How things are going so far…

If you’re reading this you’ll already have a system in place, but wanted to provide some feedback on my own experiences

So thought I’d sumerise the pros and cons over the last few days of having the system working

For us we financed the entire system over 5 years, it’s costing us an extra £230 a month, however it’s not where it ends final cost wise.

Its really important to have a dual tariff, so peak usage in the day and a cheaper night rate, we’re with EON and pay 34p per kWh in the day, and 9p at night, the cheaper rate starts from 00:00 - 07:00, the higher rate from 07:00 - 00:00. We use this to charge the battery, run the immersion heater and heating for an hour 1st thing

The new costs having solar is approx £158 per month, that’s on top of the £230 we’re paying back for the system, so in fact it’s actually costing us about £58 a month more, but with the heating being switched off in the coming months that £158 cost will of course drop.

Also important are some life style changes to save money, this is regardless if you have solar or not, so things like running the tumble dryer at the cheap rate time, as the solar system whilst can cope with the dryer on, it will deplete the battery and you won’t have anything in reserve to run the house at night

The system will absolutely cope with things like cooking, the heating on for a couple of hours in the day, lighting and everything you would normally run and use, on this it’s important to switch to led lights, turn things off on standby etc.. again all stuff you should be doing if you have solar or not. The system uses a combination of both solar and the battery or both to cope with the daily load, the key thing to remember is making sure you are minimising or at least reducing significantly any top up from the grid in peak hours, so far we are managing this with our system, so keeping the extra cost under £160 a month

Was it worth getting solar?
For me yes absolutely, despite the uplift in cost over the winter, this as said will tail off in the summer months, and at month 61 the system is fully paid for (our system like most others is not leased or our roof isn’t leased etc..) it’s our system and we can also move it if we move house. On this you’re likely better off leaving the system on the house if you come to sell, it can add £15k - £20k to the value of the property. On month 61 (based on current tariff rates) our electricity moves from £438 per month to £158 as mentioned, this is just a yard stick and of course is wholly dependent on energy prices (hopefully they go down by then, but who knows!)

SEG
This is the smart export guarantee, everyone talks about “making money from your solar panels”, whilst yes this is true it only equates to around £200 - £230 a year, that said this can be used to “off set” the unavoidable .54p daily standing charge, which for us is £197 per annum.

Hope this all helps! Sorry for the long message 🫣🙋🏼‍♂️😉

I hope it all continues to work out for you. Getting Solar if one can afford it is a good investment fir sure. It would be useful too if you said what your system was e.g. solar capacity, battery type/capacity, inverter models, etc.

For us, we will be doing OK if our seg (@16.5p/kWh) covers the standing charge per year. We live in a very rural location in North Wales and the standing charge is just under £0.62 per day.

The option of taking the system with you if one moves is questionable in my view. It sure could be done but as you say leaving it in place will sell the house at a better price more likely but the costs of de-installing and reinstalling at a new location won't be cheap. Just the cost of two sets of scaffolding on each house will be expensive plus the installation engineers. If it's a few years down the line you are likely to be better off with new kit as the technology is developing all the time.

killythebid I think you'd have to be pretty/very odd to move a PV install from one house to another 🙂

You'd have to remove it all before marketing the property otherwise mainstream mortgage companies won't offer on it due to the survey/valuation being essentially worthless if PV panels etc are coming off afterwards.

killythebid

Good shout on the spec

We have the following

GivEnergy Hybrid Gen3 inverter
A 9.5 kWh battery (9.5 kWh usable)
X14 420 watt tier 1 solar panels

Vestas yes totally agree which is why I advised keeping the system on the property as you said I’d be buying new again on my new property for the reasons you gave