Solar panels, are yours making you greener?

g600dey

I'm now a year in and I find that for the past year I've bought  1826 units(the previous two years I used around 1700units each year), I have managed to send 1837 units back into the grid (according to a panel meter I've produced 3176 units this year so 1339 units of 'free' electricity have been used by my household).

This means I spent £11500 on 9 panels and a battery to increase my power usage from 1700 to  over 3150 units, bearing in mind I live in a one bed bungalow, have gas central heating and hot water, and drive a real (ice) car, so my personal usage hasn't increased.

I now wish I'd never bought panels and I can't recommend them to anybody else.

QrizB

g600dey said:

I'm now a year in and I find that for the past year I've bought  1826 units(the previous two years I used around 1700units each year), I have managed to send 1837 units back into the grid (according to a panel meter I've produced 3176 units this year so 1339 units of 'free' electricity have been used by my household).

That's not how the maths work. You need to read the export register on your smart meter too. I can explain but you're going to have to engage in good faith rather than moan.

Do you want to learn and understand? Or are you just here to vent?

You do have a smart meter, don't you?

What supplier are you with, what import tariff and what export tariff?

g600dey said:

This means I spent £11500 on 9 panels and a battery

It does sound rather as though you were mis-sold. As a low user, there was little chance of a battery paying for itself unless you use a smart tariff and actively manage it.

How did you come to decide to buy solar panels and a battery?

What company installed your panels? What predictions did they make regarding generation, consumption and payback?

g600dey said:

I now wish I'd never bought panels and I can't recommend them to anybody else.

Now you've got them, would you like to learn how to make best use of them?

mmmmikey

g600dey said:

I'm now a year in and I find that for the past year I've bought  1826 units(the previous two years I used around 1700units each year), I have managed to send 1837 units back into the grid (according to a panel meter I've produced 3176 units this year so 1339 units of 'free' electricity have been used by my household).

This means I spent £11500 on 9 panels and a battery to increase my power usage from 1700 to  over 3150 units, bearing in mind I live in a one bed bungalow, have gas central heating and hot water, and drive a real (ice) car, so my personal usage hasn't increased.

I now wish I'd never bought panels and I can't recommend them to anybody else.

Sorry to hear your having problems. It's clear from your earlier posts that either your setup is wrong / faulty or you have misunderstood something (maybe the data you're seeing or how to get the most from your system). If you want some help understanding where the issue lies then there are plenty of people here that can help. If you didn't understand some of the replies / suggestions you got earlier in the year then please just ask.

Who installed your system, have you made them aware of your issues and if so what did they say?

Qyburn

g600dey said:

I'm now a year in and I find that for the past year I've bought  1826 units(the previous two years I used around 1700units each year), I have managed to send 1837 units back into the grid (according to a panel meter I've produced 3176 units this year so 1339 units of 'free' electricity have been used by my household).

Your generation figure sounds in the right ballpark depending on panel type, orientation, inclinati9n etc. But export doesn't.

For comparison ours went in just over 12 months ago, 20 panels. Our figures for 12 months were ..
  Generation  7,158
  Export 4,832
  Import 1,344
  Which makes our consumption 3,670, more or less the same as previous years.

My figures are all from actual meters, our smart meter for import and export and a proper net metering meter on the inverter.

There's a couple of possibilities other than you simply using more electricity.
(1) Using figures from an app and not a proper meter. For example the Solaredge app over estimate production and under estimate export, in our case that leads to our consumption being over estimated by up to 45%. 
(2) A generation meter that only records one figure, not import/export/net. That will over estimate production as power supplied by the battery will read as production, even if the charge originated from the grid.

The total kWh figures don't tell the whole story. We're now on a tarriff with cheap off peak rate which can be used to charge the battery when solar doesn't keep up. This should mean that the bulk of our Winter use costs much less than standard rate.