Solar panels sliced bread or snake oil

[rodbargee]

for my gaff here in the dales he's quoted 16 panels at £12.9K installed with inverter and 4.9 KW battery Bargain or bollox?

[Mr. Dazzle]

Depends how much leccy you use and what the rest of your gaff is like! Sounds like I'm taking the micky I know, but that's the crux of it.

My rents have 8kW of panels and a 4kWh battery, they spent £150 on Electrcity in total last year, and that includes a few thousand miles of EV car charging/driving.

They also spent £10k on the panels to begin with, sooooo......

[Mussels]

I had a long look at this about a year ago. It would make financial sense if I had an EV or I had no mortgage, it would make prepping sense if it kept the power on in a power cut. The prices are still falling so last year I would have had about a 15 year ROI but if I wait five years then it is likely to be under a 10 year ROI so I'm waiting.
In the meantime my tiled roof is 50 years old and I'm aware that's a fairly good life for them, if I get panels put up I should get the tiles replaced as well which adds extra cost but if my tiles need replacing then I'll get panel mounts done as well.
There have been genuine advances in the tech and I'm expecting more, as I have a large south facing roof the new panels that are less efficient but much cheaper are more attractive. The current tech doesn't impress me, there's not enough competition and too many customers so companies have little incentive to improve. So for me the answer is not yet, even with government grants.

[Mr Moofo]

My panels and routing were 6.5 k
No battery - sell back to Octopus any excess or use it to fuel hot water in the immersion heater.
4.9 kw system
May get a battery later - just seeing how it runs this year.
I wasn’t too bother about pay back, I just seriously pissed of with the energy companies profiteering

[Mussels]

I also looked at getting solar hot water, I was already using it for the pool so it made sense right? Nope, once the government installers get involved the price shoots right up and only the most energy efficient methods are used even if they are financially inefficient.

[Pirahna]

I've got 3.6kW of panels (8x450W), 9.6KwH of battery and a 5kW inverter, I'm off grid for electricity, there is no mains option. Bear in mind I live in Spain, sunshine isn't a problem.

I'll state the obvious first, no sun mean little to no production from the panels. My house is on the side of a mountain and in mid winter I get about a 4 hour charge window, on a cloudy day I'm watching what I use. Around the end of October I turn off the electric boiler and swap to a gas heater, the electric kettle goes away and the gas kettle comes out. In the time from the sun hitting the panels to it disappearing over the mountain I don't produce enough electricity to run them, the dishwasher and washing machine stay on although they won't get used on the same day. I've never run out of electricity but it's been close a couple of times with consecutive very cloudy days. For wifey and I our battery pack is about right, I'm going to add more panels this year just to make sure we produce enough in winter. I don't have a backup generator, it's something else to maintain and if I run out of leccy I'll book a hotel for a couple of nights, Benidorm is an hours drive. Wifey managed to trip the system a couple of weeks ago, she'd put the washing machine and dishwasher on mid morning which is when the water heater is running, all good until she switched the kettle on.

Bills for the year are obvs €0 for leccy, €120 for gas bottles, €100 for water, €250 council tax.

[Mr. Dazzle]

There have been genuine advances in the tech and I'm expecting more, as I have a large south facing roof the new panels that are less efficient but much cheaper are more attractive. The current tech doesn't impress me, there's not enough competition and too many customers so companies have little incentive to improve. So for me the answer is not yet, even with government grants.

It doesn't feel like domestic production is really the target at the moment, based on casual observation. I've got a few investments in various Solar Panel manufacturers and they're all climbing, mostly off the back of new tech being deployed in grid scale developments.

If I were a panel OEM I'd probably rather sell shit load to energy companies rather than 1s and 2s to private buyers, so that's where I'd focus my developments.

[mangocrazy]

There have been genuine advances in the tech and I'm expecting more, as I have a large south facing roof the new panels that are less efficient but much cheaper are more attractive. The current tech doesn't impress me, there's not enough competition and too many customers so companies have little incentive to improve. So for me the answer is not yet, even with government grants.

It doesn't feel like domestic production is really the target at the moment, based on casual observation. I've got a few investments in various Solar Panel manufacturers and they're all climbing, mostly off the back of new tech being deployed in grid scale developments.

If I were a panel OEM I'd probably rather sell shit load to energy companies rather than 1s and 2s to private buyers, so that's where I'd focus my developments.

Are the panels sold to energy companies the same spec (physical size, technology used, relative output etc.) as those sold to private punters or are they different (and if so, how)?

[cheb]

My unresearched and predjudied view is if you DIY it then it's probably worth it, if you pay someone and do it officially it's not.

[Yorick]

Living here with sun all year round, you'd think it'd be all the rage?
But lecky is so cheap, it'd take years to recoup the outlay.

It's 10c unit and monthly usage is about 50€ including pool pump on 6 hours a day

[rodbargee]

Thanks All going to do the dilligance on a few inde suppliers.

[mangocrazy]

My unresearched and predjudied view is if you DIY it then it's probably worth it, if you pay someone and do it officially it's not.

I concur. Seriously thinking about adding some more panels to the ones already installed in France, but on a section of roof with different orientation. This would give better solar gain throughout the day. And I could do it using nothing more scary than a small step ladder.

[Sadlonelygit]

My unresearched and predjudied view is if you DIY it then it's probably worth it, if you pay someone and do it officially it's not.

I concur. Seriously thinking about adding some more panels to the ones already installed in France, but on a section of roof with different orientation. This would give better solar gain throughout the day. And I could do it using nothing more scary than a small step ladder.

Be wary of the rules here!
Iirc, roof mounting requires a permis from the mairie. However, a fence/cloture can be built out of anything iyswim.

[cheb]

A longer answer. When FITS for solar first came out I looked into them, I have a occasional job with a renewable energy engineer, and when I discovered that he, E.Eng, allowed to work on proper HV installations, etc., wasn't allowed to install his own panels it struck me as a con. He could have got the stificat if he did the training course. Later I saw some of the work done by people with said stificat. Install it badly with enough mystique surrounding it and with the right customer base you've easy money.

[mangocrazy]

Seriously thinking about adding some more panels to the ones already installed in France, but on a section of roof with different orientation. This would give better solar gain throughout the day. And I could do it using nothing more scary than a small step ladder.

Be wary of the rules here!
Iirc, roof mounting requires a permis from the mairie. However, a fence/cloture can be built out of anything iyswim.

French building regs are (how shall we say) rather fluid in my experience. The big thing that the Mairie will get very exercised about is if you alter the outward appearance of a building without permission. When I initially applied for permis de construire for a roof terrace I made the mistake of raising the overall height of the building in my submitted plans by half a metre or so. 'Non' came the reply. Having understood their objections I resubmitted leaving the building height unchanged and it went through as easy as you like,

I think a rule of thumb is that if the alteration can be seen from ground level by passers by, you will have problems. If it's invisible from ground level, a blind eye will be turned. Certainly there have been no complaints regarding the 12 panels I had installed in 2018, as the only way they can be seen is if you're at roof level. The same would be true of the proposed positioning of extra panels.

But crucially I think it varies from Mairie to Mairie. Ours seem to be reasonably relaxed about solar panels and the like. This probably has something to do with France mandating that all new build commercial properties must incorporate a solar element. Certainly our local supermarche has installed a shitload of solar panels on gantries in the car park, meaning that cars are in the shade while parked and electricity is generated from a car park. A genuine win-win, I think.