Solar panels and battery - any real world reccomendations?

darkblade · Wednesday at 21:08

maddness said:
that quote is ridiculous you can get that for around 8-8.5k fully installed and comissioned, mcs dno heis'd up (i'd estimate with additional panels you want) from he suppliers who installed mine -

Solar panels and battery - any real world reccomendations?

You'll pay 20% VAT on battery without solar panels installed with it. You'll still need an inverter. Someone will have to install it. May need DNO application if it can export. Reliant on a cheap off-peak tariff always existing that you can get onto. To some degree here you may as well just...

forums.overclockers.co.uk

i have 12panels, 13.5giv battery 5kw inverter and 6 tigos, all wiring and the parts, cabling and the unit that goes at the meter

they said any addional panels fully installed will be £130 a pop, tigo were £40 a pop, i have a chimney so we agreed 6 to be on the safe side

I've now had an estimate through from Easy PV (note this is an estimate at this stage).
For a similar 6kWh system and GivEnergy All in One system, it's £12,500. Only £700 cheaper than what you believe is a ridiculous quote.
The materials alone come to £10,500.

An additional battery would work out at an extra £5,600.

Somebody mentioned/suggested E.on. Their estimate for a 16 panel PV only system is £8,064. £1,620 more than the quote I shared in my post. Except that doesn't include panel optimisation, that's another £1,738.
E.on is, as I suspected, a lot more expensive.

Journey · Wednesday at 21:17

There was an interesting snippet Re: Solar - fancy the consumer being on the front foot for a change.

b0rn2sk8 · Wednesday at 21:24

Thank

darkblade said:
I've now had an estimate through from Easy PV (note this is an estimate at this stage).
For a similar 6kWh system and GivEnergy All in One system, it's £12,500. Only £700 cheaper than what you believe is a ridiculous quote.
The materials alone come to £10,500.

An additional battery would work out at an extra £5,600.

Somebody mentioned/suggested E.on. Their estimate for a 16 panel PV only system is £8,064. £1,620 more than the quote I shared in my post. Except that doesn't include panel optimisation, that's another £1,738.
E.on is, as I suspected, a lot more expensive.

That's a reasonable price IMO, particularly given you are going for a whole home back up system. The £13k quote was also reasonable with the included optimisers.

Not sure how you'd get that sort of system installed for £8k either.

Consider a getting a quote for a Tesla power wall, unless GivEnergy have dropped the price on their AIO, its the same wholesale price.

Journey · Wednesday at 22:03

darkblade said:
Somebody mentioned/suggested E.on. Their estimate for a 16 panel PV only system is £8,064. £1,620 more than the quote I shared in my post. Except that doesn't include panel optimisation, that's another £1,738.
E.on is, as I suspected, a lot more expensive.

That 'somebody' was me and it was in response to another persons query, where the pricing was mental for the size of the system being offered, and the backup was, Because Which? said so, who don't as far as I am aware of insurance for their recommendations

The interesting thing from an E.on point-of-view is 0% finance for 3 years, if you take the 16 panel system with a 9.5kWh battery, the cost is £13,072, or £363 per month, with no deposit. If you have the capital and want to reduce the cost, whack it in a 4.8% 3-year fix and make £2k back in interest, and with the savings from the reduced bill, you are no paying out probably around £260 per month vs. £363 of the actual cost of the loan repayment, so in effect you are a net £1,300 better off (£700 loss is the opportunity cost of the repayments), so the install is more like £11.7k, which then is reasonably competitive, from a larger national installer.

Please note, I am not suggesting any of this suits you, just interesting alternate look at the financing and such. My only comment is do you need optimisers?

b0rn2sk8 · Wednesday at 22:29

The only thing to consider is I’m pretty sure E.on sub-contract out, the company that installed mine also installs or has installed for E.on.

darkblade · Wednesday at 22:53

Journey said:
Please note, I am not suggesting any of this suits you, just interesting alternate look at the financing and such. My only comment is do you need optimisers?

Yeah, there's a tree which will introduce partial shading during part of the morning to one side of the roof, and the house casts shading during part of the afternoon on the other side.

It's almost tempting to rip the old panels off the house roof and start again!

darkblade · Wednesday at 22:56

b0rn2sk8 said:
Consider a getting a quote for a Tesla power wall, unless GivEnergy have dropped the price on their AIO, its the same wholesale price.

I think the Tesla is slightly easier to expand with extra batteries too.

b0rn2sk8 · Wednesday at 22:59

darkblade said:
I think the Tesla is slightly easier to expand with extra batteries too.

Expansion of the PW3 is not released yet. GivEnergy have just released the expansion of their AIO.

The Powerwall 3 is just a better product overall (it’s now an 11kw hybrid inverter so you don’t need to run it as AC coupled vs 6kw of the Giv AIO) but you are limited to single units at the moment. I say that as someone who owns a Giv AIO.

Ron-ski · Thursday at 06:42

darkblade said:
It's almost tempting to rip the old panels off the house roof and start again!

You can, and still get the FITS payments. You are now allowed to expand systems, but the FITS are paid pro-rata. So for example if you go from a 4kWp system to an 8kWp system the FITS will be based on 50% of generation. You'll need someone who know what they are doing and MCS registered, as I don't think many installers realise this, they are still stuck in the mustn't touch it mind frame.

Mercenary Keyboard Warrior · Thursday at 07:07

b0rn2sk8 said:
The only thing to consider is I’m pretty sure E.on sub-contract out, the company that installed mine also installs or has installed for E.on.

Yeah they do (on both counts)

Its yet another party involved if you have an issue

maddness · Friday at 08:13

Comparing with what I paid and the cost of additional panels that is too high IMO,

On another note, givenergy has a promotion running this month, free ev charger with a 9.5 battery or the AIO

I currently have an ohme, I'm considering an additional battery, but is it worth changing the ev charger to the give ev one, I like the idea of everything in one app, would this charger play ball with the intelligent go tariff, they only have a few listed on their pages that are "compatible", last thing I'd want is to be taken off / lose this tariff as I don't have a compatible charger though I have a compatible car

Select your EV charger

The UK's most awarded energy supplier. We're doing energy better - for you and the environment.

octopus.energy

Anyone else with this ev charger (or other none recomended chargers) and on the Octopus Intelligent or the Go tariff

maddness · Friday at 08:28

darkblade said:
An additional battery would work out at an extra £5,600.

I went on the givenergys website yesterday and picked the closest approved installer to me and called them for a quote for an additional 9.5k battery installed

They quoted £4500 for the battery and the ev charger fully installed and commissioned up.

I'm still awaiting for my supplier to provide a quote.

I will get a few more prices to compare with before deciding, but ball parking, battery is ~£2700 with zero vat, hopefully I can get it close to 3.5k installed for the pair.

b0rn2sk8 · Friday at 08:40

The GivEnergy charger is not currently compatible with IO, however it is awaiting approval by Octopus.

GivEnergy say all the back end work is done, they are just waiting on Octopus to do their bit. You can already control it using the Octopus R&D site.

Hypervolt is basically in the same situation but perhaps slightly behind.

oggiet · Friday at 12:46

With new government in power, anybody think there will be chance we will get solar energy grants for home user ?

b0rn2sk8 · Friday at 12:53

No. They are simply not needed.

oggiet · Friday at 13:00

b0rn2sk8 said:
No. They are simply not needed.

Could you elaborate please, would it not encourage more people to have them installed.

b0rn2sk8 · Friday at 13:12

oggiet said:
Could you elaborate please, would it not encourage more people to have them installed.

It would be a subsidy for people who can already afford to get them. The government has already zero rated the VAT on solar at a significant cost.

A good value install will pay for itself in 6-8 years. The panels are warrantied for 20 plus years, everything after the initial investment is pure profit. Sure you might need to buy a new inverter but that’s a small cost in reality.

One of the issues with FIT is that it was way too generous and the government failed to curtail it quickly enough once the industry picked up and costs came down.

Nearly all FIT systems, even those installed in 2018/19 right at the end will have already paid for themselves. It’s just pure profit for their owners now. The payments are inflation linked so it’s costing a fortune. We are all paying for this now and will be for the next 20 years.

oggiet · Friday at 13:16

b0rn2sk8 said:
It would be a subsidy for people who can already afford to get them. The government has already zero rated the VAT on solar at a significant cost.

A good value install will pay for itself in 6-8 years. The panels are warrantied for 20 plus years, everything after the initial investment is pure profit. Sure you might need to buy a new inverter but that’s a small cost in reality.

One of the issues with FIT is that it was way too generous and the government failed to curtail it quickly enough once the industry picked up and costs came down.

Nearly all FIT systems, even those installed in 2018/19 right at the end will have already paid for themselves. It’s just pure profit for their owners now. The payments are inflation linked so it’s costing a fortune. We are all paying for this now and will be for the next 20 years.

That makes sense, thanks for your explanation.

Ron-ski · Friday at 13:19

Yep, thank you all for my FITS payments,, the system paid for itself a couple of years ago, got just over 11 years to go.

john_smith · Friday at 13:20

Approx values...My system generated me £250 profit in June. Plus the saving of £100 electric expense, plus saving maybe £250 on fuel. So a £600 financial swing...in one good month!