My Solar quote

[Ian]

Currently paying 13.2p/kWh day rate from Pure Planet (all renewables)

[ProDave]

45 minutes ago, joth said:

Remember that the current stated position is only MCS installs are going to be eligible for the new guaranteed export scheme when it finally arrives. The risk of regret of missing that is enough to make me pay the MCS markup right now.

That said, the way all the other green incentives are going, I have a feeling the SEG won't happen until next government is in, and they might not feel beholden to promises made by their predecessors on this anyway. 

Well when I last looked, last Friday, we have exported a total of 30KWh since January.  At an export rate of abput 5p, that would be a payment of £1.50. Assume the annual export is 4 times that, I don't think I will lose sleep if I cannot claim my less than £10 annual export payment.

 

The MCS premium you would have to pay on the instalation in order to claim that would have in impossible long payback.

 

Even Jeremy's system where he exports say 3KWh per year, payment for export only would be about £150  So again any MCS premium to claim that would have to be pretty small.  Even a £1500 extra cost to get them MCS installed would take 10 years to pay back.

[Ferdinand]

36 minutes ago, joth said:

 

To clarify, their proposal is to (re)nationalise national grid and the DNOs, not the solar installation/generation industry afaict.

Installing solar on a million low income homes will be expensive enough, I can't see it would make him also in a rush to refund money to those of sufficient means to be able to self-install it without financial incentive prior to his time, but this is speculation to the Nth degree so not worth losing sleep over .

 

 

 

I think the missing thing here is the need for upgrading of the national grid, which may cost many times more than simply installing 2 million solar setups.

 

I can see the solar PV installs being affordable - say £3k each x 2 m equals 6 billion. Even if you make it £10b, that is still only the kind of sum that Mr Brown used to piddle away very frequently.

 

Having it driven as a government initiative from the centre would be disastrous, but I can see the benefit for heavy incentives within the current system eg Stamp Duty reduction or tax offset. This is speaking from experience with centrally funded EWI programmes and how much cost is added between the people who actually do it, and the people who have the contract to administer it.

 

But I think they are in a hunt-the-biggest-imaginary-unicorn competition with the Greens.Given that both main parties seem to be lead by cabals of pillocks at present, I can see them starting to fine people for not installing solar panels on the roof of a ground floor flat in a tower block; or installing them below a ceiling inside the room. (* Piccie to be added)

 

I could see a lot of sense in mandating a good sized solar install for all new properties, especially in estates where bigger infrastructure can be built.

 

Ferdinand

[Ferdinand]

>(* Piccie to be added)

 

Here is a piccie of one of our fairly local Drs' Surgeries. The trees were there first iirc.

 

 

When you give people free money, they stop thinking. So don't give them free money.

 

Suspect this is due to some grant scheme being available, or perhaps due to the days when manifestly excessive FiT encouraged silly projects.

 

 

Edited May 16, 2019 by Ferdinand

[ProDave]

5 minutes ago, Ferdinand said:

>(* Piccie to be added)

 

Here is a piccie of one of our fairly local Drs' Surgeries. The trees were there first iirc.

 

 

When you give people free money, they stop thinking. So don't give them free money.

 

 

That is very much like our house, which is why I went for ground mount.

 

Although at this time of year the sun is high enough that for a lot of the day roof mounted panels would do alright, but in the Autumn when the sun is low they would suffer massive shading.

[Ferdinand]

Just now, ProDave said:

Although at this time of year the sun is high enough that for a lot of the day roof mounted panels would do alright, but in the Autumn when the sun is low they would suffer massive shading.

 

Indeed, but I would say that those trees will grow rather larger.

 

F

[AliG]

The calculations seem high for the amount of electricity generated.

 

It sounds like they are expectng a 6kW system to generate 6000kWh a year. I would expect more like 4500 and that would be facing due south. My old 4kW system generated 3000kWh a year at the almost perfect angle, although it was in Edinburgh, so you may generate more further south.

 

I also thought there was some kind of official calculation that had to be used.

 

Further you cannot save £2000 in electricity if you don't use that much. I guess you might if you have an ASHP and use electricity for heating. But then most demand will be in winter when PV panels generate virtually no electricity. This is also when most demand for lighting etc exists.

 

As has been said you might be able to use around half your generation for electricity offset and the rest to heat water. When I run the numbers I expect someone to get around a 5-6% ROI, acceptable when you look at current interest rates, which could be improved if you can get the system installed cheaper.

[Ferdinand]

29 minutes ago, AliG said:

As has been said you might be able to use around half your generation for electricity offset and the rest to heat water. When I run the numbers I expect someone to get around a 5-6% ROI, acceptable when you look at current interest rates, which could be improved if you can get the system installed cheaper.

 

@gc100, As a comparison, you could probably get 10 year money on a mortgage at around 2-2.5% (?).

 

Looking at it, I do not think they are giving you quite the information you need. As has been said, you need to work out how much of that generated electricity you can actually use, and to work out where install prices should be now for non-FiT.

 

Back in autumn 2015, I was offered, for installs including all the FiT paperwork.

 

1 - 4kWP setup for full FiT install, including everything with black on black panels. £4999 + VAT. That was a very keen price on a straightforward install then for 16 panels, but the last time I looked prices were achievable at 10-15% below that, and that was over a year ago.

 

2 - My own install, which was complex (3 arrays, full Solaredge, full FiT, 10kWp from 35 panels, loadsa scaffolding, negotiations for the larger FiT tie) was a little under £1200 per kWp, exc VAT. And they gave me 2x spare panels + 2 x Solaredge controllers as well. This was quoted in late 2015, and installed just before FiT was cut off at the knees. I am on about 11p per kWh.

 

I have no experience of the FiT/non-FiT differential, and price impacts of any industry shrinkage etc. To pin a tail on the donkey, with 15% fewer panels per kW, and no FiT buggeration, I would be aiming to be some way under £1000 per installed kWp before VAT now. I cannot tell whether I would be aiming for £900 plus VAT per kWp, or more like £750.

 

Which suggests a target price for a 6kWp install of more like £5000-6000 plus VAT. Others may be able to tell you whether that would be very demanding or not.

 

I hope that is a useful datapoint.

 

F

Edited May 16, 2019 by Ferdinand

[AliG]

Exactly, the return that FIT payments generated was ridiculously high a few years ago. People are just looking for free money when they want them to continue. Solar panels make financial sense on their own merits now.

 

You get a pretty much guaranteed 5-6% inflation proof return. I don't see many(any) other investments offering that.

 

Thus why not do away with the costs and bureaucracy of the FIT system. People just have to adjust heir minds to a reasonable return.

Edited May 16, 2019 by AliG

[Ed Davies]

18.71 p/kWh, 28.82 p/day.

 

Changed on the April 1st from 16.89 p/kWh, 29.53 p/day so a net increase for me, using 4.6 kWh/day for this bill, of 7.662 p/day or £27.96/year. Could be worth shopping around but really hope not to be here more than a year anyway.

[Ferdinand]

Currently paying 0.1395 per kWh with Co-op (Mid-Counties).

Standing charge £0.1461 per day.

 

I changed last summer.

 

F

[scottishjohn]

16 minutes ago, AliG said:

 People just have to adjust heir minds to a reasonable return.

sounds reasonable -- but repair cost --like  invertor  /multiple replacements etc are not factored in , over the 20 year lifespan 

and at least half of the self builders could be dead in 20years --

so  not a simple decison + as an investment you have no way to cash in the investment at any time ,

so it should not be looked at as an investment  in shape or form 

 

so 

[joth]

1 hour ago, ProDave said:

Well when I last looked, last Friday, we have exported a total of 30KWh since January.  At an export rate of abput 5p, that would be a payment of £1.50. Assume the annual export is 4 times that, I don't think I will lose sleep if I cannot claim my less than £10 annual export payment.

 

The MCS premium you would have to pay on the instalation in order to claim that would have in impossible long payback.

 

Even Jeremy's system where he exports say 3KWh per year, payment for export only would be about £150  So again any MCS premium to claim that would have to be pretty small.  Even a £1500 extra cost to get them MCS installed would take 10 years to pay back.

 

Or if you take his 4MWh export estimate, and 10p export rate, just over 3 years.... this is really my point: right now there's next to no way of knowing it will pay back (and in all likelihood it wouldn't) however for every day the sun shines over those 10+ years, what price to put on the warm feeling of knowing you're getting a market rate selling back that excess generation, vs a darkening resentment of giving it away for free simply because you chose to cut a corner a decade ago.  It maybe perverse economic logic, but I know my how my FOMO works!

 

[scottishjohn]

I checked on line for prices on saturday for fixed rate 12months 

no where close to those sort of prices 

[ProDave]

Be careful comparing ROI of solar PV with savings interest rates.  They are not comparable.

 

Put your money in a savings account at 5% interest (please tell me where you can get that) and your capital sits there instantly giving you an income .

 

Put your money into solar PV and your capital has gone.  The ROI might be higher but if it takes 10 years just to get your capital back, then it is not much of an "investment" compared to the savings account.

[Temp]

I've been surprised by some of the low prices for 4kw arrays on eBay. Some suggest the panels are Canadian?

[Onoff]

4 minutes ago, Temp said:

I've been surprised by some of the low prices for 4kw arrays on eBay. Some suggest the panels are Canadian?

 

Typo probably. Cambodian! ?

[Big Neil]

Is there a physical way that you can disperse electricity without passing it back into the grid when you have excess. So lets imagine you have a battery which is full, your sunamp for example is charged, your house is fully running and your EV is full.

 

Frankly i'd rather feed the next house in the street than give it away in the manner one must do now.

 

[joth]

6 minutes ago, Big Neil said:

Is there a physical way that you can disperse electricity without passing it back into the grid when you have excess. So lets imagine you have a battery which is full, your sunamp for example is charged, your house is fully running and your EV is full.

 

Frankly i'd rather feed the next house in the street than give it away in the manner one must do now.

 

 

Yes! If you move to Denmark. Believe it or not, their smart meters actually help, with a peer-to-peer local generation sub-market. See page 29 of https://www.smartdcc.co.uk/media/1321/netcompany_css_technology_review_v22.pdf

 

 

[Jeremy Harris]

35 minutes ago, Big Neil said:

Is there a physical way that you can disperse electricity without passing it back into the grid when you have excess. So lets imagine you have a battery which is full, your sunamp for example is charged, your house is fully running and your EV is full.

 

Frankly i'd rather feed the next house in the street than give it away in the manner one must do now.

 

 

That's what happens now, in effect.  Because of the way the grid works, and because electricity (literally) always takes the path of least resistance, excess microgeneration always flows first to the nearest consumers to the source.

 

This means that when, say, 30% of the houses on a particular sub-station phase are exporting electricity, that electricity will preferentially flow to their nearest neighbours, on the same phase, who are consuming electricity at that time.  Only when the local generation exceeds the local consumption will electricity start to flow back to the grid.  I've not seen any data as to how often the load on local sub-stations drops to zero, or goes negative, as a consequence of this, but I suspect it's something that is probably pretty uncommon.

[Ferdinand]

1 hour ago, scottishjohn said:

at least half of the self builders could be dead in 20years --

 

I love optimists ?

[ProDave]

5 minutes ago, JSHarris said:

 

That's what happens now, in effect.  Because of the way the grid works, and because electricity (literally) always takes the path of least resistance, excess microgeneration always flows first to the nearest consumers to the source.

 

This means that when, say, 30% of the houses on a particular sub-station phase are exporting electricity, that electricity will preferentially flow to their nearest neighbours, on the same phase, who are consuming electricity at that time.  Only when the local generation exceeds the local consumption will electricity start to flow back to the grid.  I've not seen any data as to how often the load on local sub-stations drops to zero, or goes negative, as a consequence of this, but I suspect it's something that is probably pretty uncommon.

There are only 2 houses with PV on our leg of the grid fed from a 100KVA transformer.  For there to be any return power through that transformer the 2 houses with PV would need to be exporting more than the other 8 houses are using. Possible but unlikely.

[ToughButterCup]

2 hours ago, scottishjohn said:

[...]

half of the self builders could be dead in 20 years --

[...]

 

Yeah, the build's killing me mate.

[Big Neil]

19 minutes ago, JSHarris said:

That's what happens now, in effect.  Because of the way the grid works, and because electricity (literally) always takes the path of least resistance, excess microgeneration always flows first to the nearest consumers to the source.

 

This means that when, say, 30% of the houses on a particular sub-station phase are exporting electricity, that electricity will preferentially flow to their nearest neighbours, on the same phase, who are consuming electricity at that time.  Only when the local generation exceeds the local consumption will electricity start to flow back to the grid.  I've not seen any data as to how often the load on local sub-stations drops to zero, or goes negative, as a consequence of this, but I suspect it's something that is probably pretty uncommon.

 

But they still get charged by their electricity company don't they? So effectively i'd be supplying the energy, and the company my hypothetical neighbour uses, charge them for it. Seems a bit of a scam to. Could one physically use a neighbours house to dump excess generation to in a local agreement. If i'm going to be forced to give it away for free, i'd rather it directly benefited someone i knew. Think of it as like having a diverter on a hot water tank, so when all my systems are full and i've got an excess, it goes to my neighbour whose own grid supply pauses, in the same way as mine would when i'm wholely satisfied with solar. Sort of a micro grid.

[Jeremy Harris]

12 minutes ago, Big Neil said:

 

But they still get charged by their electricity company don't they? So effectively i'd be supplying the energy, and the company my hypothetical neighbour uses, charge them for it. Seems a bit of a scam to. Could one physically use a neighbours house to dump excess generation to in a local agreement. If i'm going to be forced to give it away for free, i'd rather it directly benefited someone i knew. Think of it as like having a diverter on a hot water tank, so when all my systems are full and i've got an excess, it goes to my neighbour whose own grid supply pauses, in the same way as mine would when i'm wholely satisfied with solar. Sort of a micro grid.

 

Yes, but that's where the export payment comes in, and why it's important that this be reinstated now that both FiT and deemed/metered export payments have been withdrawn.

 

We still get paid for deemed export, at a rate that's pretty much around the average wholesale price that the supplier buys electricity in at.  IIRC it's around 4.5p/kWh at the moment.  That seems fair, as we're just like any other generator, so should expect to get paid more or less the same as other generators.

 

The problem at the moment is a cock up by the government.  Before we had the FiT there was a scheme in place to allow microgenerators to be paid for the energy they supplied, pretty much at the average wholesale price, IIRC.  When the FiT was introduced, they did away with the old generation payment system and introduced two new payments, the FiT subsidy payment, to incentivise people to install microgeneration, and a deemed, or metered, export payment system, that paid microgenerators more or less the average wholesale price for the energy they exported.

 

The latter is in the process of being put back in place, but until it is we have this very unfair state where microgenerators are not being paid for the energy they export.  Hopefully this will be fixed soon, but the government seem a bit preoccupied with other things right now, so it doesn't seem to be being treated as a priority.