Soldato
i think we may be at crossed purposes here.
1) by localised generation i meant still on the grid, so wind turbines generating energy for a local town rather than transporting over 100s of miles of cables across the country
2) given i have solar on my roof, and by todays standards it is a very small system (my panels are only 320w compared to modern equivalents of similar size now pushing 500w) and whilst it isnt enough to go off grid it is absolutely not true to say it isnt cheaper.
my system will be 3 years old in July. it cost £8500 to install. The battery (7.2kwh with 6kwh usable) is guaranteed for 5 years, expected life of at least 10 years... the panels 10 year guarantee expected life 25 years. (5.1kwh of panels with a 5kwh inverter). The inverter is the most likely piece of the puzzle to fail but that is "only" around £600 to replace.
combining my solar and battery with an intelligent time of use tariff my electricity bill has been slashed. my system will be operating on pure profit by the time it is 8 years old. its saving me over £1000 a year taking into account the cheap off peak energy, the house running off battery/ solar combined and the excess solar i sell.
getting 2 electric cars actually makes the savings due to my panels hard to work out, but in the 12 months before getting an EV, my yearly electricity costs was less than zero. i built up a huge credit on my account in summer and that saw me through winter. it even covers the cost of a lot of my gas use. my gas/electicity combined direct debit was £70 in 2023. this was way to much as my account ended up £1000 in credit. this is slowly starting to drop since we got 2 EVs last year, and we have been charging them both 100% at home from September... without that however i would have to significantly cut our direct debit and demand a sizable cheque from Octopus.
in 2020 pre solar our combined gas electricity direct debit was £150 and my account was in arrears ... also bear in mind gas and electricity from the grid was significantly cheaper in 2020 than it was in 2023.
Yeah my system was £13k but is bigger (more capacity in panels and battery) than yours. Was installed end of Nov 22 and as of end of March 24 it had saved me over 20% of the install costs.
Being able to take advantage of power ups (charge batteries) and saving sessions (received £170 of credit this year by exporting), plus a TOU tariff meant my elec costs are very low in summer and noticeably lower than they would have been over winter.
Plus for me it wasn't simply financial, but also doing the right thing to at least reduce my CO2 impact.