Solar companies - are they all hopeless?

penrhyn

Trust you are not having thoses horrible ones with the aluminium frames, a right eyesore. The black ones look much nicer.

A thought, would there be a problem if a build up of snow on the panels were to deposit itself on the ground below?

Vomityspice

Installation took 4 hours with 4 people. Sadly my Gem Apollo hasn't turned up in the post so the electrician will return when it does....

Fruit_and_Nut_Case

Vomityspice wrote: »

Installation took 4 hours with 4 people. Sadly my Gem Apollo hasn't turned up in the post so the electrician will return when it does....

Looking good! Next time can we have some kittens and puppies in the pictures too?

Topaz63

Read all the above with interest. I had three quotes back in January, ranged between £6.5k and £8.5k for a 4kw system. I've just gone back to my preferred supplier from then and refined it all to 12 BENQ 325's with Solaredge inverter and optimisers ( there's a small amount of shading from a neighbours roof for a short period of the day). Quote now is £7.3k. Having read up as much as I could about Sunpower and BENQ panels, I'm going with this one I think. Any comments?

penrhyn

Fruit_and_Nut_Case wrote: »

Looking good! Next time can we have some kittens and puppies in the pictures too?

I guess beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Living_proof

I am hoping the forum can point me in the right direction. I have an east/west 45 degree roof on newish build house in South Humber area, renowned for its' sunshine. I have had a few local quotes but closer investigation of the companies show a history of insolvencies etc. and some of the quotes have shown a lack of commercial expertise (which is a shame as they may be excellent tradesmen but first impressions always count).

I am very tempted by Ikea/Hanergy's £6150 quote but have not come across the 120kw thin panels before and wonder what the concensus is. I have ample roof space for the 32 panels quoted, total 3.84kw and have no shade problems. I'd like to get going with this project before I lose the momentum and something else comes along to tempt my bank balance.

All comments very gratefully received.

Martyn1981

Hiya LP.

Firstly, nothing wrong with that system, so just a few comments / suggestions, feel free to ignore.

You've spotted the key issue. The panels are lower efficiency, so to achieve the same kWp, you need more panels and more roof space. They are also heavy (relative to Wp) so you may need to consider this, but they will (of course) be spread over a larger area anyway.

You said you have plenty of roof space, so I was just pondering, do you mean plenty of room to fit them, or spare room after? As you might (in the future) want to extend your system, or add solar thermal, or not ..... but maybe just worth a quick think.

Have you checked your generation. I had a quick play/guess and got approx 700kWh/kWp. So that system should earn you around £600pa (assuming £100 to £120 leccy savings), so approx 10% gross return.

If you haven't tried it already, have a play with PVGIS to check generation, see this thread, post #1 section 5:

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

Another thought, and I'm starting to digress a bit here, but given the roof space, have you considered going bigger? As your roofs are pretty steep, a 5kWp system split 2.5:2.5, probably wouldn't ever exceed 3.68kW generation. So both roofs 'plugged' into a dual MPPT 3.68kW inverter would increase your generation, without you needing approval from your DNO (District Network Operator) to exceed the 3.68kW limit.

You would get a lower FiT rate (it drops 10% when you go over 4kWp) but the install cost should be a little less per kWp, though obviously a little more in total.

Apologies if I've gone a little off question.

Mart.

Living_proof

Thanks for responding Martyn. I don't think I would go for a bigger installation, and currently have a newish combi boiler which is very fuel efficient. I can see a family would use a lot more hot water though but as I could get all 32 panels on one side of the roof, there is ample room for expansion in the future. I am hoping for at least £500 return or around 8% and my electricity savings should be quite high due to working at home with a fair amount of electrical office and comms equipment on 24/7. I would also be around to switch on washer, dishwasher, tumble drier etc. in periods of high generation and might even do the ironing on a more regular basis!

tunnel

Living_proof wrote: »

Thanks for responding Martyn. I don't think I would go for a bigger installation, and currently have a newish combi boiler which is very fuel efficient. I can see a family would use a lot more hot water though but as I could get all 32 panels on one side of the roof, there is ample room for expansion in the future. I am hoping for at least £500 return or around 8% and my electricity savings should be quite high due to working at home with a fair amount of electrical office and comms equipment on 24/7. I would also be around to switch on washer, dishwasher, tumble drier etc. in periods of high generation and might even do the ironing on a more regular basis!

If you can get 32 panels on one roof then why not put 16 on east and 16 on west but use 250W panels(8kWp system). I've been quoted £10k for something similar for my parents. Also bear in mind the FIT only reduces by 1.4p per kWh generated on that size install. Trust me, if you can go bigger to start with and you can afford it then do it, you'll only um and ar at a later date when the FIT has reduced again.

EricMears

tunnel wrote: »

If you can get 32 panels on one roof then why not put 16 on east and 16 on west but use 250W panels(8kWp system). I've been quoted £10k for something similar for my parents. Also bear in mind the FIT only reduces by 1.4p per kWh generated on that size install. Trust me, if you can go bigger to start with and you can afford it then do it, you'll only um and ar at a later date when the FIT has reduced again.

But I'm sure I've read here that if you start with a sub 4kWp system and register that for FIT then add an independent extra system of sub 6kWp you'd get the 4kWp rate for the first one and the 10kWp rate for the second.


That's probably better than leaping straight in with a bigger system.


There might be extra scaffolding costs etc - but if SPs are being fitted to two different rooves you'd need two sets of scaffolding anyway.