Quote:
Originally Posted by andymc
If ever there was an argument in favour of microgeneration, this is it. At the prices they've been paying for their electricity, it would only take a few years to recoup the cost of installing solar panels with battery backup for when it's dark.
Just to compare - after the first year of use, I calculated that the payback period for my own PV array was actually around seven years, rather than the approximate nine years I had originally estimated. I don't have a battery backup yet as the price hasn't quite fallen far enough, but my savings calculation was based on receiving the feed-in tariff of around £550 per annum and a purchase price per unit of 14.4p for all the power I buy from the grid - now increasing to 16.5p or thereabouts, which ironically shortens the payback period still further. So in less than seven years, I'll reach the point of being financially better off for the rest of my life than if I had done nothing. In Sark, they'd actually been paying 66p per unit before this all kicked off ...
I just looked up the average annual electricity consumption for the south-west of England, which is the nearest place for comparison, and it's 5596 kWh (the highest in the UK). If the consumption figures correlate, that means that the average household in Sark has been paying nearly £3500 a year on electricity bills!! Even without a feed-in tariff, for a Sark household to recoup the cost of a solar array with enough battery storage for over two days of electricity consumption would take little more than two years. It's a no-brainer.
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Hi Andy
Your figures are replicated here. Looks like you and I bought the panels at the same time. One of the best decisions we made.
We have a box of tricks that diverts excess power generated to the immersion heater - so most days we have constant hot water for free.
We have also bought those plug in ceramic heaters (JML) as they use very little electricity and when it’s cold but bright we find we can have these on and still have three green lights on our display!! Which means we are producing enough to power all that we have turned on, power the immersion heater for hot water AND still be exporting power to the grid!!
One thing we have learnt though is that to help keep efficiency as high as possible you do have to get the solar panels cleaned regularly. We did t do it until this last summer when it became obvious that green powder type algae had grown on the face of the panels.
The green colour of the water coming off them into the guttering was quite amazing. But doing this has been well worth it with increased output from the panels- we now plan to do this every year.