PV Panel contract

Molly_Magic_2

We lease a purpose built building for work. The building was built for us a few years ago and has PV panels.
We can see from a meter that the PV panels are generating energy and I had assumed that our electricity bill was being reduced accordingly.
Having just renegotiated the electricity contract this doesn’t seem to be the case.
How do we connect the energy being generated and the energy we are paying for? Should we have a contract with an energy supplier for the energy being generated? If so, how do we arrange this retrospectively?
Landlord has confirmed we should be benefitting and that they don’t have a contract for the energy.

Reed_Richards

You (or anybody else) will have no way of knowing if your solar panels are working as intended by looking at an electricity bill or an electricity contract.  If you have a smart meter the smart meter should tell you how much electricity you have exported to the grid.  And your solar panels should have a generation meter to tell you how much solar electricity you have generated.  If you read both meters at the start of the day and again at the end of the day then both should show an increase.  If the increase in electricity generated is greater than the increase in electricity exported then the difference is the electricity you have used.

If your panels were installed since March 2019 then you cannot get paid for the electracy you generate.  But you can get paid for the electricity you generate and do not use yourself, the electricity you export.  For this you need a smart meter that can measure export and then you can seek a contract with an energy supplier under the Smart Export Guarantee scheme.  

    

Qyburn

Will a smart meter still record export if the export MPAN hasn't been applied for, activated, or whatever the process is?  I get the impression that those formalities may not have been completed, or if they have then the the OP hasnt been kept informed.

Reed_Richards

My smart meter records export even though it doesn't have an export MPAN.  I'm not sure my electricity supplier is even aware that I have solar panels.  So if any "process" was required it was done by the engineer who installed the smart meter (and who could see that I did have them).  I suspect that the recording of export is process free.  My old (dumb) meter could detect export and flashed rEd between readings to indicate that electricity was flowing in the rEverse direction, but it couldn't measure how much.

Ectophile

By the laws of physics, you get "first dibs" on any electricity that's being generated by the solar panels.  That means that your electricity bills will be lower.  This lowering won't appear on any bill; you will simply have used less electricity from the grid.

Any electricity you don't use will be exported to the grid.  At the moment, nobody is paying anybody for that electricity.  It's disappearing into the grid, un-billed.

If you qualify for Smart Export Guarantee, then it's worth applying.  You can get paid a few pence for each unit of electricity exported.  I don't think there's any hope of being retrospectively paid for electricity you've already given away to the grid for free.