Am I reading this right? 27 January 2021 at 9:57AM in Green & ethical MoneySaving 13 replies 314 views

Joyful

I bought a house with solar panels and have just been given the info on them. I cant get my head around this? Is it really saying I will.only save £40  a year!

Pile_o_stone

How much solar saves you each year depends on a few factors, such as whether you are a high user of electricity, whether you are using that electricity during the day (while the sun shines) and whether you use more electricity in winter than you do in Summer (i.e. if you have a heat pump rather than gas boiler for space heating.
Someone who is a low energy user, whose home is empty most of the day because everyone is at work, will not have huge savings on their electricity bill because they are simply not utilising the solar power.

ASavvyBuyer

From what I can make out from that photo, it looks like it is a very small system, just 1.? kWp and they are estimating you using only 25% of the power it produces. Therefore, yes a very small saving. However, if you use more than 25% the savings will be higher. With such a small system, it should be possible to use much more than 25%.

For example, we managed to use 85.9% of our generation last year, but we are retired and have equipment to make the best use of the solar PV generation.

Hexane

I am guessing that's a very old and relatively small system, I guess 6 x 225W panels to make up the 1.35kW? I would think most installations in the last five years or so have been 4kW. The EPC report recommendations often mention rather less than that for some reason, but some of us have gone for more, my system for example 7.25kW.

Do you know when the system was installed? Would it have been so long ago (or so recent) that it wouldn't have qualified for the Feed In Tariff? If not, is someone still receiving Feed In Tariff payments for what is now your property?

If it's not already happening in some form and there aren't already Feed In Tariff payments, you should probably look into whether your system can get payments under the Smart Export Guarantee.

On a more positive note, with such a small system it should be easier to use more of what it generates, so you could get your usage rate up to 50% for example and you would then be saving £80 a year not £40.

Exiled_Tyke

A few further thoughts: 

The calculation above assumes a price of 13p/Kwh for your electricity.  You may want to recalculate with the price you are currently paying.
As others have said, you need to get a better idea of how much of the generation you are actually using. And of course make sure you are making the best of the system. e.g. running washing machines, dishwasher, iron etc. at the sunniest times of the day. But avoid having them heating up at the same time - so use sequentially.  It's up to you are far you go with this - some members of these boards use low wattage kettles to minimise the amount of electricity they pay for. If you can wait 6 minutes for a litre of water to boil for your pot of tea, then you will eventually cover the cost of the kettle (around £10) and start to benefit.  
If you are not receiving FIT payments then depending on the set up it may be possible for a reasonable price to replace old panels with newer ones. This could generate up to 50% more electricity. However while this would improve the numbers overall the additional benefit may not be worth the additional cost. 

mnbvcxz

Yes people installed panels in 2012 to get the FIT government subsidy payment not for the electricity savings. If your panels were properly registered they could be getting 2-400 pounds a year in subsidy payments plus an export payment..  They may not be eligible but worth checking if you don't already know. 

EricMears

mnbvcxz said:

Yes people installed panels in 2012 to get the FIT government subsidy payment not for the electricity savings. 

That may be true of some people but the vast majority of solar panels were fitted to reduce electricity imports and the FIT scheme helped to defray the huge costs of so doing.

mickyduck55

EricMears said:

mnbvcxz said:

Yes people installed panels in 2012 to get the FIT government subsidy payment not for the electricity savings. 

That may be true of some people but the vast majority of solar panels were fitted to reduce electricity imports and the FIT scheme helped to defray the huge costs of so doing.

Totally agree the cost of installs was significantly higher than today's prices... 

Cardew

mnbvcxz said:

Yes people installed panels in 2012 to get the FIT government subsidy payment not for the electricity savings. If your panels were properly registered they could be getting 2-400 pounds a year in subsidy payments plus an export payment..  They may not be eligible but worth checking if you don't already know. 

The system is only forcast to produce 1,231kWh pa. Even if the system was installed between April 2010 and March 2012 when the FIT subsidy was extremely 'generous' the subsidy and export payments would not now be more than £700pa. After that date the subsidy reduced a great deal.

EricMears

mickyduck55 said:.

Totally agree the cost of installs was significantly higher than today's prices... 

In 1997,  I looked into solar generation but abandoned the project when I found that the kit would have a payback period of 400 (Yes. four hundred !) years.  Obviously a widely shared view since very few rooves sported them at that time.

One of the objects of the FIT scheme (and equivalent ones around the world) was to do a bit of 'pump priming' in order to reduce the initial costs.  With its help,  my payback period had reduced to approx 10 years by 2011 so I placed my order. In fact prices dropped further and efficiencies improved by the time I actually got the kit and eventual payback period proved to be more like 8 years.   

Cardew

EricMears said:

mnbvcxz said:

Yes people installed panels in 2012 to get the FIT government subsidy payment not for the electricity savings. 

That may be true of some people but the vast majority of solar panels were fitted to reduce electricity imports and the FIT scheme helped to defray the huge costs of so doing.

I am not sure how you deduce that for the vast majority the motive was to reduce electricity imports. The posts on this forum and around the web concentrated(understandably) on the financial income from the FIT and deemed export and the return on their investment in installing solar panels. 

A 4kWp system could give a return from subsidies of £1500+ and the saving on imported energy was only £50 to £100.

Before the introduction of FIT there were very few PV solar installations.