Solar Panel , calculations
- Thread starter mediamatt
- Start date
It was never going to stop and isn't stopping, the rates being reduced.
It's not just about producing all your electricity. You can make a stupidly good return on your investment.
Perhaps before they dropped the rate from 43pence to 21pence you could make even more. Its no where near the rate of return that it was since its around the normal domestic level of electric cost now and not almost double the rate it was. So in essense any extra you produce you end up buying back from the national grid at or around the same rate you sell it to them and since you will use more than you can generate on most domestic systems it isnt the investment that it was before.
Last edited:
FIT you get paid on all power produced, doesn't matter if you use it or not.
So you get
FIT x units produced
Units produced and used obviously saves you money as you don't have to buy it.
You then get units sold back to grid at 3.1p if IRC
So you can still make money at the reduced rate, that's also ignoring any increase in electricity cost, in the coming 25years. FIT still hasn't been finalised yet, so we have to wait and see what actually happens with that.
Last edited:
No it doesnt work like that at all, lol if it did everyone would have them.
I mean it would be like free money lol.
You only get the FIT for the units you sell back to the national grid hence the name FEED IN TARIF since its cash for what you put in. Any you generate and use of course save you money becuase you dont have to buy it. But during the times when you are not generating any power (during the night of course you then have to buy your electric)
All I am saying its that over the course of say 25 years the system is designed to pay for itself and that was the idea for the whole introduction of the FIT to help the government reach its target of 5% energy from renewables, I agree it probably was a much better investment then it currently is but its not as good as it was and imho its more of a gamble now than it was before.
http://www.fitariffs.co.uk/FITs/
It is free money and at the old rate it is better than any savings account at around 7-8%. The down side is you need the capital and then the money is locked in and you can't get at it if you need it.
Last edited:
Ok I stand corrected again, I am sure the payment for produced electric isnt much though.
My experience of this is more to do with larger commercial installs that use a high level of electric so dont actually sell a lot of their electric back to the grid becuase they use all that they can produce. My place of work for example has a large continous electrical usage becuase of a on site data recovery centre that uses a lot of electric to run. The site would be ideal for solar PVs becuase of its high electrical usage we would just use all that we generate and have to buy less. A good investment with increasing electrical costs this can only be a good thing and I agree that can be reflected in the domestic situation as well but I am still of the view its still a bit of a gamble. If we wait a few years and the output of cells doubles then of course it would be a no brainer.
My experience of this is more to do with larger commercial installs that use a high level of electric so dont actually sell a lot of their electric back to the grid becuase they use all that they can produce. My place of work for example has a large continous electrical usage becuase of a on site data recovery centre that uses a lot of electric to run. The site would be ideal for solar PVs becuase of its high electrical usage we would just use all that we generate and have to buy less. A good investment with increasing electrical costs this can only be a good thing and I agree that can be reflected in the domestic situation as well but I am still of the view its still a bit of a gamble. If we wait a few years and the output of cells doubles then of course it would be a no brainer.
Export tarrif is 3.1p
so 3.1p x an average of lets say 2250KWh per year is about £70. Not a lot but i suppose it all helps.
Anyway thanks for the debate It seems I have learned a little more about the whole subject now.
Deleted member 651465
Deleted member 651465
To give you an idea, I had a solar installation put in about 10 days ago, and it has generated 78.32kWh of electricity in total.
I'm obsessing about the figures at the moment (take a meter reading from the generation meter every night) so I can tell you that the maximum it has generated in a single day is 10.92kWh, and the least it has generated is 1.65kWh.
Essentially, you will get money for what you generate, but also how much you export, so you could generate 5kWh and export 2.5kWh because you were in work, but you could generate 5 and use 4, because you were home all day.
On average we pay £250 a quarter on elec, so I'll be interesting to see what the next bill is. Coincidentally, we had our last bill the day it was fitted so the next one should be completely accurate.
I'm obsessing about the figures at the moment (take a meter reading from the generation meter every night) so I can tell you that the maximum it has generated in a single day is 10.92kWh, and the least it has generated is 1.65kWh.
Essentially, you will get money for what you generate, but also how much you export, so you could generate 5kWh and export 2.5kWh because you were in work, but you could generate 5 and use 4, because you were home all day.
On average we pay £250 a quarter on elec, so I'll be interesting to see what the next bill is. Coincidentally, we had our last bill the day it was fitted so the next one should be completely accurate.
It is called TIF becuase I suppose the largest amount of income is from what you sell to the grid the production payment is a nice bonus. Nice to see some figures EVH, maybe you can resurect this thread in a few months when you get your bill and give us some hard figures. I would be the same as you obsessing over the numbers lol.
Other way around.
3.8kwp(~£8500 these days) system based on 50/50 usage/export
FIT ~£600, Export to grid ~£70, savings in electricity bill ~£210
Deleted member 651465
Deleted member 651465
15 x 250w Sharp panels = 3.75kW
Just switched my tariff with npower too, so now pay 10p/kW. Effectively meaning I earn 4.33 times what I pay npower, when it's generating
I'll estimate it could do 15-20kWh on a summer's day with sunrise at 6, sunset at 10.