Are solar panels pointless?

jamesmorgan

Hexane said:

jamesmorgan said:

In the same way as early energy saving lightbulbs were sold on the basis of extremely long lives, in real world conditions many turned out not to last as long as was originally assumed.  

wait what? I bought a bunch of early energy saving lightbulbs about 20 years ago, most of them are still occupying spots in less-used rooms (frequently used rooms now have LED instead).

as for "too early to know", you do realise that many solar PV systems owned by people on this forum have been in use for more than ten years? Do you imagine that they will suddenly start exploding once they reach 15 years old, like human teenagers?

jamesmorgan said:

If I had a spare £5-10K sitting around and wanted to invest it for optimum payback, solar panels wouldn't be very close to the top of the list. 

Really??? I have a large sum in global multi-asset funds through an ISA, and even larger sums in pension schemes that mainly invest in things like the FTSE100, but the only reason I wouldn't have invested more money in solar panels on my roof, is that my roof is only so big and I would eventually run into official opposition as the installed power passed 10kWp. Your investment priorities seem out of whack.

jamesmorgan said:

My broad thoughts are that energy generation is much better when economies of scale are used to drive efficiency.  Solar farms are a much better long term option than the cottage industry of having a generator on everyone's house.

That's exactly why I bought solar panels when I could buy 315W panels cheaply, instead of similar-sized 200W panels for a lot more. Unfortunately for me - fortunately for some others - the government took the opposite view and subsidised people who bought the 200W panels. Still a topic for merry debates to this day, but both sets of people made the right decision.

You can buy a share in a solar farm if you want to. But you might be better off signing up to Ripple Energy.

Understanding failure rates of systems is a complex area.  Like you, I will have many examples of items that exceeded their expected lifespan, however, equally many fell way short.  Trusting sources with a vested interest (eg suppliers) for expected lifespans of their products can be dangerous.  The following link explains some of the reasons why early predictions for LED lights were often misleading.

https://hackaday.com/2019/02/05/what-happened-to-the-100000-hour-led-bulbs/

A common issue is that suppliers often focus on the most reliable part of the system (eg the LED chips) rather the less reliable resisitors and capacitors.  Solar panel suppliers do the same.

In terms of investment returns, the key variable is the payback period.  There will always be some people with unusual circumstances that can achieve payback in very short timescales (even 5 years).  Whilst interesting, it doesn't really help build a business case for the average user.  Even organisations that actively promote solar power suggest that paybacks are typically much longer than this. For example, the following organisation https://www.greenmatch.co.uk/blog/2014/06/solar-panels-are-they-worth-it suggests a typical payback of 16-22 years.

So after 16 years I may be faced with the scenario that I have only just recovered the money I put in.  That assumes I am still living in the same house!  On average over the past 40 years I have moved every 10 years so I would never have broken even.  In my job as a Commercial Director my role is to build business cases for corporate investments.  I wouldn't get very far if I recommended an investment that took 16 years to pay back and had a reasonably high likelihood of being cancelled (moved house) before that happened.

If you can make the numbers work for you, that's great then go for it.  For me, I can't get close to making it a viable propostion.

2nd_time_buyer

jamesmorgan said:

Hexane said:

jamesmorgan said:

In the same way as early energy saving lightbulbs were sold on the basis of extremely long lives, in real world conditions many turned out not to last as long as was originally assumed.  

wait what? I bought a bunch of early energy saving lightbulbs about 20 years ago, most of them are still occupying spots in less-used rooms (frequently used rooms now have LED instead).

as for "too early to know", you do realise that many solar PV systems owned by people on this forum have been in use for more than ten years? Do you imagine that they will suddenly start exploding once they reach 15 years old, like human teenagers?

jamesmorgan said:

If I had a spare £5-10K sitting around and wanted to invest it for optimum payback, solar panels wouldn't be very close to the top of the list. 

Really??? I have a large sum in global multi-asset funds through an ISA, and even larger sums in pension schemes that mainly invest in things like the FTSE100, but the only reason I wouldn't have invested more money in solar panels on my roof, is that my roof is only so big and I would eventually run into official opposition as the installed power passed 10kWp. Your investment priorities seem out of whack.

jamesmorgan said:

My broad thoughts are that energy generation is much better when economies of scale are used to drive efficiency.  Solar farms are a much better long term option than the cottage industry of having a generator on everyone's house.

That's exactly why I bought solar panels when I could buy 315W panels cheaply, instead of similar-sized 200W panels for a lot more. Unfortunately for me - fortunately for some others - the government took the opposite view and subsidised people who bought the 200W panels. Still a topic for merry debates to this day, but both sets of people made the right decision.

You can buy a share in a solar farm if you want to. But you might be better off signing up to Ripple Energy.

Understanding failure rates of systems is a complex area.  Like you, I will have many examples of items that exceeded their expected lifespan, however, equally many fell way short.  Trusting sources with a vested interest (eg suppliers) for expected lifespans of their products can be dangerous.  The following link explains some of the reasons why early predictions for LED lights were often misleading.

https://hackaday.com/2019/02/05/what-happened-to-the-100000-hour-led-bulbs/

A common issue is that suppliers often focus on the most reliable part of the system (eg the LED chips) rather the less reliable resisitors and capacitors.  Solar panel suppliers do the same.

In terms of investment returns, the key variable is the payback period.  There will always be some people with unusual circumstances that can achieve payback in very short timescales (even 5 years).  Whilst interesting, it doesn't really help build a business case for the average user.  Even organisations that actively promote solar power suggest that paybacks are typically much longer than this. For example, the following organisation https://www.greenmatch.co.uk/blog/2014/06/solar-panels-are-they-worth-it suggests a typical payback of 16-22 years.

So after 16 years I may be faced with the scenario that I have only just recovered the money I put in.  That assumes I am still living in the same house!  On average over the past 40 years I have moved every 10 years so I would never have broken even.  In my job as a Commercial Director my role is to build business cases for corporate investments.  I wouldn't get very far if I recommended an investment that took 16 years to pay back and had a reasonably high likelihood of being cancelled (moved house) before that happened.

If you can make the numbers work for you, that's great then go for it.  For me, I can't get close to making it a viable propostion.

As a challenge, I would be happy to model an installation for you, and work out the payback periods. Real world experience of people who have had installations over the last year or so (even in sub-optimum conditions) does not seem to match your preconceptions. 

The big caveat to this, is that the current electricity prices are extraordinary. So any predictions assuming that prices going forward will be the same should be taken with a bucket full of salt.  
 

in_my_wellies

gazapc said:

Installing a domestic wind turbine would be terrible advice for the >95% of people who live in urban areas, have normal sized gardens, or gardens sheltered by trees. The only way they might make sense is if you live in a house on top of an exposed hill etc..

^^^ Quite right!
My son built a wind turbine as part an A level project. It was huge (I still have it here!) and it worked but we were unable to install it high enough due to its weight. We managed only just to get it off the ground, so maybe 10' high. But it did work and data collected was enough for him to pass

So on to the next 'project', solar panels and all the bits bought from ebay and mounted on the shed. If I remember right the cost was around £550. I never expected a return on my 'investment', it was a hobby for my son - could have been football or something else expensive so I didn't mind. 

I don't know the kw but at the start they saved around 75p/day in summer 45p/day in winter for about 5 years then the ****** trees grew! Now I get about 1 unit/day in April before the leaves and again in September after leaf fall.  

jimjames

lomasonhere said:

BTW. As I said, I used this site's tool to see what I could generate on my house, and it does not ask for my actual usage. It does not need to.

Which site's tool? Can you actually provide a link?

Alnat1

I'm assuming by "this site" he means the MSE guide

Alnat1

Found this simple calculator for non-FIT systems that seems to allow for more variation and different situations, not sure how accurate it is as I've only got a few months data myself.

https://great-home.co.uk/solar-export-guarantee-seg-calculator/

ABrass

jamesmorgan said:

Hexane said:

jamesmorgan said:

In the same way as early energy saving lightbulbs were sold on the basis of extremely long lives, in real world conditions many turned out not to last as long as was originally assumed.  

wait what? I bought a bunch of early energy saving lightbulbs about 20 years ago, most of them are still occupying spots in less-used rooms (frequently used rooms now have LED instead).

as for "too early to know", you do realise that many solar PV systems owned by people on this forum have been in use for more than ten years? Do you imagine that they will suddenly start exploding once they reach 15 years old, like human teenagers?

jamesmorgan said:

If I had a spare £5-10K sitting around and wanted to invest it for optimum payback, solar panels wouldn't be very close to the top of the list. 

Really??? I have a large sum in global multi-asset funds through an ISA, and even larger sums in pension schemes that mainly invest in things like the FTSE100, but the only reason I wouldn't have invested more money in solar panels on my roof, is that my roof is only so big and I would eventually run into official opposition as the installed power passed 10kWp. Your investment priorities seem out of whack.

jamesmorgan said:

My broad thoughts are that energy generation is much better when economies of scale are used to drive efficiency.  Solar farms are a much better long term option than the cottage industry of having a generator on everyone's house.

That's exactly why I bought solar panels when I could buy 315W panels cheaply, instead of similar-sized 200W panels for a lot more. Unfortunately for me - fortunately for some others - the government took the opposite view and subsidised people who bought the 200W panels. Still a topic for merry debates to this day, but both sets of people made the right decision.

You can buy a share in a solar farm if you want to. But you might be better off signing up to Ripple Energy.

Understanding failure rates of systems is a complex area.  Like you, I will have many examples of items that exceeded their expected lifespan, however, equally many fell way short.  Trusting sources with a vested interest (eg suppliers) for expected lifespans of their products can be dangerous.  The following link explains some of the reasons why early predictions for LED lights were often misleading.

https://hackaday.com/2019/02/05/what-happened-to-the-100000-hour-led-bulbs/

A common issue is that suppliers often focus on the most reliable part of the system (eg the LED chips) rather the less reliable resisitors and capacitors.  Solar panel suppliers do the same.

In terms of investment returns, the key variable is the payback period.  There will always be some people with unusual circumstances that can achieve payback in very short timescales (even 5 years).  Whilst interesting, it doesn't really help build a business case for the average user.  Even organisations that actively promote solar power suggest that paybacks are typically much longer than this. For example, the following organisation https://www.greenmatch.co.uk/blog/2014/06/solar-panels-are-they-worth-it suggests a typical payback of 16-22 years.

So after 16 years I may be faced with the scenario that I have only just recovered the money I put in.  That assumes I am still living in the same house!  On average over the past 40 years I have moved every 10 years so I would never have broken even.  In my job as a Commercial Director my role is to build business cases for corporate investments.  I wouldn't get very far if I recommended an investment that took 16 years to pay back and had a reasonably high likelihood of being cancelled (moved house) before that happened.

If you can make the numbers work for you, that's great then go for it.  For me, I can't get close to making it a viable propostion.

They reference a cost of £6000-£8000 for a 4kWp system. They state the savings are £270 a year.

But on another linked page it claims the same system costs £5000 and saves £870 a year.

Garbage in, garbage out.

Hexane

jamesmorgan said:

Hexane said:

jamesmorgan said:

In the same way as early energy saving lightbulbs were sold on the basis of extremely long lives, in real world conditions many turned out not to last as long as was originally assumed.  

wait what? I bought a bunch of early energy saving lightbulbs about 20 years ago, most of them are still occupying spots in less-used rooms (frequently used rooms now have LED instead).

as for "too early to know", you do realise that many solar PV systems owned by people on this forum have been in use for more than ten years? Do you imagine that they will suddenly start exploding once they reach 15 years old, like human teenagers?

jamesmorgan said:

If I had a spare £5-10K sitting around and wanted to invest it for optimum payback, solar panels wouldn't be very close to the top of the list. 

Really??? I have a large sum in global multi-asset funds through an ISA, and even larger sums in pension schemes that mainly invest in things like the FTSE100, but the only reason I wouldn't have invested more money in solar panels on my roof, is that my roof is only so big and I would eventually run into official opposition as the installed power passed 10kWp. Your investment priorities seem out of whack.

jamesmorgan said:

My broad thoughts are that energy generation is much better when economies of scale are used to drive efficiency.  Solar farms are a much better long term option than the cottage industry of having a generator on everyone's house.

That's exactly why I bought solar panels when I could buy 315W panels cheaply, instead of similar-sized 200W panels for a lot more. Unfortunately for me - fortunately for some others - the government took the opposite view and subsidised people who bought the 200W panels. Still a topic for merry debates to this day, but both sets of people made the right decision.

You can buy a share in a solar farm if you want to. But you might be better off signing up to Ripple Energy.

Understanding failure rates of systems is a complex area.

Thank you for pointing that out. It's good that we have someone with your level of insight and expertise to explain it to us.

Hexane said:

jamesmorgan said:

In the same way as early energy saving lightbulbs were sold on the basis of extremely long lives, in real world conditions many turned out not to last as long as was originally assumed.  

wait what? I bought a bunch of early energy saving lightbulbs about 20 years ago, most of them are still occupying spots in less-used rooms (frequently used rooms now have LED instead).

as for "too early to know", you do realise that many solar PV systems owned by people on this forum have been in use for more than ten years? Do you imagine that they will suddenly start exploding once they reach 15 years old, like human teenagers?

jamesmorgan said:

If I had a spare £5-10K sitting around and wanted to invest it for optimum payback, solar panels wouldn't be very close to the top of the list. 

Really??? I have a large sum in global multi-asset funds through an ISA, and even larger sums in pension schemes that mainly invest in things like the FTSE100, but the only reason I wouldn't have invested more money in solar panels on my roof, is that my roof is only so big and I would eventually run into official opposition as the installed power passed 10kWp. Your investment priorities seem out of whack.

jamesmorgan said:

My broad thoughts are that energy generation is much better when economies of scale are used to drive efficiency.  Solar farms are a much better long term option than the cottage industry of having a generator on everyone's house.

That's exactly why I bought solar panels when I could buy 315W panels cheaply, instead of similar-sized 200W panels for a lot more. Unfortunately for me - fortunately for some others - the government took the opposite view and subsidised people who bought the 200W panels. Still a topic for merry debates to this day, but both sets of people made the right decision.

You can buy a share in a solar farm if you want to. But you might be better off signing up to Ripple Energy.

Trusting sources with a vested interest (eg suppliers) for expected lifespans of their products can be dangerous. 

That's true, but not relevant to anything that I said, because I did not recommend doing so.

Your "too early to really know" assumption is equally dangerous, solar panels have been around a long time and there is a wealth of data which shows that in general panel performance holds up better than originally predicted. Panels now routinely come with 20 or 25 year warranties for output.

The person who started this thread began with the unsourced and bizarrely worded claim "Apparently it can take a minimum of 14 years to break even" (either that's a minimum or it can take that long, do you see the problem with the wording?) and then followed that with "do they even last that long?" The answer of course is yes they do, and to even ask something so basic in such a skewed way, leads to wondering about the motivation for the post. A post which you then jumped on with information about LED light bulb failure rates and an old article from 2014.

It should be obvious why an article from 2014 is worse than useless for answering "are solar panels pointless" in 2022, but if not then just compare the price you were paying per kWh of electricity in 2014 (or 2013 if that's when the data for that article was collected) with the price you will be paying per kWh of electricity in October 2022.

Things change fast, and people on this forum are well aware of the different variables involved. No, payback time in years is not the only variable, that's just the end result that people (like the OP) tend to grab some figure from some source of greater or lesser reliability, and then tout it as "the answer" as to whether solar panels are worth it or not. Without understanding how that figure was arrived at or why the calculations might have changed in the last six months (never mind the last eight years).

So on this forum people are aware of the removal of FiT payments and the introduction of SEG payments. They're aware of the controversially high FiT payment rates for early adopters (many of which agreements are still in place to this day), and of the benefits of FiT payment rates being inflation-linked in an era of suddenly sky high inflation. They're aware of the possibility of receiving much higher rates than the common SEG ones by signing up to hourly export tariffs with Octopus (this is not pie in the sky, some people are already doing it), and in the more distant future possibilities like vehicle to grid and vehicle to home. Already in use are contracts where an energy supplier pays to be able to use your home battery for grid stabilisation, again discussed in detail on this forum although generally not well received.

And then there's also the possibility of high energy usage customers such as EV owners using preferential overnight rates to charge their cars and therefore in theory making less savings from solar panels. But conversely, the possibility of using solar diverters to displace gas (or other) heating. And the effects on the financial benefits of this caused by whether export payments are made based on deemed export or metered export. Again, all of this discussed in detail in this forum.

And then we have the sky-high prices of solar panel installations right now compared to five years ago, and we have the knowledge that solar panels generally last far longer than predicted but inverters do not.

And then there's the actual practicalities of how much of the generated power you're actually using, what proportion of that is really a saving, and how to maximise that. Which is very much something you learn by actually doing it, not by saying "the industry standard is to estimate 50%" and then plugging that into a spreadsheet and producing a "payback time in years is X" answer.

All of that is before we even get started on home batteries, with or without islanding capability, with or without special hourly import rates designed for them, and what their current cost is today or six months from now. And whether the electrification of heating and transport, and the need for air conditioning as the climate warms, means that household energy demands will be so much higher in future.

So there are a lot of variables, not just some payback-in-years number that someone came up with in 2014 based on a finger-in-the-air quote for a "typically sized system". (For example - I paid much less per kWp installed capacity by installing a larger system.)

Many people on this forum are making solar panels "work for them", some of them in fact appear to be making colossal profits due to being early adopters. Some of those people are re-investing those profits in things like home battery systems which might not have a worthwhile ROI, but they find it interesting (or ethical) to try. There's one regular poster here who began a couple of years ago by wondering if an 8 year ROI was possible for a solar panel install, I believe we told him that it wasn't possible. His initial data after the install suggested that we were right, but now that energy prices have gone through the roof, that might not be the case any more.

"do they even last that long" and "can take up to a minimum of" and "too early to really know" is the dangerous and misleading thinking.

When is the best time to plant a fruit tree? 20 years ago. When is the second best time to plant a fruit tree? Today.

Similar applies to solar panels, the best time to buy them was just over ten years ago because of the huge profits from FiT ... the second best time to buy solar panels is still today. (Although, given the lateness of the hour, you could probably wait till Monday.)

ed110220

Hexane said:

jamesmorgan said:

Hexane said:

jamesmorgan said:

In the same way as early energy saving lightbulbs were sold on the basis of extremely long lives, in real world conditions many turned out not to last as long as was originally assumed.  

wait what? I bought a bunch of early energy saving lightbulbs about 20 years ago, most of them are still occupying spots in less-used rooms (frequently used rooms now have LED instead).

as for "too early to know", you do realise that many solar PV systems owned by people on this forum have been in use for more than ten years? Do you imagine that they will suddenly start exploding once they reach 15 years old, like human teenagers?

jamesmorgan said:

If I had a spare £5-10K sitting around and wanted to invest it for optimum payback, solar panels wouldn't be very close to the top of the list. 

Really??? I have a large sum in global multi-asset funds through an ISA, and even larger sums in pension schemes that mainly invest in things like the FTSE100, but the only reason I wouldn't have invested more money in solar panels on my roof, is that my roof is only so big and I would eventually run into official opposition as the installed power passed 10kWp. Your investment priorities seem out of whack.

jamesmorgan said:

My broad thoughts are that energy generation is much better when economies of scale are used to drive efficiency.  Solar farms are a much better long term option than the cottage industry of having a generator on everyone's house.

That's exactly why I bought solar panels when I could buy 315W panels cheaply, instead of similar-sized 200W panels for a lot more. Unfortunately for me - fortunately for some others - the government took the opposite view and subsidised people who bought the 200W panels. Still a topic for merry debates to this day, but both sets of people made the right decision.

You can buy a share in a solar farm if you want to. But you might be better off signing up to Ripple Energy.

Understanding failure rates of systems is a complex area.

Thank you for pointing that out. It's good that we have someone with your level of insight and expertise to explain it to us.

Hexane said:

jamesmorgan said:

In the same way as early energy saving lightbulbs were sold on the basis of extremely long lives, in real world conditions many turned out not to last as long as was originally assumed.  

wait what? I bought a bunch of early energy saving lightbulbs about 20 years ago, most of them are still occupying spots in less-used rooms (frequently used rooms now have LED instead).

as for "too early to know", you do realise that many solar PV systems owned by people on this forum have been in use for more than ten years? Do you imagine that they will suddenly start exploding once they reach 15 years old, like human teenagers?

jamesmorgan said:

If I had a spare £5-10K sitting around and wanted to invest it for optimum payback, solar panels wouldn't be very close to the top of the list. 

Really??? I have a large sum in global multi-asset funds through an ISA, and even larger sums in pension schemes that mainly invest in things like the FTSE100, but the only reason I wouldn't have invested more money in solar panels on my roof, is that my roof is only so big and I would eventually run into official opposition as the installed power passed 10kWp. Your investment priorities seem out of whack.

jamesmorgan said:

My broad thoughts are that energy generation is much better when economies of scale are used to drive efficiency.  Solar farms are a much better long term option than the cottage industry of having a generator on everyone's house.

That's exactly why I bought solar panels when I could buy 315W panels cheaply, instead of similar-sized 200W panels for a lot more. Unfortunately for me - fortunately for some others - the government took the opposite view and subsidised people who bought the 200W panels. Still a topic for merry debates to this day, but both sets of people made the right decision.

You can buy a share in a solar farm if you want to. But you might be better off signing up to Ripple Energy.

Trusting sources with a vested interest (eg suppliers) for expected lifespans of their products can be dangerous. 

That's true, but not relevant to anything that I said, because I did not recommend doing so.

Your "too early to really know" assumption is equally dangerous, solar panels have been around a long time and there is a wealth of data which shows that in general panel performance holds up better than originally predicted. Panels now routinely come with 20 or 25 year warranties for output.

The person who started this thread began with the unsourced and bizarrely worded claim "Apparently it can take a minimum of 14 years to break even" (either that's a minimum or it can take that long, do you see the problem with the wording?) and then followed that with "do they even last that long?" The answer of course is yes they do, and to even ask something so basic in such a skewed way, leads to wondering about the motivation for the post. A post which you then jumped on with information about LED light bulb failure rates and an old article from 2014.

It should be obvious why an article from 2014 is worse than useless for answering "are solar panels pointless" in 2022, but if not then just compare the price you were paying per kWh of electricity in 2014 (or 2013 if that's when the data for that article was collected) with the price you will be paying per kWh of electricity in October 2022.

Things change fast, and people on this forum are well aware of the different variables involved. No, payback time in years is not the only variable, that's just the end result that people (like the OP) tend to grab some figure from some source of greater or lesser reliability, and then tout it as "the answer" as to whether solar panels are worth it or not. Without understanding how that figure was arrived at or why the calculations might have changed in the last six months (never mind the last eight years).

So on this forum people are aware of the removal of FiT payments and the introduction of SEG payments. They're aware of the controversially high FiT payment rates for early adopters (many of which agreements are still in place to this day), and of the benefits of FiT payment rates being inflation-linked in an era of suddenly sky high inflation. They're aware of the possibility of receiving much higher rates than the common SEG ones by signing up to hourly export tariffs with Octopus (this is not pie in the sky, some people are already doing it), and in the more distant future possibilities like vehicle to grid and vehicle to home. Already in use are contracts where an energy supplier pays to be able to use your home battery for grid stabilisation, again discussed in detail on this forum although generally not well received.

And then there's also the possibility of high energy usage customers such as EV owners using preferential overnight rates to charge their cars and therefore in theory making less savings from solar panels. But conversely, the possibility of using solar diverters to displace gas (or other) heating. And the effects on the financial benefits of this caused by whether export payments are made based on deemed export or metered export. Again, all of this discussed in detail in this forum.

And then we have the sky-high prices of solar panel installations right now compared to five years ago, and we have the knowledge that solar panels generally last far longer than predicted but inverters do not.

And then there's the actual practicalities of how much of the generated power you're actually using, what proportion of that is really a saving, and how to maximise that. Which is very much something you learn by actually doing it, not by saying "the industry standard is to estimate 50%" and then plugging that into a spreadsheet and producing a "payback time in years is X" answer.

All of that is before we even get started on home batteries, with or without islanding capability, with or without special hourly import rates designed for them, and what their current cost is today or six months from now. And whether the electrification of heating and transport, and the need for air conditioning as the climate warms, means that household energy demands will be so much higher in future.

So there are a lot of variables, not just some payback-in-years number that someone came up with in 2014 based on a finger-in-the-air quote for a "typically sized system". (For example - I paid much less per kWp installed capacity by installing a larger system.)

Many people on this forum are making solar panels "work for them", some of them in fact appear to be making colossal profits due to being early adopters. Some of those people are re-investing those profits in things like home battery systems which might not have a worthwhile ROI, but they find it interesting (or ethical) to try. There's one regular poster here who began a couple of years ago by wondering if an 8 year ROI was possible for a solar panel install, I believe we told him that it wasn't possible. His initial data after the install suggested that we were right, but now that energy prices have gone through the roof, that might not be the case any more.

"do they even last that long" and "can take up to a minimum of" and "too early to really know" is the dangerous and misleading thinking.

When is the best time to plant a fruit tree? 20 years ago. When is the second best time to plant a fruit tree? Today.

Similar applies to solar panels, the best time to buy them was just over ten years ago because of the huge profits from FiT ... the second best time to buy solar panels is still today. (Although, given the lateness of the hour, you could probably wait till Monday.)

(My bold) I certainly wish I'd had solar installed when we bought this house in 2011. But I'm glad to have had it fitted before electricity prices go up any more! So I'd really agree with this point.

mickyduck55

Hexane said:

jamesmorgan said:

Hexane said:

jamesmorgan said:

In the same way as early energy saving lightbulbs were sold on the basis of extremely long lives, in real world conditions many turned out not to last as long as was originally assumed.  

wait what? I bought a bunch of early energy saving lightbulbs about 20 years ago, most of them are still occupying spots in less-used rooms (frequently used rooms now have LED instead).

as for "too early to know", you do realise that many solar PV systems owned by people on this forum have been in use for more than ten years? Do you imagine that they will suddenly start exploding once they reach 15 years old, like human teenagers?

jamesmorgan said:

If I had a spare £5-10K sitting around and wanted to invest it for optimum payback, solar panels wouldn't be very close to the top of the list. 

Really??? I have a large sum in global multi-asset funds through an ISA, and even larger sums in pension schemes that mainly invest in things like the FTSE100, but the only reason I wouldn't have invested more money in solar panels on my roof, is that my roof is only so big and I would eventually run into official opposition as the installed power passed 10kWp. Your investment priorities seem out of whack.

jamesmorgan said:

My broad thoughts are that energy generation is much better when economies of scale are used to drive efficiency.  Solar farms are a much better long term option than the cottage industry of having a generator on everyone's house.

That's exactly why I bought solar panels when I could buy 315W panels cheaply, instead of similar-sized 200W panels for a lot more. Unfortunately for me - fortunately for some others - the government took the opposite view and subsidised people who bought the 200W panels. Still a topic for merry debates to this day, but both sets of people made the right decision.

You can buy a share in a solar farm if you want to. But you might be better off signing up to Ripple Energy.

Understanding failure rates of systems is a complex area.

Thank you for pointing that out. It's good that we have someone with your level of insight and expertise to explain it to us.

Hexane said:

jamesmorgan said:

In the same way as early energy saving lightbulbs were sold on the basis of extremely long lives, in real world conditions many turned out not to last as long as was originally assumed.  

wait what? I bought a bunch of early energy saving lightbulbs about 20 years ago, most of them are still occupying spots in less-used rooms (frequently used rooms now have LED instead).

as for "too early to know", you do realise that many solar PV systems owned by people on this forum have been in use for more than ten years? Do you imagine that they will suddenly start exploding once they reach 15 years old, like human teenagers?

jamesmorgan said:

If I had a spare £5-10K sitting around and wanted to invest it for optimum payback, solar panels wouldn't be very close to the top of the list. 

Really??? I have a large sum in global multi-asset funds through an ISA, and even larger sums in pension schemes that mainly invest in things like the FTSE100, but the only reason I wouldn't have invested more money in solar panels on my roof, is that my roof is only so big and I would eventually run into official opposition as the installed power passed 10kWp. Your investment priorities seem out of whack.

jamesmorgan said:

My broad thoughts are that energy generation is much better when economies of scale are used to drive efficiency.  Solar farms are a much better long term option than the cottage industry of having a generator on everyone's house.

That's exactly why I bought solar panels when I could buy 315W panels cheaply, instead of similar-sized 200W panels for a lot more. Unfortunately for me - fortunately for some others - the government took the opposite view and subsidised people who bought the 200W panels. Still a topic for merry debates to this day, but both sets of people made the right decision.

You can buy a share in a solar farm if you want to. But you might be better off signing up to Ripple Energy.

Trusting sources with a vested interest (eg suppliers) for expected lifespans of their products can be dangerous. 

That's true, but not relevant to anything that I said, because I did not recommend doing so.

Your "too early to really know" assumption is equally dangerous, solar panels have been around a long time and there is a wealth of data which shows that in general panel performance holds up better than originally predicted. Panels now routinely come with 20 or 25 year warranties for output.

The person who started this thread began with the unsourced and bizarrely worded claim "Apparently it can take a minimum of 14 years to break even" (either that's a minimum or it can take that long, do you see the problem with the wording?) and then followed that with "do they even last that long?" The answer of course is yes they do, and to even ask something so basic in such a skewed way, leads to wondering about the motivation for the post. A post which you then jumped on with information about LED light bulb failure rates and an old article from 2014.

It should be obvious why an article from 2014 is worse than useless for answering "are solar panels pointless" in 2022, but if not then just compare the price you were paying per kWh of electricity in 2014 (or 2013 if that's when the data for that article was collected) with the price you will be paying per kWh of electricity in October 2022.

Things change fast, and people on this forum are well aware of the different variables involved. No, payback time in years is not the only variable, that's just the end result that people (like the OP) tend to grab some figure from some source of greater or lesser reliability, and then tout it as "the answer" as to whether solar panels are worth it or not. Without understanding how that figure was arrived at or why the calculations might have changed in the last six months (never mind the last eight years).

So on this forum people are aware of the removal of FiT payments and the introduction of SEG payments. They're aware of the controversially high FiT payment rates for early adopters (many of which agreements are still in place to this day), and of the benefits of FiT payment rates being inflation-linked in an era of suddenly sky high inflation. They're aware of the possibility of receiving much higher rates than the common SEG ones by signing up to hourly export tariffs with Octopus (this is not pie in the sky, some people are already doing it), and in the more distant future possibilities like vehicle to grid and vehicle to home. Already in use are contracts where an energy supplier pays to be able to use your home battery for grid stabilisation, again discussed in detail on this forum although generally not well received.

And then there's also the possibility of high energy usage customers such as EV owners using preferential overnight rates to charge their cars and therefore in theory making less savings from solar panels. But conversely, the possibility of using solar diverters to displace gas (or other) heating. And the effects on the financial benefits of this caused by whether export payments are made based on deemed export or metered export. Again, all of this discussed in detail in this forum.

And then we have the sky-high prices of solar panel installations right now compared to five years ago, and we have the knowledge that solar panels generally last far longer than predicted but inverters do not.

And then there's the actual practicalities of how much of the generated power you're actually using, what proportion of that is really a saving, and how to maximise that. Which is very much something you learn by actually doing it, not by saying "the industry standard is to estimate 50%" and then plugging that into a spreadsheet and producing a "payback time in years is X" answer.

All of that is before we even get started on home batteries, with or without islanding capability, with or without special hourly import rates designed for them, and what their current cost is today or six months from now. And whether the electrification of heating and transport, and the need for air conditioning as the climate warms, means that household energy demands will be so much higher in future.

So there are a lot of variables, not just some payback-in-years number that someone came up with in 2014 based on a finger-in-the-air quote for a "typically sized system". (For example - I paid much less per kWp installed capacity by installing a larger system.)

Many people on this forum are making solar panels "work for them", some of them in fact appear to be making colossal profits due to being early adopters. Some of those people are re-investing those profits in things like home battery systems which might not have a worthwhile ROI, but they find it interesting (or ethical) to try. There's one regular poster here who began a couple of years ago by wondering if an 8 year ROI was possible for a solar panel install, I believe we told him that it wasn't possible. His initial data after the install suggested that we were right, but now that energy prices have gone through the roof, that might not be the case any more.

"do they even last that long" and "can take up to a minimum of" and "too early to really know" is the dangerous and misleading thinking.

When is the best time to plant a fruit tree? 20 years ago. When is the second best time to plant a fruit tree? Today.

Similar applies to solar panels, the best time to buy them was just over ten years ago because of the huge profits from FiT ... the second best time to buy solar panels is still today. (Although, given the lateness of the hour, you could probably wait till Monday.)

Thank you as an early adopter with FIT and now batteries this is should be a  "sticky" well written and balanced Cheers