Purchasing Solar Panels- Yes or No?

Gerry1

ElephantBoy57 said:

You would need numerous modern panels and maybe a wind turbine to be independent from the grid.

And huge battery and a huge inverter.

matelodave

To be independent of the grid you'd need enough battery capacity to provide100% of your power needs for at least a week if not more and solar panels/wind power of a sufficient size to not only provide for your consumption but to recharge the batteries to cope for periods when there's no wind or sun

For instance we haven't seen any sunshine for the past five days and the turbines I can see in the distance haven't produced anything for a similar period.

When I was working, we specified and supplied solar equipment for a large telecomms project in Jordan where the sun shines a lot more than it does here in the UK (but strangely it does snow as well). We had to provide sufficient standby battery capacity for fourteen days. Which not only meant that the batteries had to provide 100% of the load during the night but the panels had to be sized to supply the whole load and fully recharge the batteries during a normal day. The batteries occupied a small room and the panels had to provide around 250% of the load requirement taking into account the sun angles and length of daylight between summer and winter which is no where near the variation we have in the UK

Petriix

I think people are getting hung up on semantics here. Having solar PV has almost removed my net demand from the grid as I now export almost as much as I import. I'm not sure what difference is makes whether the energy generated is used by my home or by my neighbours; it has the exact same impact on the total grid demand.

Storing the energy in a battery might (but won't due to the enormous cost) save you more money but it doesn't make any difference to the overall grid.