Solar PV Panel development …….. ?

uk1

Seeking opinion on imprecise thoughts.

I seem to have no pressing need to install my system today’ish because I have a fix until September 1st 2023 at under 19p.   If  I ordered a PV system then ie to be installed next September or within a few months with or without batteries then it will be up and running at the start of winter and seems it will be unlikely to provide any worthwhile return until the early summer of 2024.  Is that as a generalisation sort of right?

If it is, then does it follow that I might then have a better opportunity to be able to choose from more productive and better and more efficient PV panels perhaps moving from whatever the current average is now  … say 400kwh’ish  to 500kwh’ish making it a better decision to wait than buy now?  From what I have learned here the savings are mostly in the productivity of panels over summer.  Also might inverter,battery, and even utility export an off-peak rate etc all be a little better then ... and I'd have two years more life for the guarantees and the new system?

I know no reply will be “factual” but I’m simply seeking instinctive opinion.

Thanks in advance. 

Martyn1981

Hiya. I don't know how much PV will have advanced in a year, but it will of course be something, but I do think you have a point about your price fix. Install costs are so expensive now that they make my eyes water. I can appreciate why they are so high, and that the savings/returns are also higher due to higher leccy prices, but that does leave you a potential opening for waiting another year.

Famous last words - Hopefully things will improve, but I doubt they can get any worse ..... fingers crossed.

uk1

Thanks so much. 

QrizB

Solar panels are a mature technology. The first panels were built in the 19th century; there's a photo from 1884 in this article:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/sponsored/brief-history-solar-panels-180972006/

As a result, efficiencies are only improving slowly. The panels on my roof were fitted in 2012 and are around 14% efficient. Panels for sale today are around 21% efficient. That's 7% in 10 years, 0.7% per year on average, and a lot of that increase came from one-off improvements.

I would not expect any major breakthroughs in the next 3-5 years.

(I think @Martyn1981 has been looking forward to perovskite panels for a decade, but they still aren't here!)

uk1

Many thanks.  Isn't the kwph improving more than efficiency?  Aren't optimisers, inverters, and batteries improving collectively and the way that they all work together and collectively rather than as independant components improving  rapidly eg myenergy, givenergy etc?

Martyn1981

uk1 said:

Many thanks.  Isn't the kwph improving more than efficiency?  Aren't optimisers, inverters, and batteries improving collectively and the way that they all work together rather than as independant components collectively rapidly  improving  eg myenergy, givenergy etc?

Yes, so to speak. QrizB is right that panels have improved from around 14% a decade ago to 21% today, but that's not an improvement of 7% it's an improvement of 50%, when you consider it in context.

If they were to improve from 21% to 22% in a year, and I'm not saying they will, that would be another 4.8% increase.

In the case of my roof, with a mix of 235Wp (2011) and 250Wp (2012), moving to ~370Wp today would take me from 5.58kWp to about 8.4kWp. Nice!


As regards Perovskite/Silicon panels, I'm hopeful they will be viable towards the end of this decade, at roughly the same cost per Wp as silicon panels*, and maybe starting at around 30% efficiency, rising towards 35%+ as they mature.

Perovskite is much cheaper, but of course manufacturing a dual panel will add complexity costs. So if that comes out in the wash, then hopefully a Perovskite/Silicon panel that's say ~50% more powerful than a Silicon panel panel, will only cost ~50% more.

QrizB

uk1 said:

Many thanks.  Isn't the kwph improving more than efficiency?  Aren't optimisers, inverters, and batteries improving collectively and the way that they all work together and collectively rather than as independant components improving  rapidly eg myenergy, givenergy etc?

Broadly? No, they aren't.

Optimisers and inverters are already better than 95% efficient, and so there's hardly any scope for them to get better.

@ispookie66 posted earlier today that his battery is 97%+ efficient, so again, very little scope for improvement.

The only significant inefficiency in a solar PV system is the panels.

2nd_time_buyer

Interesting to see how panel efficiencies have changed. The top end seems to be increasing but quite slowly. The record is nearly 50% Six-junction solar cell sets two world records for efficiency -- ScienceDaily.

The efficiency of the consumer end of things now seems to be increasing much more rapidly, having been relatively stable up to around 2015.

uk1

Thanks muchly all.  

It seems to me that a lot of my pain in buying now is because of the sudden unexpected and huge increase in electricity costs - not for me because of my fix - and the immaturity of the solar installation  industry to respond to the sudden demand and so it is the wild west.  

As my need isn’t an imperative today then it seems to me that if I do in my own terms the counter-intuitive thing of waiting a little and doing nothing for perhaps a year or two I’m not really losing out by anything or much at all but might actually gain by two years extra life and small improvements to all the bits and a more mature installation industry and more settled utility offerings. 

I very much appreciate all the ideas, wisdom experience and coaching. 

ispookie666

These cycles happen. 

I remember when we were looking into having Solar installed in 2014/15, they were expensive and the prices were slowly creeping up. When the FiT was ending, there was literally significant price increase. Following this the industry went into a downward spiral. 

The current electric prices and desire to be carbon neutral has revived the industry. The price of gas seems to be heading down, I cannot see the electric prices staying this high beyond a year. I suspect the solar installation costs will follow it. 

Maybe installation a few months before your fix ends?

uk1

Many thanks. If I did the installation a few months before the fix ends, I’d be having it installed at the end of summer and the start of winter 2023 at the earliest.  Does that not imply zero or very low return next year until the opportunity presented by summer 2024?