Thought Id start this one going because its rather dead on this board at the moment and I suppose all my usual muckers are either at the Stella tennis event watching Dim Tim (lose again) or at Henly Regatta eating cucumber sandwiches (they wish,...NOT).

Anyway please feel free to just talk to yourself blast away and let it go on any company or subject you wish. Just wish Id thought of this one before.

cheers GF.

ExecLine - 30 Apr 2015 09:51 - 59384 of 59387

April has been such a very sunny month my E/W array of solar panels on the house roof has generated around 450 kWh.

Anyone else on here have them?

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Yes EL, we have had them installed and they have been generating very well, if your house is in the right area/conditions then fitting them is a no brainer!

I don't have solar at the moment EL.

Have problems making the figs work.

If I may, a few questions.


How big is your array, and what did it cost to install?

Same questions to you Stan.

ComRes’s telephone poll for the Mail & ITV has topline figures of

CON 35%, LAB 35%, LDEM 7%, UKIP 11%, GRN 6%

http://news.sky.com/story/1475012/tories-ahead-of-labour-by-five-points-poll

Tories Ahead Of Labour By Five Points -



The Conservative Party is leading Labour by five points, the latest poll suggests.

With one week to go until the election, the monthly Ipsos MORI survey for the Evening Standard newspaper suggests the Tories are on 35% with Labour trailing on 30%.

It shows a reversal of fortunes for the two main parties compared to the previous Ipsos MORI poll on 16 April, which suggested Labour had a two-point lead.

The latest survey - conducted between 26 and 28 April - suggests the Lib Dems climbed to 8%, up one point from last month's poll, while UKIP remained unchanged on 10%.

The Greens also remained steady on 8%.

Max, Ours are 3.85 KW. 12 panels cost £5,350 including Inverter.

We did have the scaffolding already up for other work up so you will have to add that on. Say £500 approx.

We went for the more robust Norwegian panels that cope better with the heat and cold extremes that we will expect in the future, the extremes will not affect the generating output of these panels.

ED. Panels are made by Rec.

All the polls bar one with the BBC website give the Tories a small lead.....ITV give Labour the lead.....(one poll)....

Another reason to live in the south

Average life expectancy in some parts of England will exceed 90 in little more than a decade's time, according to new research.

The forecast is greater than the official figure from the Office of National Statistics and will put pensions and health services under enormous strain, the scientists warn.

The most comprehensive analysis of its kind suggests the rich will enjoy the greatest life spans in 2030, with people in affluent southern areas living at least eight years longer than those in deprived parts of the North of England and South Wales - greater than the differences in life expectancy between the UK and Vietnam.

Yeah everyone move to the South or more specifically the South East cos' as we know there's plenty of room there -):

What Solar set up have you got EL?

There is plenty of room here. The entire population of the world could get into a space only slightly larger than the Isle of Wight.

Stan,

Check it out here: http://enlighten.enphaseenergy.com/pv/public_systems/pSSz431128/legacy/graph/days

Each black solar panel is fitted with its own Enphase Micro-Inverter. Each micro-inverter sends a continual wireless read-out to an Enphase 'Enlighten' receiver and this is connected to the Internet. This allows me to monitor the individual panel performance (ie. is it working or not and if so how well?) and Enphase kindly put up on the internet a 'world wide' map of all their customer installations.

Actually, if you start out at http://enlighten.enphaseenergy.com/ you can then drill down to my installation from the all of the installations worldwide on their map of the whole of the world.

If you don't have micro-inverters but just have one single inverter, then if either:

one solar panel packs in
or
the single inverter packs in

then absolutely NO electricity generation takes place at all.

Solar panels generate DC. An inverter converts the DC electricity generated to AC so that itcan be either:

used by the house
or
sent out to the mains

Tell me who I should vote for, I have the choice of either UKIP or the Greens. I am in John Bercow's (speaker) constituency so main parties not standing against him by tradition. I am not going to vote for Bercow!

The only thing to admire about Bercow is his oratory skill.

Out of the two of them, which party are you leaning towards yourself?

No need to tell us why unless you want to.

Now I know you are not a lefty, so IMHO, if push comes to shove, the Greens might more easily do a deal with the Tories than would UKIP.

But the Greens are a load of nutters. So I would go for UKIP.

Are the solar panels cost effective. All the reports I have seen suggest they are not. What is the payback period vs installion/maintenance costs.

Execline; I am a die hard Tory but last time I did vote for UKIP as Farage stood against Bercow, this was my protest vote, shame I can't do half a vote for both parties this time !

H/S see my post 393, The key to cost effective generation is the position of the house and roof on which the panels are to be fitted to the Sun, South or South West is best, also shading is fundamental as that will rule out you having them if you have a lot of shading.

Having said that, panels are developing at such a pace that I believe shading will not be such a problem in the future.

You can do a search to see which areas of the Country get the best Sun, The South West comes out very well.

You must of been reading the wrong reports H/S to have come to that conclusion.

B/S, if it's a choice between the Greens and the Kippers then the Greens are light years ahead of anything the Kippers have to offer and have been doing so very successfully in Scandinavia for many years.

H/S Pay back for us was said to be about 7 years but having used ours for about 3 months we are confident of a 6 to 5 year pay back then it's 14/15 years of pure profit... As I say they are a no brainer if you can fund the up front outlay and are in a favourable place.