Solar installation on a 3 Storey House

ginjaninja · Tuesday at 20:44

Thinking of jumping into solar on my house / roof but concerned the scaffolding costs to maintain it would be cost prohibitive.
....would like to go for 20 x 460W panels+ across south and west facing....
want to maximise panels but perhaps need to make room to be able to maintain via velux windows and a harness rather than need scaffolding for maintenance..

Any thoughts or considerations out there.

Also can you apply and secure the 'dno' prior to getting the installation. ive heard there is a limited amount of dno capacity to give out so want to get in there quick.

john_smith · Tuesday at 20:45

I’ve had solar since 2011. Never needed to maintain it, not touched a panel since installation.

sovietspybob · Wednesday at 09:05

I've had panels on the roof for 10 years and never needed to touch them.

But getting them installed 3 stories up might be fairly expensive, only way to know is to get some quotes.

One thing to note is quite often you're limited in the amount of generation you're allowed to have, i think we were allowed a maximum of 4kw of panels at the time (we only had 2kw installed in the end) without applying for special permission as the power network needs to be able to handle, so again worth investigating.

200sols · Wednesday at 09:28

sovietspybob said:
I've had panels on the roof for 10 years and never needed to touch them.

But getting them installed 3 stories up might be fairly expensive, only way to know is to get some quotes.

One thing to note is quite often you're limited in the amount of generation you're allowed to have, i think we were allowed a maximum of 4kw of panels at the time (we only had 2kw installed in the end) without applying for special permission as the power network needs to be able to handle, so again worth investigating.

You are not limited on generation, you just cant export over 3.68kW without a G99.

radderfire · Wednesday at 12:54

If you had to get access, could you use a cherry picker, as that might be cheaper?

ginjaninja · Wednesday at 15:52

radderfire said:
If you had to get access, could you use a cherry picker, as that might be cheaper?

good point thats probably an option, my brother in law drives such a fire department vehicle.

Mercenary Keyboard Warrior · Wednesday at 18:14

Chances are your not going to need to access anyway (as long as your not going optimisers).

The majority of failures are with inverters, especially once they get to around 10 years old.
Seeing as you should be paid back by then if you needed to do a "refresh" at that point, including maybe some panel maintenance it would hardly be a disaster.

As said you could get a cherry picker*, or maybe a scaff tower.
Getting scaff fitted isn't that much in the grand scheme of things so I wouldn't stress over it much tbh.

* the main difference being that a cherry picker will be charged by the week (maybe day depending on the supplier) where as scaff is within reason a one off fixed cost.
So if you need investigation and potential remediation to take place that may require parts your quite likely to end up with a longer hire period, or two hires, on the cherry picker.