have reduced considerably in the meantime. The amount saved by use of daylight electricity will have gone up a bit due to price rises. I estimate the overall simple interest return is at least 11% pa for us. Much better than an ISA.
There does not seem to have been any measurable output reduction due to aging- in fact the second full year produced significantly more electricity than the first, and it is looking as if that will be true for the third year as well.
I've no idea about inverter life, one sees these estimates of 10 years, does that mean minimum, average or maximum?
One good thing about having solar panels for us has been that we have paid much more attention to how and when we use electricity, we have converted to mostly low energy bulbs and indeed are going LED in our sitting room soon. (a beef here- why do lamp fittings suppliers insist on providing bulbs with them, which as in this case may not be the ones you want?)

jtk174

Just read this and thought it might be of interest
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-24921411

CL

If anyone has an SMA inverter their 5 year extensions on the warranty are ver good value

http://www.sma-uk.com/en_UK/service-osc/sunny-boy-sunny-mini-central-sunny-tripower-windy-boy/warranties.html