[Technology] Solar Panel Installation Recommendations

[HillBarnTillIDie]

My advice is to get 3 quotes. Get them to quote with specific details including what system they intend to put in and how they intend to install it.

The main issue I see with the p.v industry is the range of quality on both material and install.
I’ve also heard stories of customers being sold one manufacturers devices but another being installed.

If you want a starting point tho, look at the SolarEdge system.

Good luck.

 

[227 BHA]

Top tip based on our road - make sure you get the panels made bird-proof. Added a few hundred quid to the cost of our installation but looks very neat and our next door neighbours have a horde of pigeons nesting under theirs. Get it done as part of the installation, you won’t regret it.

If your installers don’t do that as a matter of course then I’d suggest looking elsewhere - shouldn’t be an option

 

[nicko31]

My advice is to get 3 quotes. Get them to quote with specific details including what system they intend to put in and how they intend to install it.

The main issue I see with the p.v industry is the range of quality on both material and install.
I’ve also heard stories of customers being sold one manufacturers devices but another being installed.

If you want a starting point tho, look at the SolarEdge system.

Good luck.

Think its good if the company have their own install team, many just sub it out then you lose some control.

Solar Edge is good esp. if you want optimisers / micro inverters which is worth considering especially if you have shading issues.

 

[lawros left foot]

I don’t know if the scheme is still running, but, we got a 100% grant from the local council for ours.
7 panels and all installation included. We don’t have to pay a penny back.
There are some hoops to jump through, but nothing too stringent.

 

[dazzer6666]

If your installers don’t do that as a matter of course then I’d suggest looking elsewhere - shouldn’t be an option

Interesting - literally no-one else on our road had them included. They were an optional extra. One of our neighbours has made a killing retro-fitting wire netting around them.

 

[Grizz]

I get the impression its hard to get over 80% of the output. I'm going to for 7kw system with 10kw battery, 5kw inverter (limited to 3.6kw export)

My strategy is export at the highest possible rate in summer (Octopus Flux pays 23p) and in the darker months I'll switch with Octopus Intelligent (7.5p off peak to charge battery, export is only 4p but generation will be low)

Reckon 7-8 year payback.

Aye, ours was roughly an 8 year payback, but through the energy crisis and saving more than I thought we would, it's come down to about 5 years now, but wasn't the reason I did it tbh.

I'm sure you've done your research, but just watch the Octopus tariffs, some of them are fixed 12 month tariffs. I got caught a little with that on the Agile one seeing the £1 export prices between 4-6pm during the energy crisis. Now I did benefit a lot from that, but should've gone for the 15p fixed rate one if I thought about it more. Ah well, you live and learn.

 

[Elbow750]

I'm curious what is your annual generation from your 4kw system? Do you end up exporting much to the grid?

In 2022 my system generated 3.6 MWh. Of that I exported 0.9 MWh and used the rest. I also imported (and paid for) another 0.834 MWh from the grid. My battery is a 4.7 kWh Moxia, which I got for £2k on offer 3 years ago. It can also be programmed to charge up at cheap rates in winter months, but it gets complicated.

I've also got a solar i boost, which feeds excess solar power to my hot water cylinder immersion before exporting any to the grid. So I get a full tank of hot water, free, before any of my solar power is exported. But, my Feed in Tariff provider is changing the way I get paid for exports. As well as the govt 13p a unit generation tarif, I also get paid an assumed export (7p a unit?) of 50% of generation (which is much more than I actually export) but this will reduce to the amount I actually do export by meter reading. So I'm looking at changing provider, possibly to Octopus, who have one tariff paying 15p unit for the actual exported. Has anyone else been through this ??

 

[dazzer6666]

In 2022 my system generated 3.6 MWh. Of that I exported 0.9 MWh and used the rest. I also imported (and paid for) another 0.834 MWh from the grid. My battery is a 4.7 kWh Moxia, which I got for £2k on offer 3 years ago. It can also be programmed to charge up at cheap rates in winter months, but it gets complicated.

I've also got a solar i boost, which feeds excess solar power to my hot water cylinder immersion before exporting any to the grid. So I get a full tank of hot water, free, before any of my solar power is exported. But, my Feed in Tariff provider is changing the way I get paid for exports. As well as the govt 13p a unit generation tarif, I also get paid an assumed export (7p a unit?) of 50% of generation (which is much more than I actually export) but this will reduce to the amount I actually do export by meter reading. So I'm looking at changing provider, possibly to Octopus, who have one tariff paying 15p unit for the actual exported. Has anyone else been through this ??

Only been up and running properly for a few weeks, but we’re with Octopus (we already were, and the PV consultant said they were currently best for our usage/plan), we switched to the flat 15p export tariff. In the first full month we’ve generated 470kwh, used 300kwh, exported 190kwh and imported 43kwh (12 x 415w panels, 5KW Inverter and 5.2KW battery )

 

[Goldstone Guy]

As title so can the hive mind of NSC recommend a local company?

Sussex Solar did mine. Didn't get any other quotes so nothing to compare them to, but it's working well, good customer service and generally very helpful. There was one problem with the battery after installation (which turned out to a problem with the battery manufacturer/provider as far as I can tell rather than Sussex Solar), but someone from the Sussex Solar team was round quickly to check it and contacted the battery people (GivEnergy) and it was sorted out quickly. So overall I'd recommend them.

 

[227 BHA]

Interesting - literally no-one else on our road had them included. They were an optional extra. One of our neighbours has made a killing retro-fitting wire netting around them.

Really surprised.
Sussex Solar did it as standard but I guess that’s what you get with a top local company?
They’re not the cheapest but you get what you pay for I guess? As the previous poster said, no subbies, all work carried out by their own team and electricians and extra touches like pigeon proofing guards as standard

 

[dazzer6666]

Really surprised.
Sussex Solar did it as standard but I guess that’s what you get with a top local company?
They’re not the cheapest but you get what you pay for I guess? As the previous poster said, no subbies, all work carried out by their own team and electricians and extra touches like pigeon proofing bets as standard

Solardynamics are also local (Horsham)……their guys (they are their own) were brilliant too - can’t fault them to be honest. Quote was good - I guess I could have gone ‘cheaper’ by not having the pigeon guards and got the guy over the road to do it but overall was under £11k which was at worst in line with others/expectations.

 

[Baldseagull]

We have a 3.8kw system (10 panels), but that never goes over 3.25 due to the way some of the panels face. Each year we generate about 3800kwh from that and we export about 2800 of that, as we don't have a battery. Having spent hours/days pondering the maths of it all, I still don't think a battery is worth it for us. There's only two of us and we use maybe 2-3kwh a day from the grid in the summer months, 5-6kwh in the winter months. I work shifts, so can use all the white goods during the day. (it's a moot point anyway, as I can't afford a battery at the moment).

It's worth looking at a switch that will divert any electricity you are not using to an immersion heater, if you have a hot water storage tank.

 

[carlzeiss]

Our installers fitted netting as means of preventing Pigeons from nesting underneath the panels however I can't see this stopping Squirrels which can cause expensive repairs if they get their teeth into the PV cable . In hindsight wire mesh would surely have been a better option .

As far as performance is concerned though the system does seem to be performing to spec . with just over 2.2MWh generated so far this year from 11 south facing panels . This has kept the Electricity spend to £322 and gas to £122 including standing charges with the Solar also used for Electric immersion water heating

 

[seaford]

We got ours installed in 2004, and were luck that at the time there was a 40% grant available.
We used a relatively local company then, called Chelsfield Solar, they are now based in Hertfordshire.
Whilst the actual generation does not pay much, it certainly reduces the amount that you pay.
My wife likes to take the daily readings and summer compared to winter obviously has a huge impact, in the summer we often used less than £1 a day, and we are only rated for 1.1 KW
My mate has not paid (NET) for electricity for a number of years as his generation capacity is about 6 KW.

 

[Rambo]

Is there anyone on here that is a PV installer or business owner? - Please PM me

 

[drew]

We got ours installed in 2004, and were luck that at the time there was a 40% grant available.
We used a relatively local company then, called Chelsfield Solar, they are now based in Hertfordshire.
Whilst the actual generation does not pay much, it certainly reduces the amount that you pay.
My wife likes to take the daily readings and summer compared to winter obviously has a huge impact, in the summer we often used less than £1 a day, and we are only rated for 1.1 KW
My mate has not paid (NET) for electricity for a number of years as his generation capacity is about 6 KW.

I'm a bit puzzled as you say the generation doesn't pay much. Are you on the FIT scheme or was your installation prior to that being introduced? We had ours fitted in 2011 and earn about £2.2k from the generation each year and that foes up by RPI each April. Think we're getting about 70p per KW. We've now had a battery installed and this charges up fully by about midday and then covers most of the electricity we use in the evening. Probably will be a bit different come winter with shorter daylight hours.

 

[dazzer6666]

I'm a bit puzzled as you say the generation doesn't pay much. Are you on the FIT scheme or was your installation prior to that being introduced? We had ours fitted in 2011 and earn about £2.2k from the generation each year and that foes up by RPI each April. Think we're getting about 70p per KW. We've now had a battery installed and this charges up fully by about midday and then covers most of the electricity we use in the evening. Probably will be a bit different come winter with shorter daylight hours.

70p is incredible….we only pay 35p for any we import (and get 15p for export).

 

[drew]

70p is incredible….we only pay 35p for any we import (and get 15p for export).

It was a very good deal and as I said in my post, we got our panels in 2011 so were in quite early on the fit scheme. At that time the scheme was trying to encourage as many as possible to get PV panels. We bought ours so we get the benefit of FIT payments as well as the energy we generate but there were others that effectively rented out their roof space. They get free energy when the panels are generating but the Fit payments go to the company that installed the panels (a bit of a con in my view). As the scheme got bigger the starting price point for new joiners was lower and lower. We get 68p for every kwh we generate and then a further 4p for 50% of what we generate on the basis that is exported back into the grid. For example today we generated 15kwh. During the day, 6.71 kwh were exported. Because of the battery, we only imported 4.6kwh. The battery get's recharged during the day and then drains down once the daylight is over. We've only had the battery since beginning of July so I'm waiting to see what our next energy bill will be.

 

[dazzer6666]

It was a very good deal and as I said in my post, we got our panels in 2011 so were in quite early on the fit scheme. At that time the scheme was trying to encourage as many as possible to get PV panels. We bought ours so we get the benefit of FIT payments as well as the energy we generate but there were others that effectively rented out their roof space. They get free energy when the panels are generating but the Fit payments go to the company that installed the panels (a bit of a con in my view). As the scheme got bigger the starting price point for new joiners was lower and lower. We get 68p for every kwh we generate and then a further 4p for 50% of what we generate on the basis that is exported back into the grid. For example today we generated 15kwh. During the day, 6.71 kwh were exported. Because of the battery, we only imported 4.6kwh. The battery get's recharged during the day and then drains down once the daylight is over. We've only had the battery since beginning of July so I'm waiting to see what our next energy bill will be.

Is the export rate fixed and what do you pay for any import ?

Your overall numbers aren’t dissimilar to ours - yesterday we generated 18kwh, exported 9kwh and imported 2kwh (we also own the panels so get the full benefit). We’ve got 12 panels and our roof is just about perfect in terms of position and pitch

 

[drew]

Is the export rate fixed and what do you pay for any import ?

Your overall numbers aren’t dissimilar to ours - yesterday we generated 18kwh, exported 9kwh and imported 2kwh (we also own the panels so get the full benefit). We’ve got 12 panels and our roof is just about perfect in terms of position and pitch

The export rate is fixed at 50% of what we generate. If memory serves me well, we could have either had a metered export facility (ie you only get paid for exactly what is exported) or agree a flat 50%. We signed up to the 50%. As for imported cost, 30.899p. We have 18 panels on a SW facing roof.