Solar Panel quote seems high

ASI

Hi,
Today we had a quote for £11,100 for 16 Solar Panels and battery with Project Solar (apparently it would've been more but we were in the last day of Black Friday sale and got battery free). We have a south facing garden and no shade - we have a detached property and with a recent loft conversion, 6 bedrooms. We have 4 children and I felt as they children grow, we're going to be using a lot more than our careful average usage of £50 a month on electric. I have been toying with the idea of Solar Panels but never went ahead 5 years ago as the previous roof was in awful condition. The company have made claimed they are not the cheapest but offer life time warranties and backed by MSC and all the other reputable insurance warranties etc. They said they were the most popular company and based on our current usage, in 13 years, we will have paid off. It seemed good at the time and we had the advisor at our place explaining everything over 2 hours 30 minutes.  I hadn't done much 'recent' research but that was the point - get a quote & further details. I feel he explained well and we were happy to proceed. We paid a deposit of £106 and installation in a few weeks. HOWEVER,   now after reading online on this website, it has been stated they cost between £4000- £6000 and not to have a battery. I am now bewildered at the massive difference in what we have been quoted. Yes, its a big system of 16 panels but is this quote completely unreasonable? We would have to switch to Solar Energy to 'buy' and 'sell' back to the grid. We're in the Midlands. Any advice is appreciated. I know I am not as knowledgeable but its made me think about cancelling as I believe I may have been hasty. I am now also questioning if I will truly benefit or am I being naive. Can any experience people offer any advice?

Ectophile

That's just way over-priced.  The battery is a good thing, and adds to the overall cost.  But £11100 for a standard-sized system is too high.

[Deleted User]

What size of battery are we talking about? A battery such as the Powerwall 2 can cost in excess of £8.5k when installed. VAT is also a tricky issue as it depends on the cost of materials versus installation costs. A battery installed at the same time as PV solar will be taxed at 5%.

All suppliers are required to offer SEG payments but some insist that you use them for import and export contracts. One of the problems in calculating payback is that some ToU tariffs such as Octopus Agile distort the potential savings. For example, on Agile, I was already saving 25% on my electricity bill compared to a fixed tariff when I installed PV solar and a battery a few months ago. Battery alone, I calculated a payback time of >25 years. With solar, my dodgy ‘man maths’ have got the break even time down to 18 years. That said, PV solar with a battery is more of a lifestyle choice than an investment. 

matelodave

I'd guess that the cost of you "free" battery has just been added to the cost of your solar installation. You should get a quote without the "free" battery.
TBH I cant really work out the value of solar nowadays and I am now old enough that I probably wont live long enough to see a return on my investment and I certainly don't see a big benefit in a battery until they come down to a couple of grand.

I maybe should have gone for solar when the FIT was a decent amount and being paid for 20-25 years -  payback could have been about 8-10 years (assuming you didn't borrow the money to pay for it). However, by installing a heatpump we reduced our electricity consumption by quite a bit , which had the perverse effect of extending the payback period for solar voltaic. 
I also couldn't reconcile it with solar (even though we did explore it thoroughly at the time) because we actually use most (70%) of our leccy in the winter when the days are short and the sun doesn't shine and relatively little leccy in the summer when it does so the costs didn't work out for that either

Just my opinion you understand, but I think you need to do some very careful sums to work out whether it really is cost effective and how long its going to take to realise a payback on your 11k - 13 years sounds like a long time and a lot can happen over that period (you have to be pretty well convinced that you wont have to buy another inverter and hope that the battery will last that long)

Petriix

Steer well clear of Project Solar. They're extremely overpriced and use questionable sales techniques. Someone I know signed up for a similar system on finance and really regrets it.

A battery will not pay for its self in its usable lifetime unless you are very high users. A 4kWp PV array should cost under £4,000 these days and, post FIT, even at that price, it will take ~ 13 years to break even.

Get some other quotes from local installers.

ASI

We have managed to cancel the contract with them. I just wish there was more incentive for having solar panels!

Ectophile

ASI said:

We have managed to cancel the contract with them. I just wish there was more incentive for having solar panels!

There used to be.  But the government kept the subsidies too high for too long, the pot of money ran out, and the government cancelled it completely.