Solar PV and Electric Heating - worth is?

spettifer

Hi all, first post but long time lurker. My wife and I are finally buying our first house, fairly late by most standards. We've skipped a rung or two on the ladder on purpose as we both work from home and need offices which can also double as spare bedrooms if needed. We're planning on staying for a good long time too.

However, the fly in the ointment is the heating: It's electric underfloor heating throughout with electric hot water tank too. There is no gas and no oil and it would not be practical to install it either. As I've already mentioned we both need offices because we both work from home, so we are around during the day to use our appliances etc (and most of them are A+ or better rated). As a result I'm wondering if solar PV is worth the effort, given the ever decreasing FiT, but all the examples of payback time I find online are based around monthly bills of £50 or so but I know the current occupier of the house (4 beds, mostly cob wall but with a modern two skin extension as well) spends somewhere around £225/month on electricity. It might well be that in fact it makes no difference because you're never going to generate more than 20 quids worth of power a month - but I just don't know because so much of the information out there now is really just sales guff.

I am lead to believe that the typical cost to buy *and install* a 4kW system is around £5-6000 (probably a bit more as I would want a SolarEdge inverter as everyone I've spoken to who uses them sings their praises). What I really want is to hear from anyone with electric heating who has installed solar to see whether they feel it was a worthwhile investment in terms of reducing their bills or not. Of course, I recognise that the FiT received by existing installations will be better than the dregs available now, but I'm still interested in hat people's experience might be.

The other option is solar hot water which would attract some RHI payment but not enough to pay back more than about 25% the system over 7 years and I don't think it would really make a huge difference for the two of us (I'm thinking about fitting an electric shower to heat the water required for showers directly but that's another matter).

I am of course aware that the direction our roof faces (roughly SW by W) and out location (Devon) plus trees and whatnot all make a difference, but I'm talking in fairly general terms about how much difference it might make to a fully electric setup.

Thanks all

ASavvyBuyer

I suggest you ask the same question on the Green & Ethical board where Solar PV is discussed.


https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/forumdisplay.php?s=&daysprune=&f=100

TamsinC

What EPC is your house? Anything under a D doesn't get a decent FIT rate - 0.2p per unit - we looked into it - high bills and our FIT return would be around 5 pounds A YEAR. When taking into account the approx one third saving on fuel bills compared to the cost of fitting it just isn't worth it. And we are south facing, with no shade.

System

ASavvyBuyer wrote: »

I suggest you ask the same question on the Green & Ethical board where Solar PV is discussed.

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/utilities/free-solar-panels/

matelodave

I'm guessing that you'll be trying to heat your place in the winter which is generally when the days are ever short, the nights are long and cold and the sun doesn't really shine a lot either.

Solar panels generally work best in the summer when the sun does shine and you dont really need a lot of heating.

you could have a play with this to get an ideal of how much energy you could generate each month and you'll see that you dont get much in the winter http://re.jrc.ec.europa.eu/pvg_tools/en/tools.html

macman

If you are both going to be working from home then E7 would be perfect for you. You already have an immersion heater, however you might have to install some NSH's to supplement the underfloor heating, which you won't want to be running on peak rate E7 if you can help it. If the property is relatively new and well insulated, then you could time the u/f heating to charge overnight on cheap rate, I'm not sure how fast the release rate is, assuming a solid floor?
The cost of a meter change and NSH's would be a much better investment than solar PV, as the E7 savings will massively outweigh the solar PV savings.
Forget about your appliances, 80% + of your usage will be heating and DHW.

DREKLY

hi mr. Pettifer, you are most welcome to pop down to cornwall to see my WSW 4kw system, that has a solar edge inverter, the property is all electric, with immersion, and electric shower,
most days i use 2kw and a further nightime 2 to 3 kw, so it is very economical to run.
feel free to contact me if you want to view or discuss further, the system is just 3 years old,
and produces around 3,600 kw annually.