Buying a house with solar panels....

Pok3mon

Ok so we found a house it is about 5 years old and was built to high energy efficiency standard.
The house is all electric with tiny electric heaters in each room also the water is heated buy the solar system 3kw.
My parents had a all electric house in the 80's and it cost a fortune to heat (storage) and hot water as well as planning baths! 
Since that time I have only owned houses with on demand/combination boiler and found them easy and cheap to run. 
As far as I am aware the solar system is 3kw and will belong to me with the feed in tariff.
So the questions:
how good are these types of houses relay does anybody have experience?
Are the expensive to run?
How different is cooking on induction vs gas?

Thanks

Ditzy_Mitzy

We presently live in a house with gas central heating and an electricity generating solar panel array.  You don't mention whether the solar panels on the house viewed are electrical, or whether they are the older style 'wet' solar heating.  If the latter, I cannot offer advice.  If the former, they do work and they do generate some electricity.  On a sunny day it's possible to run a couple of appliances free.  The downside, and it's significant, is that the panels only work when it's sunny.  Anyone who says otherwise is lying, and probably a solar panel salesman.  Cloud cover reduces the panels' output to the point where it's negligible at best.  The feed in tariff scheme is reasonable, depending on terms.  The older the contract the better, generally, although you won't make much money from it.  Your outlay, however, is non-existent as you will not have bought the panels directly.  
I have also lived in an electric only flat and hated it, especially being in there during a hard winter.  Running electric heaters round the clock was punishingly expensive.  I would choose gas any day.  

MaryNB

I presume it's an immersion heater so I would definitely recommend a smart controller if it doesn't already have one. I lived in a flat with only electricity and we'd turn off the immersion if we were away for a weekend. I hated coming home after a long journey and having no hot water. I have a smart thermostat in my house now (which thankfully has an on demand gas boiler) and I can control the heating remotely - wish I had it in that flat! That flat was definitely more expensive to run than my gas & elec house. I hated turning on the heaters. 

ProDave

Simple thing is to ask your vendor for a copy of the last few years electricity bills.

We live in a self built low energy house and the heating is via an air source heat pump.  The heating costs less than £250 per year.  We spend WAY more than that powering other appliances in the house.

If it is that new, it should have had a proper as build SAP report that should be much more accurate tan the typical guess RDSAP EPC you get with a house.

I would also expect it to have a diverter that sends surplus solar PV to the immersion heater rather than let it get exported.

Pok3mon

ProDave said:

Simple thing is to ask your vendor for a copy of the last few years electricity bills.

We live in a self built low energy house and the heating is via an air source heat pump.  The heating costs less than £250 per year.  We spend WAY more than that powering other appliances in the house.

If it is that new, it should have had a proper as build SAP report that should be much more accurate tan the typical guess RDSAP EPC you get with a house.

I would also expect it to have a diverter that sends surplus solar PV to the immersion heater rather than let it get exported.

According to the vendor this is how it works.
The electricity bills will tell me very little he says it is about £35 per month. However he is a working bloke living alone in the 3 bed house, my wife works from home and my 22 year old daughter seems to need a bath every 3 hours so the dynamics change. 
I suppose I will have to wait and see.

AdrianC

Pok3mon said:

also the water is heated buy the solar system 3kw.

You're sure it's PV solar, rather than simply solar HW tubes?

Ashworks

We have PV panels but with a combi boiler for heat and water. We are on the early FIT scheme so we make more money each year than we pay in bills for gas/elec, even as a family of four. We put appliances on during the day to maximise the saving.
We have an induction hob and would never go back to gas. It's much quicker to heat things, much more adjustable and the pan is heated rather than the hob so its very efficient. Much easier to clean too. The only down side is you can only use pans with iron in them.

Pok3mon

AdrianC said:

Pok3mon said:

also the water is heated buy the solar system 3kw.

You're sure it's PV solar, rather than simply solar HW tubes?

PV with auto switch for hotwater

anselld

The vast amount of PV generation occurs in summer months for obvious reasons.  So it is going to make very little difference to your heating bills.  That is going to be much more dependent on energy rating as ProDave states.  However, bear in mind that however good the rating is, electric heating comes from a starting point of units being about 5x more expensive than gas.

You would need to confirm for sure that the panels are owned not leased and exactly what the level of FIT payments are.  2016 levels are well into the reduced tariffs, somewhere around 4p per unit so generation on a 3kWp system is only going to pay you less than £150 per year.   Better than nothing but not going to make up for extra expense on heating.

Longer term you will be well prepared though if the current trend of banning gas boilers takes off.

Pok3mon

We are thinking of getting a log burner as we get free wood and use one now.

Bluebell1000

I'm not sure about the FIT rate you suggest. Ours were installed in late 2018 and £150 a year is roughly our income from them. I'd have thought earlier ones would be a bit higher. That's an idea of our monthly generation, 3.57kW system. This May has been a rubbish month compared to other years!