Does anyone use solar power on their house?

Bleek

Bleek

Bleek

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I was looking in to solar power/collection or similar for our house, does anyone have any experience of it?

Anything I should look out for i.e. different brands of panel being better than others, ball park install figures, yield, reliability, maintenance etc?
 
Our neighbour had a solar panel fitted to his roof about 2 years ago now. I don't know how much it cost but he said he should start making his money back within 10 years.
 
Are you looking at electricity generation or water heating? Electricty generation by solar is nowhere near as efficient and cost effective as a reasonably sized wind turbine.

My parents had solar water heating fitted a couple of years ago and that has been very effective, as evidenced by significant drops in their gas bills winter and summer. A lot less problematic and more maintenance free than electricity generation.
 
Dolph said:
Are you looking at electricity generation or water heating? Electricty generation by solar is nowhere near as efficient and cost effective as a reasonably sized wind turbine.

My parents had solar water heating fitted a couple of years ago and that has been very effective, as evidenced by significant drops in their gas bills winter and summer. A lot less problematic and more maintenance free than electricity generation.
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I'm keeping an open mind, can you run water and electricity side-by-side or would that be too costly?
 
Bleek said:
I'm keeping an open mind, can you run water and electricity side-by-side or would that be too costly?
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IIRC my parent's water setup was about £3500, and is saving them around £300-400 a year so the payback time is fairly lengthy. They looked at electricity generation as well but the costs and payback time were both much higher.
 
I looked at it for my parents, but a turbine/photovoltaic hybrid system. Set up was £18k to go completely off grid which would be a 10 year pay back.
 
My brother in laws dad has a solar panel for water heating, he's a plumber and quite tight fisted and he swears by it!
 
jonno.co.uk said:
how does this work? does it replace your boiler?
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The one I mentioned works in combination with the boiler. There's a control box that decides how much hot water to take from the panel based on the tank's temperature and the panel's temperature. It's pretty clever and seems to work well.

For about 3 or 4 months in summer you can get 100% of your hot water for free. This obviously drops off toward winter but you can still get some benefit, even on a cloudy day.
 
Dolph said:
IIRC my parent's water setup was about £3500, and is saving them around £300-400 a year so the payback time is fairly lengthy. They looked at electricity generation as well but the costs and payback time were both much higher.
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Are there no grants that you can get for these?
 
Wicksta said:
Are there no grants that you can get for these?
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You can, but some of the conditions are both onerous and stupid.

For example, my parents didn't apply for it, because one of the conditions is that you have to have 12 inches of insulation in the roof (based on fibreglass wool insulation). They have a large loft space that is used, so instead went for a material that provides better performance with much less loss of space... The problem is that the grant stipulates at least 12 inches of insulation, so they couldn't have it, even though they had better insulation than the standard, because they hadn't used enough volume :rolleyes:
 
Dolph said:
You can, but some of the conditions are both onerous and stupid.

For example, my parents didn't apply for it, because one of the conditions is that you have to have 12 inches of insulation in the roof (based on fibreglass wool insulation). They have a large loft space that is used, so instead went for a material that provides better performance with much less loss of space... The problem is that the grant stipulates at least 12 inches of insulation, so they couldn't have it, even though they had better insulation than the standard, because they hadn't used enough volume :rolleyes:
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That sounds about right. :D

I'd maybe have weighed up the cost differences of some extra fibreglass insulation then just chucked it out/sold it once I got the grant.
 
Any more info on these grants, is there a gov website for them?

Thanks for the feedback thus far guys, very helpful. :)
 
It annoys me a little when people talk about using solar/wind power on a domestic scale, when its clear the technology for it to be completely viable is still some years off.

Surely the way forward is to teach ourselves to consume less energy, instead of spending more and more money on relatively unproven pieces of equipment to just supplement the copious amounts of energy we actually use. Just so that the minor electrical/heat gains we do get from these installations, we can waste through poorly insulated and leaky glazing units, 12 katrillion watt tumble dryers and appliances which each have umpteen constantly glowing LED's just to let us know they are on standby.

:)
 
My Sister boyfriend worked for a company that did this and has set up his own company to fit it. He said to me he wouldn't fit it to my house even if I wanted it because it's a rip off.

Takes too long to get the money back and the panels life is too short. He said to me yesterday you are looking at around 10k for a system that gives payback.

I'd rather just pay a little more on my bill each month than give that sort of money over on a system thats still years of being viable.
 
The life of a panel can be up to 40-50 years, or so say the manufacturer.

I wonder what warranty they come with?
 
You should be able to get a 3KW panel fitted for around £10K, but I know they can be less than that because someone on another forum mentioned they had one that cost £4K (though I don't know the power output). Government pays you 14p per unit you feed back into the grid and I think I read they are increasing that to 22p per unit. You have a special meter that keeps tabs on how much you've put back into the grid basically.

By my back-of-a-beermat maths I assumed 8 hrs/day at 3KW, 14p per unit and it should pay you about £1300 per year. Reality is you'll probably get more than 8 hrs/day on average, because I just went for a worst case scenario. So you'll maybe get as much as £2000/yr depending on how much the government change their feed-in tariffs to.

I'm really interested in meeting anyone who actually has one so if you know anyone, nudge me in their direction :)
 
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