Solar panels - Good or bad idea?

[sedgy34]

You need to forget that idea and concentrate on the next big thing people will uptake, not sure what that's going to be though. Could be wig making lol

 

[PEG]

Not that i would condone it,but say the government legalised the propagation of cannabis,can you imagine the work sparkies would have? All those lamps,fans and controllers with henleys everywhere.Assessors queuing up to come and view your scheme entry first install...Anyone think of another expanding industry?

 

[moggy1968]

buy a Porsche? I don't think so!!

Rates are now worse than general electrical rates as companies quote ridiculously cheap on rubbish gear just to try and keep in business, while a price obscessed, quality ignorant public drive prices lower and lower.

You do have a couple of other options.
1. sit at home burning £20 notes
2. pee in your own breakfast cereal every morning.

either or both of these options will be more rewarding than getting into solar now.
The good times are long gone.

 

[PengEF]

As a consumer I think dansk is onto something. Home automation or at the very least systems that allow you to monitor your home that you don't need to be a millionaire to install will only become more desirable the more the energy costs go up. Not talking about the somewhat half-assed products out now but true built in monitoring and control of every plug socket, lighting circuit, power circuit and heating systems. I am looking for this now and the products just don't seem to be there or if they are they cost so much they are the domain of millionaires and are just painful to use as they are all proprietary and want to lock you in so that if they don't work they have you by the proverbials until they dane to fix them.

I know there is the enthusiast market if you are prepared to cobble together something but a decent retail expandable and adaptable system just isn't there yet. First company to make one and to be truly quick to adapt to customer needs along with the electricians to fit them will probably clean up.

A bit like the immersun. It's getting there but it's just one system and I get the feeling it's just not quite there yet. Maybe in another year. I also think there is an opportunity for a product that could replace the RCD/MCB's in consumer units that would still do the same job they do now AND report energy usage accurately with the ability to control the whole circuit as well.

Maybe I am just 2 or 3 years to early with what I want. Wish I was an electrical engineer instead of a programmer...

 

[Worcester]

I think you're spot on with what you want, we're playing around here with a system developed on Home | OpenEnergyMonitor and Raspberry Pi | An ARM GNU/Linux box for $25. Take a byte!

The concept of the intelligent RCBO is a good one, then with indiviual sockets and appliances with their own IP address (time for a new thread ...)

 

[FB.]

companies quote ridiculously cheap on rubbish gear just to try and keep in business

The problem is managing to get a reasonable payback period to compensate for there being no ability to get the money back other than from very-long-term FiT payments and bill savings.
I scrapped my plan to add a second PV array as at the prices being quoted by local companies, there was no margin of safety due to the greater unknowns the longer the projection into the future. If I ended up being unlucky and needing two new inverters during the 20yr FiT period, I would have been no better off than putting the money into a cash ISA.
All the risk and no reward.

As a consumer, I don't have the buying power and ability to get prices whch make the FiT attractive at 14p unless I want to cross my fingers and hope that my system never needs repairs. Solar PV now risks leaving ordinary homeowners behind and simply lining the pockets of the rent-a-roofers who can get better pricing for installations, and otherwise going back to being a middle-class tree-hugger's gimmick.


I appreciate you advocate a short FiT period (say 5yrs) with high FiT rates (say 50p) in order to make payback time reasonable and I generally agree that would be a better route - and it sounds as if 2013's RHI might be taking some steps in that direction.

 

[Kamikaze]

if only i could devise a machine to produce electrickery from rain, i'd be a millionaire.

14 year old Raymond Wang from British Columbia in Canada has been working on that and has a working prototype. Now rain into beer and you will be a legend! :biggrin:

 

[moggy1968]

FB - on my prices, with 3% inflation and 5% fuel inflation we're looking at less than ten years payback time, but still losing out to cheap tat. people need to stop looking at renewables as a way to make money, and instead as a responsible thing to do and a cost effective way to inflation proof their fuel bills, after all, over 30% rises in fuel bills since 2010 is quite a lot. Is there any ohter type of home improvement people actually expect to make money from? No. The trouble is, the level of tariffs have produce a culture of greed and pocket filling, not just from some installers, but also from the public at large. There is no justifiable reason why PV should be regarded as a financial investment. If you can make a bit from it, great, but that really shouldn't be the main deciding factor.

Home automation of the type your talking about will always be expensive, because it will require a complete rewire of the house. I amn working on one at the moment. Every room has it's own lighting circuit, sockets are divided up so, for example, the fridge is on it's own circuit, the washer on another. It's only a three bedroom house but even then it requires over 40ways on the distribution board and he wanted everyone with it's own RCBO, thats over £800 just on RCBOs! Usually this stuff goes in footballers houses, but he knows the guy that does the systems so is getting it on the cheap, while I sort out the electrics. Even so, it's going to be a hellish expensive rewire!!!

The best retro fit system I have seen is this
Welcome to jsjsdesign
it has can be controlled from a hand controller or smart phone. One of the things I liked about it is it just replaces standard faceplates, so you can fit as many or as few as you like and, if in years to come you can't get the parts or it's obsolete because it just replaced standard fitments you can just swap it back again.

 

[FB.]

Hi Moggy.


Local companies (Cambs/East Anglia) advertise 4kWp Chinese poly panels and Chinese inverter for £5-6k but when contacted the price is closer to £6.5-7k, with scaffold extra - "it's a printing/typing mistake, sir".
Companies offering "quality" charge £9-10k.
Everywhere else in the country, prices seem much more attractive. I even considered asking an installer to come long-distance and I pay for a hotel room.

So I can pay £6-7k for Chinese poly panels and Chinese inverter, but how long will the Chinese inverter last? Will I end up needing to replace it twice, effectively adding £1500 to my system cost over the 20yr FiT period? Will the inverter deliver the same efficiency as "Western" inverters or will my system struggle even to meet SAP2009 calcs?

With those prices, those concerns and the 14.5p soon reducing to 13.99p FiT for going into the 4-10kWp band, I feel that the only people making money out of it are the installers profit margins and Scottish Power who'd buy the electricity for 4.5p and sell it back for about three times that price.


I believe that to make any investment, it needs to have a fair rate of return relative to the risks involved and all the risks seem to be dumped on me (along with money unable to be recovered except through FiT payments and bill savings which will depend on the performance and reliability of the system). The installer and the utility company appear to be the ones laughing all the way to the bank.

 

[FB.]

editing......

 

[jason121]

4KW £6200.00 Suntech panels Steca inverter with 7years

 

[moggy1968]

That does seem steep FB, well above what we charge for decent kit.

I do think it's time we stopped trying to sell PV as an investment. It's a way of inflation proofing your fuel bills and producing electricity in a responsible way. No other home improvement is seen as an investment (although it may ultimately improve the value of your home) so why should PV be any different. IT should be viewed as something that enhances your enjoyment of your home, if you make a few quid then great, but that shouldn't be the greatest motivation.

Thats why I support a more generous FiT with a shorter payback time. The you are getting a subsidised installation to generate electricity, rather than making money out of it.

 

[solarsavings]

Prices in this part of East Anglia are much lower in yours FB. Perhaps it's the Cambridge effect?

 

[PengEF]

Thanks for the lightwave RF tip moggy, I have seen them before and they are part of the frustration. They do allow control and are where I think this tech needs to be applied but they only do half of what is needed i.e. control. There is no monitoring of energy usage so you can see if something needs a control plan.

Also your example of a whole house rewire is exactly what I mean about the expense. In this day and age we should be able to come up with a 21st century solution where the control and monitoring is in each plug socket, switch and light fitting. Hell all the tech exists the LightwaveRF stuff proves it as well as other products like those from plugwise and homeplugs. Just nobody has put it all together yet or if they have the leccy companies have probably paid them all to P***** ***f and not tell us all. Just think how much work there would be if it was affordable to replace wall sockets with something that was easy to use, plug and play and gave the home owner/business total visibility and control of their electrical devices? Ah well maybe in 10 years time when leccy costs a pound a kWh it might happen *sigh*

 

[FB.]

I do think it's time we stopped trying to sell PV as an investment. It's a way of inflation proofing your fuel bills and producing electricity in a responsible way.

Yes, but a margin of safety needs to be in place to ensure that it's not a loss-maker for those who put their hard-earned savings into it.

 

[FB.]

4KW £6200.00 Suntech panels Steca inverter with 7years

Not everyone is fortunate enough to have space for 4kWp, while 3kWp (medium) and 2kWp (small) systems only seem to knock a few hundred quid off, with a large increase in payback time.
I already have 3.75kWp, while a 3.25kWp second array would have been the ideal size, but had such a wafer-thin margin of safety for me taking on the risk compared to simply playing safe and putting the money in an ISA, where at least I could cash-out at any time.

 

[FB.]

Prices in this part of East Anglia are much lower in yours FB. Perhaps it's the Cambridge effect?

Yes, it could be the effect of sky-high property prices and rents near to Cambridge. Property prices here have largely ignored the recession and are among the most expensive in the country. Nationwide second-quarter figures report average UK house price as £165k, London average £344k and Cambridge average at £329k.

 

[FB.]

That does seem steep FB, well above what we charge for decent kit.

I find it frustrating that not many companies offer a guide price, while others won't mention the inverters used, while others have a lot of hidden extras or claim that adverts have misprints. Yet others I must register an interest using form on their website so that they can then pester me for weeks or months afterwards.
It's feeling more and more like the double-glazing salesmen, where prices are marked-up to see if the customer will buy and then bartered down (by phone and not in writing) every few days if the customer rejects an offer.

 

[moggy1968]

Yes, but a margin of safety needs to be in place to ensure that it's not a loss-maker for those who put their hard-earned savings into it.

do you get that with a conservatory or an extension?

Not the same I know, but really, how much margin do you need! Your already more than doubling the cost of your system in your returns.

- - - Updated - - -

Yes, it could be the effect of sky-high property prices and rents near to Cambridge. Property prices here have largely ignored the recession and are among the most expensive in the country. Nationwide second-quarter figures report average UK house price as £165k, London average £344k and Cambridge average at £329k.

shame I sold my flat in cambridge 14 years ago then:cry_smile:

 

[FB.]

do you get that with a conservatory or an extension?

Not the same I know, but really, how much margin do you need! Your already more than doubling the cost of your system in your returns.

Doubling my money in 20yrs is only about 3.5% annual average, which is roughly equal to long-term inflation (as per the 3.5% I mentioned in an earlier post). Simply matching long-term inflation isn't "growth"; it's simply preservation of buying power.
I could buy an inflation-linked bond and probably get an equal annual average return without the unknowns associated with solar such as component lifespan or other variables (such as precise levels of RPI inflation or energy price inflation) which could result in a very different rate of return than originally projected.
As we've both agreed before: a long payback period creates a wider range of possible outcomes and a greater amount of uncertainty.