Energy Bills...that time again

The solar panel investment is an interesting debate see here If we installed them now we probably would not see much value in our investment. Possibly our savings, as people in our sixties, need to go towards future living costs in general. I'm not sure how long solar panels remain efficient either, improvements will no doubt come along too as they do with other heating systems. We're "investing" in a more efficient gas boiler next week, we probably won't recoup the costs of the instalment but hopefully our general fuel costs will decrease.

There are several factors that can be introduced into any spreadsheet on the issue, loss of interest on capital outlay being just one. No-one has mentioned the effect of inflation on your capital which will also affect the value of any interest accrued. The bottom line is that anyone who installed solar four years ago is quids in. As the likelihood of me lasting the twenty five year payment period is fairly remote, I must find out what the position is regarding payments after my demise.

The solar panel investment is an interesting debate see here If we installed them now we probably would not see much value in our investment. Possibly our savings, as people in our sixties, need to go towards future living costs in general. I'm not sure how long solar panels remain efficient either, improvements will no doubt come along too as they do with other heating systems. We're "investing" in a more efficient gas boiler next week, we probably won't recoup the costs of the instalment but hopefully our general fuel costs will decrease.

Brue you should see a differnce in your gas bill with a better boiler, we certainly have. We opted for a combi boiler when we changed ours 6 years ago. With us being away so often including winter I didn't want tanks up in the attic, plus we changed the bathroom from a bath to a shower thinking ahead for old age  our consumption is much less yet we were in the house from end Nov - March last year and it won't be much differance this year, we are on LPG so for us it is important to keep costs down.

Cyber, as far as I remember you can gift the solar panels to your children (or others)  in your will.

Those of you who are "breaking even" in such a short time.....

are you factoring in the loss of interest on the capital that is no longer in the bank?

The money we used to pay for our panels was originally earning 4%, then that dropped to 3%, which is the highest rate we would now be earning (meantime!), so I have made a spreadsheet to take the loss of interest into account.

We will on those rates, break even on that basis after 8 +years.

As we are always meantime away when the most power is generated, thus unable to use it, we have ignored savings on our bills, so ours is the worst scenario

We will certainly be in profit by 8 years, and this is as predicted by most official sites.

Does your spreadsheet take into account the FIT tax free payment and the tax payable on your savings before the advent of £1000 tax free interest?

Yes, like TG, our savings were previously mainly in my wife's name as she is not a taxpayer, so the FIT being tax free makes no difference.

Had we not used the money on the panels we would actually now have an additional £10k in the NS&I  4% fixed account, so really I should still be using 4%.

We do save a bit on bills, but very difficult to know exactly how much, so I have left that out of the calculations and look at it as the "icing on the cake".

See I take a different view.  My capital costs will be paid off in 5.5 years.  The capital cost if not put into solar panels would have been in a fixed rate ISA at approx 3% for 4 years, then transferred to either another ISA at about 1% if lucky or some other savings account which would have been taxable.  After paying the capital cost of my panels we will have nearly19 years of tax free income of close to £2k a year

There is quite a bit of good information out there, see here. Probably if we had been younger we might have considered it. Houses need to be more energy efficient generally so that nothing is wasted when using any type of fuel.

Just been reviewing my figures, which I had not done since last year, and find that after a couple of slightly poorer years, it will now be 9 years before we are in profit.  

Being further north presumably cuts down on the production, plus due to the shape of our roof the best size panels for us were the slightly more expensive ones.  Our FIT brings in between £1650 and £1700 each year.

Just over 5 years since we had the panels installed, so I need to survive a while yet!!

There are several factors that can be introduced into any spreadsheet on the issue, loss of interest on capital outlay being just one. No-one has mentioned the effect of inflation on your capital which will also affect the value of any interest accrued. The bottom line is that anyone who installed solar four years ago is quids in. As the likelihood of me lasting the twenty five year payment period is fairly remote, I must find out what the position is regarding payments after my demise.

I looked at that a while back, the FIT goes with the meter unless you assign it to someone else, a bit like those "rent a roof" schemes.

So essentially whoever inherits/owns the house gets the FIT.

If the house was to be sold, I think you would find it very difficult to sell if someone else was to retain the right to the FIT payments.

We also have an 'i-heat' unit in the solar PV system where the immersion heater draws power generated but not used, to heat a tank of hot water. We changed the boiler a few years ago due to old age and decided to go for a condenser boiler with a new larger hot water storage tank. During the summer the hot water tank is heated by solar, that by changing habits ie shower of an evening means we don't use gas for hot water.

The step daughter stayed here whilst we were away at Easter and rang us early 1 morning to say there was no hot water for the shower, when asked if she used the shower the evening before and she confirmed then asked her how solar works at night!! They don't teach the yoof science on facebook.

In the winter when the gas central heating is on, hot water is a by product effectively.

The missing link currently is storage of electricity generated. Yes there are batteries out there, but as with the first solar panels are exhorbitantly expensive currently (pardon the pun). I'm sure in the lifetime of our solar panels, storage will be viable.

Our roof is directly south facing and by chance we got the higher performance panels fitted as the supplier was unable to get the ordered lower quality panels in time to meet the installation date 

Apparently the first working solar PV panel was in service in 1957, made by Sharp.

I've got friends up on Orkney and another couple locally who boost their water heater with solar, seems to work quite well. They don't have solar power for anything else, just the water.