Today our postman posted a "card based" leaflet with our post.
Its addressed to "Dear Roof" and also on the front is an aerial picture of our house and our immediate neighbours.
The "deal" on offer is "free solar panels"
So what is the catch?? I'm intreagued!
Much better to buy the panels yourself.
From rent-a-roof, a household with a big (3-4kWp) solar array might save a couple of hundred pounds a year. If no mains gas then the savings will be more.
Personally, I would not do it for a couple of hundred quid bill savings a year, and the risk that rent-a-roofers will not be sympathetic in making the panels look as attractive as possible, and the risk of problems with selling the house, or even obtaining a mortgage on a house where the roof no longer belongs to the owner. The mortgage lender should be consulted and they are likely to say "NO"! - the house is
their house; you are still paying them back for it.
The several-hundred-pounds-per-year Feed-in-Tariff subsidy will allow the rent-a-roof company to make a much fatter profit than the power which can be used in-house. The power from minute-to-minute and from day-to-day is very variable and it is difficult to use it. There tends to either be far too much (on sunny days) and it mostly flows into the grid, or there tends to be dull days with only enough to run two lightbulbs, and all other household appliances have to draw the additional required power from the grid.
So they make about three to four times the "profit" that the homeowner will make.
I strongly advise to buy your own where possible.
Rent-a-roof schemes should be treated with caution due to the risk of spoiling the house apperance and making it difficult to obtain mortgages or difficult to find a house buyer who will accept a rent-a-roof property.
For example:
I have had 3.75kWp solar array on my roof for several months.
I am at home in the day, and I can use the power. I have reduced my bill by half - a saving of about £200-250 per year.
This is all I would have saved had I done rent-a-roof. If I didn't work from home, I would have saved much less as the power would just flow into the grid.
However, I received a Feed-in-Tariff payment of about £350 in April, for the three-month period to that point.
I expect to receive another FiT payment around £450 shortly for the most recent three months - despite the dull weather.
So I'll be looking at £1600 per year in FiT payments (which is what the rent-a-roofers will be pocketing) and £200 per year in bill savings.
This is with 45.4p FiT and 3.1p export tariff (now 21.0p and 3.1p).
21p FiT would reduce the FiT payments to £800 per year and the bill savings remain the same, around £200.
This is where the Rent-a-Roofers earn the big bucks; the house owner doesn't get paid anything from the FiT; it goes towards yachts, ferraris and fine wine for the owners of the Rent-a-roof company who can just sit at home and watch the sun come up each morning.
