Solar Panel advice

Waywardmike

powerful_Rogue said:

Batteries seem like marmite, love them or hate them! I've got batteries, I use on average 10kWh per day. I wouldn't be without them. Will take a bit longer to pay back then if I had got a system without them, but I find them invaluable.

Is this true though?  The only people I can find who 'hate' them don't have them. 

I've yet to speak to someone who's got a battery and regrets it.  I'm willing to be proven wrong though, hands up who's got a battery and hates it/wishes they hadn't bothered?

Alternatively lets ask, who got a battery and wishes it was bigger?

Tryinghardtosave

I bit the bullet and got a Solax X1 Hybrid 7.5kw with a 15.8 kwh battery. Love the fact that at the moment I can fill the battery in the day and it will run the house over night. Much better investment than just watching the pennies sitting in the bank. 

MarzipanCrumble

I am interested in what a previous poster said about drilling through slate.  I have a slate roof - how does a panel get fitted?  I can see that the slatew would definitely crack if drilled through......probably.

DougMLancs

They should lift the slate, fit a bracket then replace the slate. You can also get brackets affixed to something that looks like a slate tile that they can swap the real tile out with. 

[Deleted User]

MarzipanCrumble said:

I am interested in what a previous poster said about drilling through slate.  I have a slate roof - how does a panel get fitted?  I can see that the slatew would definitely crack if drilled through......probably.

You are talking about Solar Limpets which are MCS-approved fittings for slate roofs.

https://www.solarlimpets.co.uk/

Other than roofing slates and fitting an in roof mounting system, alternative fixings also carry some risk as slates have to be removed:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EYHC5yzTek

ian1246

So I've had 2 more of my quotes - one came in at £10,900 (that's without a Battery!) for a 4Kwh System and the other came in at £7963.80 for the following:

Huawei 3.6kW Hybrid inverter (Max 5kW input). 10x Trina 425Wp Vertex 'S' PV modules. All fixings, Cables, Isolators ect. MCS certificated, Electrical Certificated and registration with building control.

Notes: 5 panels on frontage of house (West) 5 panels on rear roof (East) Huawei inverter upgradable to 5kWp PV input and Optimisers if required. Inverter also upgradable to work as a hybrid for battery storage. App for monitoring

#################

This is vs. the earlier quote of £6,390 for the following:

11 x Trina Vertex S 415W All Black Mono solar panels
GivEnergy 3.6kW hybrid inverter 
Fixing, Cables, Connections etc...

Whats people's thoughts? I'm trying to work out why there is a £1573 price difference - both these quotes confirmed they'd install the panels via removal of the slate tiles and fitting of solar-limpets etc...

DougMLancs

Pretty sure the difference is just one wants a holiday to the Maldives 

Petriix

Waywardmike said:

powerful_Rogue said:

Batteries seem like marmite, love them or hate them! I've got batteries, I use on average 10kWh per day. I wouldn't be without them. Will take a bit longer to pay back then if I had got a system without them, but I find them invaluable.

Is this true though?  The only people I can find who 'hate' them don't have them. 

I've yet to speak to someone who's got a battery and regrets it.  I'm willing to be proven wrong though, hands up who's got a battery and hates it/wishes they hadn't bothered?

Alternatively lets ask, who got a battery and wishes it was bigger?

That's because of confirmation bias where people are willing to believe that they've made a good investment even if it's not objectively true. People who've done the sums fully are unlikely to be disappointed in their battery because they mostly haven't installed one. People who are happy with their batteries are unlikely to have done the sums properly, otherwise they mostly wouldn't have installed one if they had. That leads to the observable split in opinion.

That might seem harsh, but it's true. That doesn't mean batteries are always a bad idea. There are combinations of unusual circumstances where they make sense, it's just that those circumstances are not applicable to the majority. For the record, I'd love to have a battery if someone else was paying for it, I just can't possibly justify the expense.

Screwdriva

Petriix said:

That's because of confirmation bias where people are willing to believe that they've made a good investment even if it's not objectively true. People who've done the sums fully are unlikely to be disappointed in their battery because they mostly haven't installed one. People who are happy with their batteries are unlikely to have done the sums properly, otherwise they mostly wouldn't have installed one if they had. That leads to the observable split in opinion.

That might seem harsh, but it's true. That doesn't mean batteries are always a bad idea. There are combinations of unusual circumstances where they make sense, it's just that those circumstances are not applicable to the majority. For the record, I'd love to have a battery if someone else was paying for it, I just can't possibly justify the expense.

+1 to this.

I usually suggest that heat pump owners will need a battery to recover against the investment in electrified heating within the warranty period. There are also those who live in areas where recurrent power blackouts cause frustration that a battery can resolve. 

FFHillbilly

can anyone recommend a good forum / website for solar panel research?