Should I remove my solar panels ?

Shanaz_Patel

Hi
I purchased and had 10 pv solar panels installed by Npower in 2008 with the FITs scheme. I am now selling my house . I thought the solar panels would be an incentive but I guess not everyone is interested in having them!
How easy is it to remove them and then sell them on? What is the best way of doing this? any help/advice/signposting will be greatly appreciated.
thank you

EricMears

At the moment, very few people would want to buy secondhand panels when they can buy new ones and qualify for a 20 year income stream. It's possible that PV kit might be more easily saleable when FIT payments reduce to a derisory level but that's pure guesswork.

If you really want to remove them, it's pretty easy to do - they usually just bolt onto a set of rails so can simply be unbolted (electric cables removed first of course)then the rails unbolted from their support brackets then the brackets removed from roof. Done reasonably carefully, you might have a saleable product (but finding a buyer remains a problem).

But why do you think removing them would make the house easier to sell ? Has any viewer actually said "I love the house but wouldn't want those panels on the roof" ? And if anyone does say that a suitable response might be "I don't like them either but I do like the £1000 a year they earn me (and could earn you for another 18 years)".

If a house isn't selling, it's usually because the asking price is too high. You need to check yours against similar houses in same area (pref same street) that have sold recently. There's may even be some other reason for buyers avoiding your street - e.g. is there risk of flood or subsidence or a new motorway/railway line expected to come close ?

MFW_ASAP

All of the property !!!!!! TV programs go on about 'kerb appeal', and let's face it, solar panels are almost always ugly additions to houses. Integrated ones (such as the ones I'm having fitted to a outbuilding) or solar roof tiles are fine, but panels that sit on a roof like a hat are more than likely to reduce the sale price of the house, sometimes much more than the cost of the install and the electricity savings.

I'd suggest getting them removed and sold on ebay. You can then use the money from ebay to cover the cost of removal and remedial work to your roof (It's likely that you'll have broken slates, etc.)

Good luck with selling your home. I'd imagine a lot more people will be in your predicament as time goes on and more solar hatted houses come up for sale, sitting on the market while their attractive slate roofed neighbours sell like hot cakes.

Oh the folly of chasing tariffs, paid for by those in fuel poverty

EricMears

MFW_ASAP wrote: »

All of the property !!!!!! TV programs go on about 'kerb appeal', and let's face it, solar panels are almost always ugly additions to houses. Integrated ones (such as the ones I'm having fitted to a outbuilding) or solar roof tiles are fine, but panels that sit on a roof like a hat are more than likely to reduce the sale price of the house, sometimes much more than the cost of the install and the electricity savings.

I'd suggest getting them removed and sold on ebay. You can then use the money from ebay to cover the cost of removal and remedial work to your roof (It's likely that you'll have broken slates, etc.)

Good luck with selling your home. I'd imagine a lot more people will be in your predicament as time goes on and more solar hatted houses come up for sale, sitting on the market while their attractive slate roofed neighbours sell like hot cakes.

Oh the folly of chasing tariffs, paid for by those in fuel poverty

"People in fuel poverty" are far from being the only contributors to the 'alternative energy levy'. Indeed, since they're likely to be below average users of electricity, their share of the fund is likely to be low. Perhaps we should spare a thought for those living in larger houses with enormous electricity bills ?

Well fitted, solar panels would never be 'ugly' - but in any case, anything on the roof will always be completely invisible to anyone inside the house. If indeed the existence of panels on a roof did affect property prices it would be upon the price of nearby houses where the occupants were forced to gaze at their neighbour's roof.

My own solar panels are completely invisible to any of my neighbours as they're on a very shallow roof where the only 'viewers' would be passing hang glider users.

MFW_ASAP

EricMears wrote: »

"People in fuel poverty" are far from being the only contributors to the 'alternative energy levy'. Indeed, since they're likely to be below average users of electricity, their share of the fund is likely to be low. Perhaps we should spare a thought for those living in larger houses with enormous electricity bills ?

I'm sure those people who are having to make the difficult choice of whether to heat or eat will be appalled with your statement. It's reprehensible that a sector of our society who are struggling financially, who are often living in poorly insulated housing stock with high cost PAYG key meters are having to chip into a subsidy that allows wealthy home owners to cut their electricity bills by half and then receive a tax free payment for decades.

As far as your comments about housing. The idea that if you're sat inside a house, you can't see the outside and therefore it doesn't matter is ridiculous. You undermine your statement that 'well fitted' solar panels are attractive is negated by your comment that yours are fitted onto a shallow roof and therefore cannot be seen from the street. Are we to assume that your panels are not 'well fitted' and are therefore fortunate to be invisible to the naked eye?

warrenb

My panels are fitted on the rear roof, and are not visible from the road. The only people that see them is me in the garden, or the neighbour behind, who asked me all about them and was interested themselves.
As for the folly of chasing subsidy. Well what a load of tosh.
If you think the average 33p it adds to an annual fuel bill a year (YEAR) will affect peoples budgets, then I suggest you save it by not buying a Mars bar (Oh sorry that costs more).

EricMears

MFW_ASAP wrote: »

Are we to assume that your panels are not 'well fitted' and are therefore fortunate to be invisible to the naked eye?

If you're particularly thick, then you might well draw that conclusion. Anyone else will realise that it was a simple aside remark to the effect that although the panels are immaculately fitted and result in hordes of the hang glider fraternity coming to admire them every week they cannot actually be seen by my neighbours.

MFW_ASAP

warrenb wrote: »

As for the folly of chasing subsidy. Well what a load of tosh.

Well I'm sure that you installed your solar panels because of ecological 'save the planet' reasons, not because you could get a great financial return on an investment, but not everyone is that altruistic.

PasturesNew

If you're selling with panels in place, then maybe one thing you can do for free is to make sure that the arrangement/deal etc of the solar panels is clearly set out in the details.

There are so many different arrangements, companies, tariffs that people (like me) would just give it a wide berth through lack of up front information.

If there were, say, a short paragraph setting out who fitted them, when, the tariff and the income stream value, then it might nudge a few from not wishing to view to feeling OK about it.

ed110220

MFW_ASAP wrote: »

Well I'm sure that you installed your solar panels because of ecological 'save the planet' reasons, not because you could get a great financial return on an investment, but not everyone is that altruistic.

I trust you also rail against the big energy companies for their financial returns on building power stations through selling electricity? Fits are a drop in the ocean (single digit pounds per year for the average bill) compared with their profits.

Mankysteve

The Tory's are scraping it has nothing to do with decreasing energy bills you won't see any major drops as a result. It's just that corporate intreast want to make more money and don't like the democrataztion of powder production breaking there monopoly.