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.

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.

The last party to vote for are the Greens with their crazy policies. As Bercow will get anyway, you may as well spoil your ballot. Mind you, UKIP are just as crazy.

The use of solar panels must also depend on how long you are going to stay in your property. If it not considerably more than 6 years, you are wasting your time. There is also the interest to be earned from putting the capital costs in a long term interest bearing investment. You can get a good rate if you commit the money for 7 years or more.

solar panels have never worked for me, we face east west and I would expect us to move within the next 10. Instead i replaced all windows and doors, this was a 100 house site and we were the last, windows and doors were draughty and guarantee was well gone. we are now having our conservatory roof replaced with a tile and insulation roof, so a room which is comfortable only in part of spring and autumn can be now used much more, gone will be too hot in summer and cold in winter. (I hope)

My installation cost £6,500 and was for 16 Canadian Solar all-black CS6P-250M solar panels, each fitted with an Enphase M250 Microinverter. Each microinverter sends a wireless output signal to an Enphase 'Envoy' Communications Gateway sited on a lower shelf of a side table in the lounge. This communicates directly to the Internet in an extremely comprehensive manner.

The installation comprised an array of 10 panels fitted to the West side and an array of 6 panels fitted to the East side of the house roof. Each array has its own isolator. The AC feeds then meet at a further isolator at the Generation Meter, which has been sited at the side of the Consumer Unit inside the house. From the Generation Meter there is a feed to the house and also a feed to the grid near the Electricity Meter. The Electricity Meter cannot run backwards so if we don't use what we generate, then it goes out to the National Grid.

We receive £0.1438 per kWh generated.
We also receive £0.0477 per kWh exported. Exports are calculated at 50% of generation.
We also receive a further 20% VAT on top of Export amount.

Thus far we have had payments for the 3rd and 4th quarters for the last financial year,
In total, these amount to: £180.52 and are made up as follows:

A. 1047kWh at £0.1438 = £150.56
B. 523.5 kWh at £0.0477 = £24.97
C. 20% VAT on B. = £4.99

April is 450kWh (Generated thus far)
May 500 kWh (est)
June 550 kWh (est)
July 600 kWh (est)
Aug 600 kWh (est)
Sep 550 kWh (est)
6 months sub total = 3250 kWh (est)

So Total for a Full Year of 12 months = 1047 + 3250 = say, 4,300 kWh.

Payments will be:

A. 4300 x £0.1438 = £618.34
B. 2150 x £0.0477 = £102.55
C. 20% VAT on B. = £20.51

Total Tax Free Income = £741.40

Annnual Percentage Return = £741.40/£6500 x 100 = 11.4%

I calculate the payback time will be around 9 years. Not fantastic I know, but the annual return is simply stupendous and a no-brainer when compared with other low risk investments.

The installation also focuses the mind somewhat on using and wasting (or not) electricity. There are therefore other indirect savings.

My installers were an utter cowboy outfit. Thus I could not recommend them as a business at all. I consider myself to be a wide thinking and expert buyer and I was cheated in several ways by a man who was just an outright liar. However, I am quite happy with my installation now because I did get all the crappy work, which he was going to fob me off with, and other of his elements of downright cheating too, put right. I put matters right using my own resources and knocked my costs of doing so of his bill.

In the doing of my installation I did get to meet several good guys. I have noted their details too.

In this business, warranties for solar panels mean absolutely nothing, IMHO. You have to make sure that these are bloody good ones to start with. Similarly, with the microinverters. Use good, reputable, reliable components.

Just imagine the scaffolding costs to change one solar panel or one microinverter. Let's say £350 average. THIS SCAFFOLDING COST IS ALWAYS DOWN TO YOU IN THE EVENT OF A CLAIM. SO WOULD YOU CLAIM? It is going to cost you £350 to swap one £150 solar panel and/or one £20-30 Microinverter. YOU WOULD SIMPLY RUN WITH THE FAULT. The payback value isn't worth the cost of the repair.

So, IMHO, what one needs by way of an installation, is the type of installation which I had done. Not just one single Inverter for the whole job lot, but using a Microinverter for each solar panel. Using one single inverter for thew whole job indirectly means the whole lot goes down if you get one faulty solar panel. If one solar panel goes down then the lot goes down and you have to get the scaffolders in. The single inverter would be sited in the roof space so it should be replaceable without the need for scaffolding but there would be zero generation until it got fixed/swapped. None of the others would feed through the faulty single inverter.

With a Microinverter for each panel, if one of these fails or the pertinent panel associated with it fails or underperforms, then generation continues.

If you have a single inverter system, everything performs only according to the maximum of the worst panel in the array. Shadow on one panel reduces the whole lot down to the generation output of that shadowed panel. This is not so with a Microinverter system.

The installation needs at the very least to be carried out by a team who has in it:

1. A good, careful, neat and safety-concious Roofer.
2. A good, neat, concientious, thorough and non-cheating Electrician. And one who can legitimately Certify the job on completion so the customer can get properly connected up to the Feed In Tariff and be paid out from it.
3. Neat, careful Scaffolders.

Concentrate on the strength of the Installation team and the quality of the Panels and Microinverters.

Just don't let some 'lying-bastard-run-scumbag-outfit' fit cheap undersized cable down the side of wall from the house roof, flapping in the breeze, without any isolators to the system.

eg. Without even asking or discussing anything about it, my bastard boss installer even swapped the solar panels from what we had originally agreed upon. His electrician brother, who was the 'foil' for obtaining and running the firm's registration, came and did a bit but fell out with him and walked off the job. Thus this left him without any properly qualified and certified electrician on site or even attached to the firm. I could tell you a whole lot more about this cowboy outfit sort of stuff.

Just make sure you get THREE GOOD GUYS as above and you'll get a good installation and be laughing instead of losing a fair amount of sleep.

Obviously good insulation is the key in every house as not loosing heat means you don't have to use fuel to provide heat! Most people forget how much money they are loosing by not insulating properly.

Even if you leave a property the "FITS" benefit go's with you so you don't lose by moving, as I say it's a no brainer, only a fool would argue against Solar generation in the right area.

Excellent news
You haven't deducted interest lost on the £6,500. You can get more than 5% (in fact up to 7%) for investing your money for long periods. That is between £325 and £425.

Haystack.

True. That was a trap and deliberate mistake set for you.

But it is in a sense, a bit of a fallacy. The best return I could find at the time for a low risk was around 4% gross. The fallacy is complicated because that theoretical rate can go up and down too.

You cannot value the 'look' of the high tech black panels on the roof.

Neither can you value the 'balls' of the buyer who had it done and lives in the house beneath that roof.

Some of my neighbours don't fit exterior lights, etc, at Christmas. I think some of them can't afford to. Even if they could afford it, some of them haven't got a clue how to do it. Even if they have got a clue, some of them just haven't got the practical skill to do it for themselves. IYGWIM? Sorta kinda.

Stable

I did similarly withour conservatory roof. I had a Guardian roof system fitted.

We now have a usable 'temperate all year round Sun Room' - as against a 'roasting hot' or 'freezing cold' conservatory.