Solar Panel Help

sb2987

Looking for some advice regarding solar panels and registering them...

I moved into a new build on 29th March 2019 which had solar panels installed, the builders raved about them when selling the house and how it cuts cost of the bills etc. Thats as much as I understand about them.

I tried to register the panels with british gas feed in tariff however didnt have the MCS certificate for the panels. I eventually got this in June 19 however british gas state that the mcs certificate must be dated prior to 31st march 2019 to do so, as i was in the home before this date I have been trying to get the original MCS cert from the builders.

today the builder issued an email
"I’m just letting you know that I’ve heard back from our Technical Department regarding your query relating to your Solar Panel MCS certificate.

Due to the way the MCS certificates are generated, some of our clients will be unable to apply for the Feed in Tariff due to the date noted on the MCS certificate. Forster Roofing will instead provide a £150 voucher as a goodwill gesture for our clients who had the system commissioned prior to the 22nd of March, but an MCS certificate generated after the 31st of March. The value of payment lost via the Feed in Tariff is approximately around £17 per year and despite this you will still continue to benefit from the solar PV system by using self-generated electricity to realise a saving on your electricity bills.

We are currently in talks with Forster for some clarity on how you would go about claiming the voucher and I’ll keep you posted as soon as our Technical department receive a response"

Can anyone advise what this actually means please? she mentions i still benefit from the panels on self generated electricity so i'm assuming that the panels are doing something although I havent registered them?

any help is appreciated

1961Nick

Have you got any documentation for you solar panels?

In order to work out what FIT you have lost, we'd to know your array size (kWp) & it should be on the MCS certificate.

As an example, if your array was the typical 4kWp & oriented roughly south, you'd generate around 3500 kWh & receive 3.96p/kWh...£138.60 pa.

In addition, you'd be deemed to have exported 50% of the generated electricity to the grid. For that you'd be paid 5.38p/kWh ... another £94.15.

I don't know where your builder gets £17 from, that's less than one single panel earns in a year!

Did you have anything in writing at the time of purchase to say that the solar array would be registered for FIT?

mmmmikey

Hi


Before answering your question, worth pointing out that you seem to have been let down by your solicitor because sorting out this kind of paperwork is exactly what they should be doing as part of the conveyancing process. Also, the builder seems to be giving you the run around because really they should be sorting this out and paying you, not expecting you to deal with the roofers yourself. Having said that, before getting bogged down with the legal nitty gritty, worth seeing how big the problem is in money terms.


In a nutshell, there are 3 financial benefits to having solar panels:


1. You get lower electricity bills, regardless of whether the panels are registered for FIT payments or not. On sunny days, the panels will generate electricity and when you switch the kettle on (or whatever) you'll automatically be using any electricity from your panels without even knowing about it. If the panels aren't generating enough to power the kettle, any extra you need will flow through your meter as normal, but if the panels are generating enough you'll be able to boil the kettle for free saving money from your bills.



2. If the panels generate more electricity than you can use yourself (for example it could be a sunny day in June and you're out the house so not using anything except perhaps the fridge, etc.) then any spare will flow backwards out of your meter to the grid and someone else will use it. This is called exporting and you can get paid for this if you're registered for FIT payments. Instead of buying electricity from your energy provider, you're selling it to your FIT provider. There is another way you can get paid via a new scheme, but don't worry about that for now, we can come back to that. If you have a smart meter you can see whether electricity is flowing into the house (because you're using more power than the panels are generating) or out to the grid (because the panels are generating more than you're using). My in house display has a little picture of an electricty pylon that lights up when you're exporting and yours may be the same if you have one.



3. In addition to the above you get what is effectively a government grant just for owning panels - think of it as their way of saying "thank-you very much for saving the planet". This is the other part of the FIT payment and you can't get this unless you registered before the end of March. The amount you get depends on how much electricity your solar panels generate regardless of whether you use that yourself or export it to the grid (as per the point above). As well as your bog-standard electrcity meter like everyone has, you should have a second electricity meter somewhere that measures this generation.


To give you an idea of the amounts of money involved, if you could take a reading from the generation meter and post it here we can assume the meter was at 00000 when you moved in (when was that?) and make a guesstimate of how much the panels are worth in a year. This can vary quite a lot but at least we can give you a ranging shot and you can see if the offer of a voucher is in the right ball park (and to be honest it sounds very low, but lets not jump to conclusions)



As a cross check, how many panels do you have? I assume, being a new build, you just have 1 or 2 panels built into the roof somewhere? If you look at older houses, you'll see that the panels are a fairly standard size and typically a house with retro fit panels will have smething like 12 to 16 of them (although again this can vary quite a lot). If you've only got a panel or two you'll get much less but it's worth knowing what you have got so we can cross check it with your meter readings and make sure the builder/roofer aren't trying to pull the wool over your eyes.


Hope this helps, Mike


p.s. very difficult to pitch this kind of explanation at the right level - if it's too basic or too complicated just say and I or someone else here will try again.

sb2987

Thank you both for responding its made things a little clearer for me! I did not realise that even without a FIT the panels are still benefiting the home.

I'll link the docs i have, i used these to support the FIT application to british gas the only thing they said was that because the mcs was dated after 31st march i couldnt apply.

I should have had an mcs dated prior to this as i got keys 29th march 19 and moved in 19th april.

Deffo getting the run around but because I dont understand any of it I dont know how to respond to the email from the builder.

I have readings from 3rd may (61.91kwh) and again today (283.04kwh)

The house only has 2 panels , uploaded a pic

again thanks for your responses, if its not worth arguing with them for the original certificate to register for FIT i'll just leave them running as they are.

post wont allow me to add links to upload the mcs certificate etc is there another way i can post them? new to this site too!

thanks
stacy

mcs cert - i.postimg.cc/6QTpNf4Q/20191012-172858.jpg

mcs cert - i.postimg.cc/fRqM5SqQ/Screenshot-20191012-172739-Word.jpg

builders letter - i.postimg.cc/j2RVRR3h/20191012-173214.jpg

panels - i.postimg.cc/pLg4kTdG/Screenshot-20191012-204029-Gallery.jpg

Reed_Richards

Two panels seem more like a token gesture than anything worthwhile. If you had been able to get an MCS certificate dated before the end of March then you would qualify for payment of (283* 3.79+283/2*5.38) pence or £18.34 (actually a bit less because there will always be a bit of a delay before the MCS certificate is issued. My calculation also assumes you would have been paid for deemed export, which is the norm). There is nothing you can do now about the MCS certificate not being issued in time, However this calculation does demonstrate that your builder is not offering you enough compensation you and you have the generation figures to prove it.

Martyn1981

Given their own calculation of £17pa, perhaps ask them for £340 representing the 20yr loss. If they argue that it's all up front, explain that the FiT is index linked and that you'll be missing out on the deemed export too.

But, regarding export, in reality from 2 panels, you'll probably be consuming most of the generation, most of the time.


Small rant - nothing against you at all, but installing PV involves lots of bits and pieces, such as cabling, meters etc etc, so it does bug me when these companies put such a small token amount of panels up, when that side is so 'easy' and relatively cheap, and 5 or 6 panels would be hardly any great effort. oh well!

EricMears

If the house only has two solar panels, then there could only ever have been a small amount of generation ! Certificate says total installed capacity is 0.52kW. No idea if expected annual generation of 416kWh is correct but let's assume it is (you can get a better forecast if you look at the pvgis page reference in our faq post).

Usin9 1961Nick's FIT figures, your annual payments for that would have been £16.47 (possibly where the builder's £17 comes from ?) and deemed exports would have been £11.19 so a total of around £28.

The £150 'compensation' offered therefore represents only 5 years payments (at current rates) and you're losing another 15 years worth (at even higher rates because of inflation linking). I'm sure any competent accountant could offer you a formula for a fairer calculation of present value of future losses.

But what you are getting is generation of 416 kWh (or whatever) and since it's so small you'll probably be using all of that (peak output would only be 520 Watts, most of the time it would be a lot less)) so can expect a saving of 416 x (whatever you pay for electricity) which should be worth something in the order of £60 per year to you.


Edit : Martyn has just said much the same. My only 'criticism' of his post is that you should be claiming for lost export payments as well as lost FIT (unless you can manage to find someone who will pay you for the exports without charging a 'higher than best' figure for your imports).