Getting solar panels in a rented property

Falney

I live in social housing. I've been living here for 22 years and have no ambition of moving any time soon. 

I've recently been thinking of paying to get solar installed but as I am a tenant, I am hesitant to do so. The local housing trust is supportive of their tenants getting solar so I am not concerned about permission. 

What I am concerned about is if something comes up that means I need to leave before I have recovered the installation cost. 

Assuming the house was left water tight and with no fire risk, would I be able to take the solar panels with me? Or would I get into legal difficulties if I did so. 

Thanks 

deannagone

Personally i would avoid this.  I know I'm in a situation where one child has left home, in five years the other one could, and I'm going to be paying a lot more in bedroom tax.  You could have to move for job or health reasons, you just can't predict.  As it takes a long time (decades) for solar panels to pay for themselves (and that depends on how much sun they are exposed to as well), I'd be wondering how one can guarantee you will be there long enough to make it worthwhile installing them on a rented property.  Your next place could be a flat, with no roof accessible to you.  There's too much uncertainty with a rental.  Whether you can move them without damage to the roof in the house you live in now, depends on the company who you get them from.

I'd do a lot more research on the pros and cons of solar panels.  They don't seem to be quite as rewarding as they seemed years ago.

Ditzy_Mitzy

I agree with @deannagone I've got a solar array on the roof and it is yet to pay for itself.  We're on a better feed-in tariff than anything you'd get today, too.  The panels were expensive to begin with, and the loan offered by the fitters was dreadful.  Thankfully we had the wherewithal to pay it off as a lump sum and get rid of the interest obligation, however if you haven't then you might end up stuck on a poor finance deal.  
The suggestion that you might take the panels with you is a non-starter, economically speaking.  You would need to find someone willing to dismantle the array, arrange for a crane to take them down and then organise a lorry to take them to the new address.  The whole thing would then have to be done in reverse, assuming that the same fittings could be used.  You might end up having to buy a new framework to fit the panels to.  You would certainly have to buy a new controller and pay for the array to be wired up again.  It would cost far more than leaving the existing panels in place and buying a new set, as most installers offer something of a discount on initial fitting.
Overall, not worth it.  

AdrianC

Taking the panels with you sounds daft. The cost of the actual hardware is not the most major part of the installation - the work involved is.

By the time you've paid somebody to take them down again and make good, you might as well just buy new ones wherever you go to.