Lead time and price increase for domestic solar installation?

k6chris

With the recent rise in energy prices, installing a solar array on our 32 m2 south facing roof would seem to make more sense.  I would imaging we are not the only people to have had this thought!  Have forumites seen an increase in lead times or prices recently??

Magnitio

The installer I used in February said that business had gone up considerably. They had many months' backlog and were working 6 or 7 days a week.

Verdigris

A much delayed house move is making me consider giving this year a miss in the hope of things calming down a bit, politically, and for supply chains and shipping costs to stabilise. Or I may just miss the boat.

Nostradamus is strangely silent on the matter.

Hexane

k6chris said:

With the recent rise in energy prices, installing a solar array on our 32 m2 south facing roof would seem to make more sense.  I would imaging we are not the only people to have had this thought!  Have forumites seen an increase in lead times or prices recently??

A few years ago, I tried to popularise the saying that the best time to buy solar panels was in 2011, but the second best time is today. I am very glad I went ahead in 2019 or whenever it was.

There was a significant increase in lead times and prices in 2020 and 2021. There will probably be a further increase in lead times and prices this year.

But people are sheeple, many of them won't really understand what an average yearly gas+electric bill of more than £3000 is like until they start paying it. If you have a large south-facing roof, then if I were you I'd get as much as possible installed as quickly as possible.

EricMears

Hexane said:

A few years ago, I tried to popularise the saying that the best time to buy solar panels was in 2011, but the second best time is today. I am very glad I went ahead in 2019 or whenever it was.

We did indeed have ours fitted in 2011 although if we'd hung on a bit, prices actually dropped a bit  but  2012 buyers still get the same returns that we do. 

But in spite of that,  our installation had paid for itself a couple of years ago and we're still collecting considerably more from FIT than we pay to import the rest of our usage.