ashthekid Posted March 10, 2021 Share Posted March 10, 2021 I’ve seen the Viridian Velux Pv panels that are integrated into a slate roof for example and connect very neatly and pretty much flush with the roof tiling. Has anyone any experience with this particular integrated PV panels or any other integrated brands? Good idea or not? I’m in the middle of a conversion project and not got to the roofing and tiling stage yet so could build them integrated which seems to make a lot of sense. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Conor Posted March 11, 2021 Share Posted March 11, 2021 I'm doing integrated panels using GSE mounting system. Adds about £1k to the job but I think it looks much better. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SteamyTea Posted March 11, 2021 Share Posted March 11, 2021 56 minutes ago, Conor said: I'm doing integrated panels using GSE mounting system. Adds about £1k to the job but I think it looks much better. Our old mate @Jeremy Harris used the same system and when I first visited his place I did not notice them at all. I am surprised it is adding so much to the cost. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Conor Posted March 11, 2021 Share Posted March 11, 2021 Sorry @SteamyTea should say that I'm probably saving more on slates than I'm paying for the trays!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nod Posted March 11, 2021 Share Posted March 11, 2021 I still haven’t worked out the point of PV On our first build the Sap predicted £200 annual saving Chatting to our Architect he’s saying perhaps we could get that upto £500 this time The figures don’t stack up Perhaps another three years without taking any flights will do our bit for the environment ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ToughButterCup Posted March 11, 2021 Share Posted March 11, 2021 23 minutes ago, nod said: I still haven’t worked out the point of PV ... In which case, they aren't for you. Which makes me wonder if I have more money than sense. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jamieled Posted March 11, 2021 Share Posted March 11, 2021 You can look at it in a couple of ways. There's a lot of unnecessary (but desirable stuff) in most builds that doesn't have any saving. SAP is a poor way of assessing savings. With PV you probably need to alter how you use a house a bit to maximise self use. SAP has no way of knowing how you actually use your house and therefore the numbers are a bit of a finger in the air. Finally it won't be worth it if the install is expensive. Buy the kit cheap, self install as much as you can and the it starts to look better financially. I suppose it also depends on where electricity prices are going. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dnb Posted March 11, 2021 Share Posted March 11, 2021 4 hours ago, Conor said: I'm probably saving more on slates than I'm paying for the trays!! I found that too when compared to mounting panels on rails. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SteamyTea Posted March 11, 2021 Share Posted March 11, 2021 (edited) 6 minutes ago, jamieled said: I suppose it also depends on where electricity prices are going. With the government's price cap, they seem be heading up with inflation. Odd as wholesale prices have not moved much. From Ofgem Edited March 11, 2021 by SteamyTea Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nod Posted March 11, 2021 Share Posted March 11, 2021 44 minutes ago, jamieled said: You can look at it in a couple of ways. There's a lot of unnecessary (but desirable stuff) in most builds that doesn't have any saving. SAP is a poor way of assessing savings. With PV you probably need to alter how you use a house a bit to maximise self use. SAP has no way of knowing how you actually use your house and therefore the numbers are a bit of a finger in the air. Finally it won't be worth it if the install is expensive. Buy the kit cheap, self install as much as you can and the it starts to look better financially. I suppose it also depends on where electricity prices are going. Our daughter has purchased a Redrow home with PV They are the inset type which don’t look as bad Plus they are on the back of the house So can’t really be seen She expected her electricity bills to be less But in reality they about the same We were required by planning to fit PV But with Heritage insisting on sash windows the type of slate we used There seemed little point spoiling the look of the house So we didn’t fit them The next two we build we may not have much choice With quotes of 7-9k quoted last time It would have to be a case of buy cheap and self install Preferably on the back of the garage Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jamieled Posted March 11, 2021 Share Posted March 11, 2021 58 minutes ago, SteamyTea said: Odd as wholesale prices have not moved much I can't claim to understand much about how the electricity market works. I wonder how the Hinkley C cfd strike price will influence this (if at all). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ProDave Posted March 11, 2021 Share Posted March 11, 2021 My PV saves me about £250 per year in electricity. I could get that up a bit (and gradually will) by thinning the trees that shade it early morning. I can't do anything about the other tree that shades it in the late afternoon as that is in the neigbours garden. My DIY install cost me about £1500 which means it will pay for itself in 6 years. I believe it is only financially viable if you can buy the kit cheap and install it yourself. If you had to pay for an install and the cost was say £4K then the payback time for me would be too long. The developer houses with just a few panels, are probably not put there for planning reasons, but because the developers continue to build poor houses and it would fail the SAP calculations on it's own and they add some "renewable energy" to get just enough points from that to pass. The will save you money if youcan use that electricity but you need something to use it in the daytime like your washing machine, dishwasher etc. If you are out, set those to run on a timer in the middle of the day and at least some of the power they use will come from the PV. If you are all out and nothing is on to use the power generated by the panels it will just get exported to the grid for no or little payment. The other way to self use your PV power is a device to divert surplus generation to your immersion heater, but the developer house is likely to have a combi boiler and no hot water tank so that is not possible. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SteamyTea Posted March 11, 2021 Share Posted March 11, 2021 (edited) 7 minutes ago, jamieled said: wonder how the Hinkley C cfd strike price will influence this Probably going to be renegotiated as it is so delayed. Be interesting as the French Government will have to pick up the tab. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flamanville_Nuclear_Power_Plant is still not producing. Nor is https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPR_(nuclear_reactor) producing on a regular basis. 1 2020 is the estimated date. 17 years after work commenced. Edited March 11, 2021 by SteamyTea Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ashthekid Posted March 11, 2021 Author Share Posted March 11, 2021 Could I not keep the electricity rather than giving it to the grid, save it in a Tesla style Powerwall battery and then use it all myself? That would surely bring the bills down substantially more. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ProDave Posted March 11, 2021 Share Posted March 11, 2021 22 minutes ago, ashthekid said: Could I not keep the electricity rather than giving it to the grid, save it in a Tesla style Powerwall battery and then use it all myself? That would surely bring the bills down substantially more. Properly cost the installed cost of the powerwall, the life of the batteries, battery replacement at end of life, and tell us the cost per kWh of your "free" stored energy that you can use. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bitpipe Posted March 11, 2021 Share Posted March 11, 2021 (edited) 24 minutes ago, ashthekid said: Could I not keep the electricity rather than giving it to the grid, save it in a Tesla style Powerwall battery and then use it all myself? That would surely bring the bills down substantially more. You can but the batteries are currently quite expensive. We have a PV solar diverter - when it detects that power is about to leave the house it switches it to run two immersion heaters in our UVC so free* hot water. *free once the cost of the diverter is paid for but it was not that expensive and tells us it has saved 3000 KWh since installation in August 2016 so its paid for itself at least twice over so far. We also both work from home so as well as laptop power etc - dishwasher & laundry all occur in daytime. Not hard on most modern machines to schedule the run time either. We were lucky enough to get on the FIT before it was reduced so that gives us £1.50 benefit a day, that said we needed a MCS approved install to quality. Edited March 11, 2021 by Bitpipe Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bitpipe Posted March 11, 2021 Share Posted March 11, 2021 Photo of our in roof install - not quite as tidy as the one above. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fly100 Posted June 13, 2021 Share Posted June 13, 2021 He are my integrated panels. Had many comments on how much better they look than 'on' roof system. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TonyT Posted June 13, 2021 Share Posted June 13, 2021 I’m sure they are less efficient when integrated, in 99.4% certain I read that the cooling effect behind the panel improves efficiency, but this was 10 years ago when mine were fitted.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SteamyTea Posted June 13, 2021 Share Posted June 13, 2021 (edited) 38 minutes ago, TonyT said: I’m sure they are less efficient when integrated, in 99.4% certain I read that the cooling effect behind the panel improves efficiency, but this was 10 years ago when mine were fitted.. There is a loss of efficiency as temperatures rise, but there is also a rise in power as solar radiation rises. Part of the reason for this is the standard test measure. Temperature and radiation levels are picked i.e 25⁰C and 1000 W/m². Then efficiencies changes are based around these. We should really use the Kelvin scale for temperature. In practice, power output is a bit misleading, PV often produces relatively small amounts of power, relative to the input, but does it for a long time. Today in Penzance, I will get 16 hours and 21 minutes of 'normal' daylight, but even though it is sunny, very few PV modules are reacting in 2 axis to take full advantage of this. Most will be fixed in altitude and azimuth by the building design and orientation, so may not get as much direct beam sunlight on them as imagined, and because it is a clear day, there will be less diffused light. This is why optimal yield days are often in the late spring and early autumn, but that is very weather and building orientation dependant. This is often used as 'proof' that a rise in temperature is very bad for PV production. Not always the case. Like a lot of things, it is not as simple as it first seems. Edited June 13, 2021 by SteamyTea Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nickfromwales Posted June 13, 2021 Share Posted June 13, 2021 3 hours ago, TonyT said: I’m sure they are less efficient when integrated, in 99.4% certain I read that the cooling effect behind the panel improves efficiency, but this was 10 years ago when mine were fitted.. That’s out of date info Modern panel manufacturers are on top of that, plus the in-roof trays allow for quite a bit of convection airflow. They’re open top and bottom / side to side. Very little to argue over there imho and that from being on roofs fitting them 1st hand. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nickfromwales Posted June 13, 2021 Share Posted June 13, 2021 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nickfromwales Posted June 13, 2021 Share Posted June 13, 2021 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pocster Posted June 13, 2021 Share Posted June 13, 2021 5 hours ago, TonyT said: I’m sure they are less efficient when integrated, in 99.4% certain I read that the cooling effect behind the panel improves efficiency, but this was 10 years ago when mine were fitted.. I was told this relatively recently . Built in ones less efficient at heat . Though how much less efficiency I’m not certain ( not a great deal from memory) PV is ‘ better value ‘ with an EV and a battery . I estimate repayment for us at this point will be around 7 years . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SteamyTea Posted June 13, 2021 Share Posted June 13, 2021 Just had a quick look on the Panasonic PV site, their Evervolt module has a temperature coefficient of 0.26%/°C. This, I assume, uses the STC so that will be based on a temperature of 25°C. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now