What things to consider when comparing/haggling solar panel costs?

Manjinder Singh Chatha

Manjinder Singh Chatha

Manjinder Singh Chatha

Associate
Joined
13 Jun 2021
Posts
9
Location
Wolverhampton, West Midlands
Hi Folks

I have had a few solar panel installation quotes ranging from £8k to £15k.

Apart from the below questions, what else could I ask the installers in order to get the best deal?

The total output produced?
The size and number of panels?
The quality of the panels?
How long the warranty is for?
How long would it take for me to break even?

I had one installer say I may only need 11 panels whereas another said I would need 26.

There is a vast difference and I don't want to get ripped off.

Any advice greatly appreciated.

Thanks
 
Harry's Farm has done a video where he discusses his proposed solar installation. I think you'll find it helpful. I couldn't quickly find the original, but I did find this one after he'd done the install.

 
Break even is a tricky one to answer but one I would not expect the installer to answer.

What you get on export will depend on your energy supplier and what they pay for export. I am with Octopus and get fixed 15p/kw exported and I have 7kw of panels on a east/west roof so only about 3.5kw at any one time is being generated but my house load during the day is quite high so around 1-1.5kw without the solar so I could expect to make 30p per hour on export however the sun is not always there, so I am not always generating enough to export but do have enough to cover my daily load.

January - June I was £171.25 for my export for the sake of maths we double that to £342.50, my install cost my £7,000 a couple years back, so based on the £342 would take 20.4 years to pay back my solar. But I am a heavy user of electricity, I have electric oven and an EV. But then we are technically in our forever home so not too worried as next couple years planning to double my array size and add batteries.

Break even at the end of the day is more guess work you can get a rough ball park yourself but I would ignore what a solar installer would tell you.

Also make sure they are MCS qualified, I know Octopus now take Flexi-Orb but other suppliers might only accept MCS installs.

Kimbie
 
Last edited:
Nikumba said:
January - June I was £171.25 for my export for the sake of maths we double that to £342.50, my install cost my £7,000 a couple years back, so based on the £342 would take 20.4 years to pay back my solar.
Click to expand...

Imo it's fair to also take into account money not spent on usage that it's saving you as part of your calculations as well for cost savings.

In my case, I take my actual daily consumption, and can compare that to my average daily import and the average cost of those kWh units.

i.e. for any given month, if my average daily usage is say 15 kWh, then I can confidently say my bill would be 30 * 15 = 450 kWh. I can then sensibly define what that cost would be on the SVR electric rates. I can compare that with what my actual usage/cost was, and negate any export costs off that on top (some months I would be negative cost).

The difference between theoretical usage cost and actual then gets treated as the cost saving instead, and is part of the ROI of the system.

At a more basic level you can also simply eye-ball it a bit and work out your actual spend for the year, for example for 2023 my gas + elec cost for the whole year, inc SC, was £634. Without solar + Battery + export that would have been a lot more. I don't even count the fact I got some of that back via the saving sessions.
 
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