Solar energy and the Feed-In Tariff - your opinions

I did not know that charging batteries would limit efficiency. But at the moment castiel you are not truly independent from the grid. Without the grid your panels are only useful during the summer and day time. Some people go solar because they want to be power independent so that if there is a power cut they still have power. This is where batteries are useful. But from the sound of things, you are not doing it to be power independent, you are doing it as an investment. Well thanks to the green government regulation it sounds viable. But imo i would like to have the batteries as well even for backup.
 
Goldy said:
I'm all in favour of solar energy, either photovoltaic or heating.

However the biggest beneficiary of the feed in tariff is the banks. The FIT has been abused by companies who promise customers 'free panels' with no catch. Homeowners need to do a bit more research before entering into such a deal.
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Indeed. I looked into the deal offered by E.on, which promises panels fitted for £99. All well and good, but the energy can't be stored on site and is fed back into the grid, and these cheapo deals don't pay you for the energy generated on your panels and sold back to the grid - the money goes to the provider that has leased the panels on your roof. So unless you can use it there and then, you don't benefit at all... And when does the sun shine? When you're out at work, not using electricity at home.
 
groen said:
I did not know that charging batteries would limit efficiency. But at the moment castiel you are not truly independent from the grid. Without the grid your panels are only useful during the summer and day time. Some people go solar because they want to be power independent so that if there is a power cut they still have power. This is where batteries are useful. But from the sound of things, you are not doing it to be power independent, you are doing it as an investment. Well thanks to the green government regulation it sounds viable. But imo i would like to have the batteries as well even for backup.
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I don't want to be independent from the grid.
 
vonhelmet said:
Indeed. I looked into the deal offered by E.on, which promises panels fitted for £99. All well and good, but the energy can't be stored on site and is fed back into the grid, and these cheapo deals don't pay you for the energy generated on your panels and sold back to the grid - the money goes to the provider that has leased the panels on your roof. So unless you can use it there and then, you don't benefit at all... And when does the sun shine? When you're out at work, not using electricity at home.
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Which is why you would only save around £100 on your bills over a year. All you are doing is effectively leasing your roofspace for 25 years.

A bit if a no-no in my opinion. Own them or don't bother is my advice.
 
groen said:
You say that now. But wait until we reach maximum capacity and we see power cuts twice a week, not unheard of. Wouldn't be too much too have a switch that you can flick that goes from sending back to the grid to charging batteries. :D
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I have a generator in the garage.
 
Castiel said:
Why are they against it?
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its one guy in particular is worse than the rest, goes by the name Ban-All-Sheds.

Essentially solar PV in this country is a complete waste of time and money, will never work, and the FiT scheme is stealing money from old grannies on their electric bill to pay those who can afford to get on the FiT scheme.

Oh and anyone who joins in is a leech on society with no morals :rolleyes:

As I said, enthusiastic.
 
I don't see why money is being put into solar stuff when it could be instead put into nuclear stuff which does work and has worked for the last 50 years or so in the UK. Oh yeah, because it's 'dangerous'.
 
Macky said:
I don't see why money is being put into solar stuff when it could be instead put into nuclear stuff which does work and has worked for the last 50 years or so in the UK. Oh yeah, because it's 'dangerous'.
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Red tape, Time scale, investment, scale you would be talking. Huge number of reactors. Not the ~10 they want to build.

On the other hand solar
Is cheap as people buy it, instead of government.
Produces a decent amount of enemy with little to no red tape.
And over the next decade or two is going to get many many times better. Making it a real contributor to uk energy supply.

Energy security in the uk is not going to be solved with just one method.
Although I do agree nuclear needs to be rushed through and objections blocked and any protests that hinder construction made illegal.
 
I always wondered why we don't have solar panels plastered all over the high rise buildings here in the city centre.

In the summer, combine all of them and it would probably run all the lights rather than them sucking electricity off the grid.

But I guess it all comes down to costs as has been stated in here.
 
VaderDSL said:
I always wondered why we don't have solar panels plastered all over the high rise buildings here in the city centre.

In the summer, combine all of them and it would probably run all the lights rather than them sucking electricity off the grid.

But I guess it all comes down to costs as has been stated in here.
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Not just cost, roof angle and direction, shadows and the like. A highrise isnt really the right shape at least not at the moment. Perhaps in the future if solar panels get much more efficient.
 
Todge said:
its one guy in particular is worse than the rest, goes by the name Ban-All-Sheds.

Essentially solar PV in this country is a complete waste of time and money, will never work, and the FiT scheme is stealing money from old grannies on their electric bill to pay those who can afford to get on the FiT scheme.

Oh and anyone who joins in is a leech on society with no morals :rolleyes:

As I said, enthusiastic.
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So a bit of a div then. I might join up and give him some of the old Castiel persistent argumentative mode....;)
 
The government recently reduced the rates for all schemes of greater than 50kWe making them unviable unless you can get the capital costs down to £1500/kW.

They did this with the intention of focusing effort on domestic and community scale schemes.

If your interested you should definatly be looking to to finance yourself and not let anyone else have the FiT payment (unless yuo really don't have access to credit, in which case the reduce energy bills may be enough of an advantage to go with one of the developer schemes).

Schemes under 50kW have to be installed by an MCS registered installer and supplier FYI.

Storage of generated power really isn't an option at the minute due to storage system efficiency (fuel cell linked system may become feasible for schemes of a larger scale eventually).

With regards to wanting to export at your own rate, a supplier won't buy power off you at such a small amount cause it has no value to them unless your at the MW scale. You don't really have a choice but to accept the guaranteed export rate except use electricity when the panels are generating (washing machine timer etc.)

Happy to provide more information if required. I'm currently working on a number of 50kW arrays with a number of 5MW arrays recently shelved due to the cut in tariff rate coming in the coming months.
 
Question for Castiel.

How does the inverter link back to your distribution/mains box? My biggest concern after building our house is having panels fitted, then having to run 2 big cables back down the outside of the house, to the mains box.

Email me if you don't want to take this off topic :)
 
EVH said:
Question for Castiel.

How does the inverter link back to your distribution/mains box? My biggest concern after building our house is having panels fitted, then having to run 2 big cables back down the outside of the house, to the mains box.

Email me if you don't want to take this off topic :)
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I had an extension distribution/fuse box already in the Garage. AFAIK it is wired into that. There are no cables on the exterior of the garage. This is the inverter and on the other wall is a fuse box. Without looking specifically I'm not really sure how they did it, but it definitely links to the cabling we already had running underground from the house to the garage.

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and the installation:

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Yeah, thought so.. Pretty much screws my plan up then.

Our fuse box is in the centre of the house, so any roof mounted panels would need to be wired back to there, and I can't think of a way they could do it without external wiring back to the fuse box :(

Thanks, though.
 
Castiel said:
So a bit of a div then. I might join up and give him some of the old Castiel persistent argumentative mode....;)
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He's an arrogant sod who will generally just pick apart someones post and tell them why they are wrong at every turn. Not unlike a couple of OCUK posters I won't mention lol.

I mentioned dropping 12 on panels to the wife when I got home and got looked at like I had grown another head and "we have a few more important things to worry about" lol.

She's right I suppose, we're 26, will be preggo in 18 months and in September shes off to Uni for a year to top her Nursing Diploma up to a Degree (all paid by the trust at £25k :D).

It's something thats probably come a few years too early for me to really be able to justify with the rest of our lives. Balls :(
 
Paying the well off to put up the price of electricty for the poor - fantastic idea.
Also it puts reliable plant that will produce the winter electricty further out of merit in the summer so the generators have to recoup more in the winter to offset the lost generation in the summer. Now I'll grant at the moment that's not an issue but the more installed capacity the bigger the issue that will be.

Solar and wind are waiting for a practical large scale electricity storage technology then they will be a fantastic resource. Until then our politicians are using them as greenwash that puts the price up for everyone hurting those with least worst. Bad policy.
 
They must be making a fair profit. Out of interest I got a quote direct from manufacture for high quality 320w panels, don't even own a house. 15 Panels a little over 4.5kw works out at £4571 or 5666 if that doesnt have duty/vat paid, delivered to London docks.
inverters seem to be around 1-2k for 5kw. Not sure what other parts you need, roof fixing system. But that's a lot left over from 12k.
 
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