Does solar save you money?
Yes ~
Is solar Green?
Eventually, you have to offer set the carbon and impact of making the solar panels, and getting them installed.
Will solar reduce my electricity bill?
Yes, but there are things to consider.
Will Solar meet my energy needs?
Yes and No. The UK is feast and famine. but there is some from of compromise and even a Offset to consider.
Is solar value for money?
Not always. but its getting better.
Is Solar energy free?
Silly, No you have to buy the hardware, but you could say it was free energy after you paid back the costs of having solar, that’s all down to the ROI ( return on investment).
Let us talk shop…
When Someone is trying to sell you something they tend to gloss over the facts and maybe bend things a little, if they tell you what you want to hear, it is fairly common and they are there to line their pockets with your hard earned money. But in some cases, most sellers and installers don’t actually know what they are doing regardless of how many bits of paper or paid memberships and groups they have or are in.
So here is the down to roots info you want.
Solar does NOT meet all your power needs, its no magic pill. You cant install solar and never have a bill from the grid. This is because MOST homes are tiny boxes and cannot fit what we need to make it work with our lives.
Secondly, this is not Sparta but England and the weather has a dull grey sky far too often. This reduces solar power for around 90 days of the year.
COST
Trying to make solar cost effective is hard work, for decades Solar just did not work at all. There is no point is saving a grid bill of £1500 per year, to spend £1500 per year on paying back solar. The only way that would make any sense at all is for the carbon off set. or what’s known as “green credentials”
it took a long time to make it work, and this is where we sit in the market.
Green Credentials.
Solar panels can offset a significant amount of carbon emissions compared to grid-supplied power. Studies have shown that solar panels can reduce carbon emissions by 50-90%. The manufacturing process for solar panels can have some environmental impacts, but these are generally offset by the long-term benefits of using renewable energy. Research concluded concluded that a PV system can produce energy equivalent to the energy used for its manufacture within 1 to 4 years. Most PV systems have operating lives of up to 30 years or more.
Value. Like cost and savings.
People get confused with value cost and savings, if your looking at solar it is probably to lower your electrical bill. The value of solar is only the difference between how much is costs and how much you will save. You will see from our grid tied articles we say ” you only save what you can use”. This is because generally they are BAD Value. and I touched on the cost to saving above with the paying £1500 to save £1500. that’s no value at all.
Certain types of solar installations have difference values and they don’t always scale. For the most part people tend to not understand why I will ask for a detailed account of their power use. When are slogan says “making solar work for you” we mean that. They tell me they use 15Kwh a day, or 2000w.. its totally meaning less as it has no context at all.
Small solar value.
Solar that is good value is one that pays for itself in a year, this would be small solar installations.
The Lower the cost the faster the return, then the savings. for the most part that’s solar installations that are less than £500.
To work out any “value” you simply do the math, the cost of grid power and the cost of solar.
so here we will use £500 at £0.25kwh = 2000kwh.
This means that you would have to make, and use 2000kwh to reach zero.
We can give ourselves a ROI target of say 2 years. which means that you want 1000kwh per year.
If we have 850w of solar installed, and the math for this is around 1760kwh per year yield from the solar.
So we know that our ROI is over 1 year, annually we make around £440 in power, and the return is 415 days.
We can then roll on the lifetime which is roughly 15 years, gives us £6,100 savings.
BAD value.
The above good example, does not scale, these are grid tied and during the day is when the energy is made but are you there to use it? if you are not using the power your making it goes to the grid and the big company will profit from you. Anything above the base load, it generally going to be bad value.
Mid and Large Value.
While Grid tied is good on the smaller scale, when you want more and more savings, the cost will grow.
While Most companies will flog you with a ten year ROI we try to make that four years.
To make solar work for you, you will need to have a solar battery, this takes the extra power made by the solar and stores for use later, when the suns down.
Lets do some math so you can see how that works.
£2000 battery at £0.25kwh =8000kwh
a 15kwh battery will return the cost in 534 days ( 1.46 years)
When you add a battery, while its standalone ROI looks good, but your costs grow when you have to add solar to make this work. you would have to have 2.53kw of solar to support the battery.
That’s around £770 or 3080kwh. You then need to add more panels to manage the day time loads (usage) about 560kwh minimum, but its lightly to be three times this amount.
The yield here is 11,440kwh per year or £2,860. giving a base hardware ROI of just under 2 years.
By the time we add the rest of the hardware and installation this doubles the ROI.
However The EOL savings are £37,180.
We can see here the scale is -£10,100 some of the systems do not scale, The other issue here is the array size. This would be roughly the maximum solar array for a large house roof.
We also have the other considerations, such as weather, and even the roof alignments relative to the sun. all of which drain the savings over time and prolong the ROI.
The worst scale value has to be Micro inverters when you have 3 or more micro inverters. This is not the same when you have a larger micro inverter, such as the 1800w micro inverter with four panels. This tends to be on the cusp of value over a string inverter. So you do have a limited value of upgrading here; but on the flip side if you have a odd roof shape or shading then the value increases.
Micro inverters are AC. so you do not get the battery option from them, you would need to have an AC coupled battery, and these contain inverters to give you back the power that you stored. the total inverter power applies to both the micro inverters and the AC coupled battery to your limits on installation. Therefore careful thought needs to go into the upgrade path longer term with micro inverters.
Micro inverters Vs String inverter
THE BOTTOM LINE.
Solar works in the UK and as the prices have dropped, having solar is not as costly as you would think. You can off set your bill with solar and go small scale, this will give you good savings over its lifetime, there are points where this doesn’t make a good value option. Grid tied if you work from home or have a fairly high day base load at home. For the most part a home with solar and a battery are going to make the greatest of savings as you can shift the solar made in the day, to free power in the evenings from the battery. you must pick the correct battery and the correct inverters to make this work well.
With Massive savings from RenewSolar the ROI is reduced to a manageable 4 years rather than 10+ years. With returns over £30,000 solar makes a good investment, but its not going to meet your total needs year round. it certainly pays for itself and has some green credentials.
With careful planning your solar purchase can be just right for you and RenewSolar will make solar work for you.
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