Thoughts on the following solar panels quote

Black20VT

Received a quote earlier in the week for solar panels based on the following;

1. 4.0kw - 16x Axitec Premium Black 250w panels
2. Aurora Invertor
3. Solar iBoost
4. Geo Solo PV
5. Our property faces 80 degrees from South with an inclination of 42 degrees with no shading
6. Expected output is 3176 kWh/year
7. They're predicting a payback in year 7
8. Return on Investments (%) 9.24

And the cost for this...
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£9,664

We've lots more info about the quote, so if anything else is required to draw an accurate opinion / conclusion, please ask, as we're keen to get honest feedback.

What do people think?

Good, average or bad price?

Good, average or bad equipment?

Any and all feedback, comments or suggestions welcome :beer:

Thanks in advance fellow moneysavers! :money:

tunnel

Don't need anymore info....its too expensive, shop around. Blunt..yes, to the point...what you want to hear

Is the house a east/west split, could you use both rooves? Can't say i've heard of the panels so can't comment. You should be looking at £6-7k for a realistic price

Can you post your rough location so others may see and recommend?

Black20VT

We're in Swindon and could potentially use both sides. We did discuss the option of splitting 50/50 and having 8 panels on each side, but decided one side would be better.

tunnel

As your only 10 degrees off a direct E/W split i'd be inclined to look at your usage before ruling anything out. Do you have someone in the house all day or would you be looking to make the most of the evenings. A split would give you a much wider generation curve, all depends on your own personal use.

You do need to shop around, that's for sure. Can i ask if it was a national company that quoted your sky high price?

jimjames

How do they work out return on investment? That number sounds very high for the cost. Also payback in year 7 seems very optimistic too. With that cost and current FIT rates I wouldn't have expected it to be under 10 years. Our system was marginally under that cost but with FITs of now 49.5p our payback was 6 years.

Martyn1981

Black20VT wrote: »

[*]Expected output is 3176 kWh/year

Just stuck a pin in Swindon, and choose ESE (-80) and PVGIS suggested 3,210kWh, so the estimate of generation looks reasonable.

But the cost, payback etc doesn't look reasonable. Good/tough target to aim for is £6k, or perhaps 6.5k (ish) with the extras (black, GEO, Iboost).

More info, advice and an explanation of PVGIS in the FAQ thread.

Mart.

nigelpm

Wow, a few grand too much.


We're in Swindon

Let me know if you want a recommendation - I'm not that far away.

ed110220

I would like to know how they calculated payback time as it seems much too optimistic for that price of system.

Feed in tariff is 14.38p/kWh so 3176 kWh gives £456.71/year. Export tariff is 4.77p/kWh and usually export isn't metered as most meters are not yet capable, but is assumed to be 50% of generation, so £75.75/year. Total income of £532.46.

That's the easy part, the rest relies on how much of the electricity you produce you use to substitute for grid imports and this is where they've probably been optimistic.

Ok, so to pay back in year 7 (we'll say at the end of year 7) for £9664 you'd have to make/save £1380.57/year. Given you will get £532.46 from FiTs and export tariff the rest must come from electricity savings.

So £848.11 of electricity savings per year. Now if electricity is 15p/kWh you'd have to avoid buying 5654 kWh from the grid!

Given this is almost twice as much as you will generate (and almost twice the average consumption), it's clearly impossible, so not only have they given you an inflated price, they have supplied ridiculous calculations.

Not sure about Axitec panels, probably fine but not one of the usual premium brands such as Panasonic, Sunpower, Benq, LG etc which you should be able to get for a lot less than this quote.

Ed

nigelpm

As a matter of point here does anyone pay any attention to the payback and ROI calculations that PV installers produce?

Not one of mine included a change of inverter in the 25 year cash flows.

They are worthless IMHO although as Ed has pointed out when they are completely wrong I guess this should immediately raise a red flag.

groovyf

My installer supplied the yearly figures from FiT (and at the time I gave a cursory glance but noticed the generation tariff increasing), but it's just sunk in that FiT increases with RPI each year, so on year 9 or 10 you'll be getting more than 14.38p per unit, right?

Presuming RPI is 2.7%, a quick calc provided this (figures in pence)
Year 1: 14.38
Year 2: 14.77
Year 3: 15.17
Year 4: 15.58
Year 5: 16.00
Year 6: 16.43
Year 7: 16.87
Year 8: 17.33
Year 9: 17.80
Year 10: 18.28
Year 11: 18.77
Year 12: 19.28
Year 13: 19.80
Year 14: 20.33
Year 15: 20.88
Year 16: 21.44
Year 17: 22.02
Year 18: 22.62
Year 19: 23.23
Year 20: 23.86

PS: £9.6K is indeed a high quote. Can't imagine where the extra cost is coming from.

nigelpm

groovyf wrote: »

My installer supplied the yearly figures from FiT (and at the time I gave a cursory glance but noticed the generation tariff increasing), but it's just sunk in that FiT increases with RPI each year, so on year 9 or 10 you'll be getting more than 14.38p per unit, right?

Presuming RPI is 2.7%, a quick calc provided this (figures in pence)
Year 1: 14.38
Year 2: 14.77
Year 3: 15.17
Year 4: 15.58
Year 5: 16.00
Year 6: 16.43
Year 7: 16.87
Year 8: 17.33
Year 9: 17.80
Year 10: 18.28
Year 11: 18.77
Year 12: 19.28
Year 13: 19.80
Year 14: 20.33
Year 15: 20.88
Year 16: 21.44
Year 17: 22.02
Year 18: 22.62
Year 19: 23.23
Year 20: 23.86

PS: £9.6K is indeed a high quote. Can't imagine where the extra cost is coming from.

It does but then so does everything else.

To keep the cashflows simple I always assumed that everything stays the same i.e. FIT, energy prices and cost of money.

If you increase your FITs you also need to reduce incoming cashflows by interest rates each year.