House Solar Panels

We had ours fitted in 2011,I think, and they will have paid for themselves in another year or so, but we have applied quite stringent conditions to that, as in factoring in the amount of interest we would have had if we had kept the money in the bank.

To get a realistic overview of the return, you do need to do that.

That will still give us over 15 years of "profit", if, as brue said, we live long enough!

Meantime, this has been a very good year and our income from the panels is more than enough to cover all our fuel bills. 

Had ours installed late 2011 so obviously living in East Anglia has its benefits

I so wish we'd installed them.  But circumstances where such at the time that it was an unnecessary decision to think about at the precise time and we never reconsidered a few years later when we had 'headspace'.

I think it's a crying shame that now we have the means to harness the solar power it isn't considered standard/compulsory to fit on new builds. Keep existing schemes in place. Along with underground rainwater storage from roofs especially in such dry areas where we live. We are ALL supposed to be considering the environment and what better way to start?  I'm sure the cost of including both would add very little in the great scheme of things. Especially when prices in this area are taken into account 😲😲😲.

Whether houses have solar panels seems to depend on the builders/local planning. Both my sons have owned houses in Milton Keynes and both have had solar panels. One son recently moved to Northamptonshire, new house but no solar panels. So difficult to know why one and not the other. One clue might be that the Northamptonshire house was built by a relatively small builder but the two Milton Keynes houses build by large national builders?

David

Yes, ours went in in mid November 2011, so around the same time as yours. Not quite 7 years yet.

To our last submitted reading towards the end of June this year we had generated 22245kwh, how does that compare with your figures?  We have the max size of system allowed.

Checking my spreadsheet, it will be 10 years      till we break even now, the last 2 years our generation was a little  down due to poor weather here.  Overall our generation is roughly as predicted by the installer.

Had we still had the money, it would have been in BOS Vantage accounts, so I am using that interest rate in my calculations.

One thing I have not factored in is the electricity we use ourselves and therefor are not paying for as it is impossible to know how many kwh that comes to.  My best guess would be about 35% of the total .  So we will be in profit a little sooner than my spreadsheet predicts.

I presume you have to factor in unknown upward rate changes, I don't think we would have gained much, but I do think solar should be part of new builds. No sign of this happening where we are although we have a lot of solar arrays in fields in the SW. 

I understand that some insurers will not cover the use of solar panels on rooftops.  One reason is the additional weight on the roof, which can vary greatly depending on the size and number of panels installed.  Where such panels are installed, I wonder how many home owners checked the legal angles first, and how many installers carried out a reliable survey of structural strength of the roof before going ahead?

We certainly checked out all that, OH dealt with the insurance, and as  Civil Engineer I checked the structural side.  Easy for me as we designed the house ourselves and have all the structural drawings and calculations.

Take it Le Touriste you are speaking from experience?

Never had a problem with that, I think there is a lot of 'urban myth' surrounding stuff like this. Have spoken to a number of other home owners with panels and none has had insurance problems.

Our installer advised us to check with our insurer which we had already done and surprisingly there was no uplift in our insurance premiums.

From 2011

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.php?t=3334072