Energy help /advice please ..

Martyn1981

Countryways wrote: »

In relation to PV my core questions relate to long term maintenance including cleaning, servicing, panel expected and real lifetimes, degradation rates etc. My instinct is that the solar PV initiative by the government allowed many companies to start-up a very good business for advice, installation and maintenance. ... But in time as new business volumes for advice/installation taper off the 'maintenance only' part will change those businesses dynamics/economics and many companies will go out of business. Do folk who have installations plan for very long term maintenance or is it really more a matter of planned obsolescence within a decade or so ?

Hiya, check out the PV FAQ's for some general info.

Regarding your questions, you could take out an annual contract for maintenance, etc, but with PV there is very little to go wrong.

The panels should last for 30 to 40 years, but could degrade about 0.5% pa. The inverter should be good for 10yrs or more, hopefully more, but sensible to expect to have to replace it sometime in the first 20 years. The SolarEdge inverter comes with a standard 12yr warranty, extendable to 20yrs for approx £200.

You might want to clean the panels occasionally, but to be honest it's not really worth the bother, just wait for it to rain.

So hopefully your only cost within the 20yr FiT period is a possible replacement inverter. Which may (depending on make and model) cost £600 to £1000 including labour (educated guess).

Mart.

jimjames

Countryways wrote: »

In relation to PV my core questions relate to long term maintenance including cleaning, servicing, panel expected and real lifetimes, degradation rates etc. My instinct is that the solar PV initiative by the government allowed many companies to start-up a very good business for advice, installation and maintenance. ... But in time as new business volumes for advice/installation taper off the 'maintenance only' part will change those businesses dynamics/economics and many companies will go out of business. Do folk who have installations plan for very long term maintenance or is it really more a matter of planned obsolescence within a decade or so ?

Should be no need for much maintenance if any. Reports of panels lasting over 25 years so shouldn't be obsolete either.

I'm puzzled that an installer was dismissive unless they were offering free PV. Anyone paying for the install would be potential customer so target for sales pitch unless it really is so massively complicated to install that cost is prohibitive.

Countryways

Thanks very much for the feedback ..the house is three storey rather than bungalow ... But I guess that might just up the install cost and make maintenance more tricky.

It is odd that two installers both were pretty clear that it wouldn't make sense ...prolly a countryside thing! It was definitely a me pay up front thing too ..though it might be my reaction to the suggestion from one that the price would be in the order of 10k ...to which I expressed a rude response (!) and that they seemed very dismissive of the availability of multiple inverters.

Sounds like it maybe does make sense to look at again!

Tyvm for the help/advice