Solar Panels

MrSalty

So ive just had my 1st salesman round about installing Panels on my House and was Quoted £10550 :shocked: 1 of things he kept saying was a "Voltage Optimiser" would save me close to £300 a year, i had never heard of these and when checking online this seems to be very far fetched , He quoted me for 6 panels , Volt Optimiser , and a water heater (so any extra power goes to heating water) and installation. Has the panels and equipment come on that much that these volt optimiser are that good . I live in North Essex and my roof is facing 100 degrees has no shading so gets the sun up too around 3 pm , Im not to worried about selling my extra energy back this is more about saving money by using the solar power lowering my bills as we are an all electric house , i cant help but think that this is a big outlay for not a big saving . HELP please

System

Hi - welcome. Re-post on The Green and Ethical Moneysaving forum for a more considered answered but the quote that you have been given is about twice what most people are now paying for a PV Solar installation.

A 4kWp system will generate about 4000kWhs of electricity a year. You will struggle to use 75% of this. Bear in mind, the sun doesn’t produce much PV during Winter and none at night.

NineDeuce

You need to take into account all 3 revenue streams quite carefully - i.e. the savings, feed-in-tariff and export tariff.

The longer you are at home, the quicker the payback. Only you know if you are going to use this electricity.

£10k is about the price of an 8-10kW system - double the typical for a house. A typical house will never have a such a big load. So the seller is trying to sell you something bigger than worthwhile, or is charging you double (at least) for a typical system, so just say no.

For what it's worth, assuming you are an average consumer of electricity, voltage optimisation will never save you that much. £300 would be somewhere between 30-50% of your electricity bill per year... it just simply isnt going to happen. If it did, every house would be fitted with them and we hear more about them.

Cardew

The quote is a joke!

Go to the Green and Ethical section of this forum and you will get an idea of the income/savings.

A voltage optimiser in domestic properties is next to useless.

matelodave

If you got solar panels a few years ago then you would get a fairly decent return on them with the FIT, now the FIT has been reduced the payback period is about twice as long so IMO they aren't really worth persuing.

The price quoted seems to be about twice the going rate and as other have said a voltage optimiser is never ever going to save you money.

Have a look on the Green & Ethical section of the forum to see what others have to say.

I'm all electric with a ginormous roof and as I use about 70% of my leccy in the winter to heat the house when the days are short and the sun doesn't shine I can't make a case thats pays back in a reasonable time (I'll probably be dead by the time I was in profit)