It may seem a bit run of the mill for someone to say, get solar, when its a solar business saying so, but really you can save money. We are a family business and not for profit and you may buy else where so we are not trying to upsell.
Solar system come in a range of sizes and budgets and if your wanting to cut your bills its really simple. Solar can be used to off set and that is what will happen in winter for sure, but when it comes to saving money, its all about what you can or do put in. Our target Return is 1 year or 4 years. so that means unlike many other business flogging solar, you’re not stuck paying the system back for 10+ years, as it is NO value until its paid back.
An affordable solar kit
For less than £450 ( kind of) You can step into solar with a 2kw system, it wont blow the socks off your bills, but it would be the most easy option and it looks nice.
What’s with the kit?
DC Isolator,
DC cable.
2kw inverter (grid tied string)
2 500w solar panels.
You can add two more 500w solar panels, this brings the total to £605. We also didn’t include mounting things for the panels, so you may want to work out what or where you want to put those panels.
Just because the inverter is 2kw you do not need to power it with 2kw. And you may find it a bit of a waste of effort and here is why. Grid tied systems will export the power that they produce and you do not use, therefore you’re giving away power, just look at the meter current power use and see what you’re using.
The Catch.
Due to the law, which some may say is just another way to get money out of people. you cannot install your own circuit in your home. – AKA you cant wire it in. Well you can and get building control to come and inspect it for a fee. Or you have a registered electrician install the new circuit which will consist of a cable, an isolator and breaker (RCBO) in your fuse box. You may want to check the prices.
What sort of money will I be saving with solar?
Saving with grid tied solar is only based on what you can use rather than what you produce. for example you produce 1000w of power but only use 500w, then you are only saving 500w, which is about 22 pence per hour.
A 1kw solar array will make around 5.5kwh of power per day, maybe up to 8kwh. the panels we put with this are bi facial, so will have higher power than the sticker. With the price of power being 26.5pence per kwh, you could save £2.12 per day Thats around £515 Per year.
The return in this solar kit would be 450/2.12 = 212 days or 339 days on the lower end of the power, We would class a solar year as 275 days, so you would be looking over a year on the lower end of the power production.
Therefore this kit means that it hits our target of paying for itself in 1 year, it will be 1 year 4 months in real life. Of course this depends on you using the power it makes.
When we and the extra panels, bringing the solar array power to 2kw+, we make around £4 per day, making the return 151 days or a annual saving around £1000
What will I be missing out on, and is there an upgrade path?
Grid tied solar tends to over produce power during the day and its not saved for you to use later in a battery. The type of inverters like this ( grid tied) do not support batteries, so you cannot store the extra power that it makes.
To step up, you would need an additional £627 for a decent hybrid inverter, and you would also need to think about batteries. We have 15kwh batteries for £1650, so as you can see it is a jump. and you would be looking at the 4 year return. You could upgrade the inverter one year, and add the battery another time with the money that you would be saving.
I hope thats helped someone grasp a really easy and cost effective way to have solar installed.
Our more advanced Solar 2kw kit in the shop
The big dent in the bill.
To really make the most out of solar it has to be a power system with a battery, we have one of the lowest cost batteries in the country and price solar kits. The trick here is making all your spring to autumn energy price £0.00
To help make this happen you need to consider where you are using power, old tech can use a lot of power meaning that while you can make solar power, its a good idea to look at reducing the power you use. The main reason for this is when we have winter weather solar is not going to pick up the bill.
You will either have your own generator which will use fuel or a cheap rate grid connection, this can amount to £0.04 kwh but is likely to be around £0.07- £0.12 kwh together with any standing charges (year round).
With no grid standing charge you would save around £187, but how will that effect the bill in winter?
Big array means some power for winter, but you may need to have a bigger battery.
Storing power to use from an inverter is one way to keep the lights on, but bigger battery means bigger costs and that array size needs to work for you even on darker days.
Just to keep it real for per Kw of solar you could make 65watts of power for around 3 hours a day Unless you live in a modern home, then it is going to be typical that you will use between 15-20kwh a day in your home, therefore a generator is essential or grid feed to charge the battery. If you want to suck power into the battery then the battery charges the fastest between 0 and 80%, This time really is around 2.2 hours, but will depend on the charge current.
To fast charge using our 15kwh batteries you can charge at 120 amps, That’s about 6.1Kw Once of our bigger single inverters has a charge current of 190 amps, which is 9.7 kw However your more than likely going to have two batteries which a max charge current of 240amps 12.2kw but can also charge at 24,800watts which exceeds almost every homes capacity in any event with a charge in just over 1 hour. For the most part most people will not go bigger than a 13kw generator for a 3 hour run time, and if you find the generator data it will tell you the costs, don’t forget to look up the current price of Red diesel. It is likely that you will be running a 8kw in most cases.
The cost of a kit is in the range of around £8,000 plus gen. Your system should run for around 10 years without issue and would have a design life of around 16 years. So the yearly power bill excluding fuel is between £800 and £500. It is odd to think that the current standing charge is about Half that price before you get into paying for KWH, but Im guessing no one is paying less than £800 per year for their power bill in any event.
For most people looking at the energy used in the home is a key for bill reduction. its not about making power your self, but where you can save power.
Shower tend to use the most power at around 8kw a few minutes can add up, for example a 10 minute shower costs £0.35.
TVs can use a good amount of power, our older TV which is a LED uses around 170watts, while the power load is lower if its on for 7 hours amounts to £0.315 per day or £2.20 per week. Our newer tv uses 50w in comparison.
I sure I do not have to tell you about lights, a 60w light uses 60watts of power and there are LED strip lights which replace tube lights going to 9w from 120w makes a bit of a difference. It is the smaller differences that add up around the home that can make a difference to the power that you will use over the day, weeks and year that gives you that terrible bill.
If you are consider a dual rate power system then the low cost option here is to ensure that all day every day is cheap rate. While many can add solar, having a energy storage system (ESS) can help you charge during the lowest rates and then use that power during peak rates. We have two systems that do this which are the 3 and 5Kva Systems from Victron which we paired with our batteries. The system is designed to be upgradable and affordable at the same time. so pick your budget and start saving.
Read more on these links:
5kva – 15kwh system
3Kva – 5kwh system.
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