Solar Panels

christineessam

We have both solar panels and photovoltaic panels.  Over the summer months we don’t use gas or electricity but we still have to pay the, now enormous, standing charges!  This doesn’t encourage people to ‘go green’, the savings are drastically reduced because of the standing charge.  Is there anyway to reduce this?

gefnew

Not at the moment, do you not offset this from your fit payments you receive.

minorman

Do you have solar hot water panels then ?  I would be interested in knowing about these as I think these might be beneficial. 

We looked at photovoltaic panels when the payments were the original high one until HM Gov. tried to pull the plug.  The system then would have cost about £15,000 so we stopped the order when the government tried their tricks.  Lo and behold when they had to reinstate the scheme the payments were much reduced and Lookee Lookee,  the price of the solar panels fell instantly to something like £5000 .  We decided to sell up the farm and move so did not go ahead.  Now my wife asked if we could do it on our current home,  So I used the energy saving trust online calculator to see.  Yes we could get some free electricity but the return over 20 years would be something like £2500 to £3K in total.  We even looked at putting in a battery storage to improve things but the cost is high and in any modern home space is at a premium.. 

There is one slight problem.. We are both 73 so you crunch the numbers !  It's not easy being green to quote Kermit the frog.  In fact, in our case it is pointless and we don't feel we should invest our hard earned savings so that somebody , including estate agents can benefit in the future.  Sounds very negative but until they come up with a much better return that makes it attractive ????

Chris

MWT

christineessam said:

We have both solar panels and photovoltaic panels.  Over the summer months we don’t use gas or electricity but we still have to pay the, now enormous, standing charges!  This doesn’t encourage people to ‘go green’, the savings are drastically reduced because of the standing charge.  Is there anyway to reduce this?

We may share different understandings of words like 'enormous' and 'drastically'

2kWh a day of solar generation will fully offset the standing charge for electricity, and the gas standing charge has hardly changed at all recently.

If you are on FiT as well then you are already being handsomely compensated for your investment and with a deemed export payment you don't even have to export and can use all of your generation. 

... and you still need to pay the standing charge anyway unless you want to go fully off-grid and provide your own power over night and in winter when there is insufficient solar...

For those thinking about installing solar now the maths still works, the higher the kWh price goes the easier the installation cost is to justify.  

QrizB

MWT said:

For those thinking about installing solar now the maths still works, the higher the kWh price goes the easier the installation cost is to justify.  

I was thinking that.

With electricity now 28p/kWh, not 14p/kWh like it was 12 months ago, the potential savings have increased drastically and are now enormous.

Benny2020

My system cost £6000, it pays me around £800 a year in FIT payments and i reckon i use at least 2500 of the 4100 kwh that it produces each year. It also saves me using the boiler for hot water and i have a couple of oil filled rads to soak up anything after a full tank of hot water.
Its put 4.15kwh into the hot water tank today and now i am running an oil filled rad at 900w.

minorman

Benny,  Are you on the original high FIT payments ?  The energy saving trust calculator gets nowhere near these numbers now when I crunch the numbers

Benny2020

No i get around 19p a kwh.
So i get £1500 a year benefit, you could argue that i should value some of that benefit at gas prices rather than electric, but my 4 bed detached house now uses less than 1000kwh of electric and 9000kwh of gas a year.
I am a little obsessive about using every bit of generation though.

gefnew

Here is ofgems fit rate tables for 2022.
https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/publications/feed-tariff-fit-tariff-table-1-april-2022
My combined rate from my 2011 November install 60.23p per kwh and 4.25 for 50% export generated on average 3680 over the years

markin

minorman said:

Do you have solar hot water panels then ?  I would be interested in knowing about these as I think these might be beneficial. 

We looked at photovoltaic panels when the payments were the original high one until HM Gov. tried to pull the plug.  The system then would have cost about £15,000 so we stopped the order when the government tried their tricks.  Lo and behold when they had to reinstate the scheme the payments were much reduced and Lookee Lookee,  the price of the solar panels fell instantly to something like £5000 .  We decided to sell up the farm and move so did not go ahead.  Now my wife asked if we could do it on our current home,  So I used the energy saving trust online calculator to see.  Yes we could get some free electricity but the return over 20 years would be something like £2500 to £3K in total.  We even looked at putting in a battery storage to improve things but the cost is high and in any modern home space is at a premium.. 

There is one slight problem.. We are both 73 so you crunch the numbers !  It's not easy being green to quote Kermit the frog.  In fact, in our case it is pointless and we don't feel we should invest our hard earned savings so that somebody , including estate agents can benefit in the future.  Sounds very negative but until they come up with a much better return that makes it attractive ????

Chris

As the wife will likely live 15 years longer than you she may like the cheaper power bills, payback was around 9 years and could be better now if the bills stay the same keep rising.

The FiT was slowly stepped down as the cost of panels reduced due to mass production and many install companies competing, The first round was always a limited budget and they expected the uptake to be far lower.

Benny2020

I ran outside and mowed my lawn when i saw a gap in the clouds this afternoon, that kind of obsessive.
Max of 3.72 kw being generated this afternoon and i can't waste it.