Solar PV --- so anyway ...

[Another John]

So anyway lads (and lasses?) --- since the original thread has diverged and meandered in very interesting ways from JimK's original question ...

Where does this fit in? [1]

to this, EoN (who happen to be our gas/elec suppliers, and I'm pretty pleased with them, touch wood) will do me the job for £99. So does this mean: "Pay us £99, we'll give you some cheap electricity, and we, and our partners, will take most of the proceeds." ???

Or to put it another way, "Lend us your roof, guv!"

John

[1] I had googled for this *before* seeing Jim's question, as a result of the happy news that (surprise surprise) fuel bills are going up by *20%* this year (10% just ain't enough any more). (put that in your inflation basket and massage it, Mr Cameron)

[tim....]

Yep (though it's we'll give you some free electricity)

WTP?

tim

[Another John]

hh :-D

[larkim]

So I pay =A399. They get to generate (say) 3000kwh from my roof over the year. I get to benefit from what ever of those kwh I happen to be in the house at the time to use (given that I go to work, I'm mostly away in the day time).

They maintain the solar PV kit, I give them the right to have space on my roof (which binds future purchasers of my house) for 25 years, and they take the FIT proceeds. I get the smug (or not so smug) feeling of being "green" and get slightly cheaper electricity (which will without a doubt cover the =A399 layout).

Apart from the 25 year commitment, I would have thought that they'd get quite a good take up on this. Clearly if you've got the cash to invest in PV kit for yourself, the economics seem to make it a no- brainer at the moment, but if you've not (and you don't want to saddle yourself with a long term finance arrangement to fund the kit) then I would have thought there would be a good take up of this.

Matt

[Another John]

Thanks for that Matt: now I understand it all thoroughly!

Hmmm ... I wonder what estate agents will say, in about 5 years time, about 25-year leases on part of my roof .... hmmm... thinks....

John

[tim....]

So I pay £99. They get to generate (say) 3000kwh from my roof over the year. I get to benefit from what ever of those kwh I happen to be in the house at the time to use (given that I go to work, I'm mostly away in the day time).

They maintain the solar PV kit, I give them the right to have space on my roof (which binds future purchasers of my house) for 25 years, and they take the FIT proceeds. I get the smug (or not so smug) feeling of being "green" and get slightly cheaper electricity (which will without a doubt cover the £99 layout).

Apart from the 25 year commitment, I would have thought that they'd get quite a good take up on this. Clearly if you've got the cash to invest in PV kit for yourself, the economics seem to make it a no- brainer at the moment, but if you've not (and you don't want to saddle yourself with a long term finance arrangement to fund the kit) then I would have thought there would be a good take up of this.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

I have the money and my sister has the roof, so we looked at this.

Her roof is slightly marginal in terms of the direction it is facing but overall the installer estimated a ROI of about 7.5%.

I decide it wasn't a good enough return to counter the risk of the installer over-estimating.

tim

[Man at B&Q]

Why not install storage heaters?

MBQ

[cynic]

SNIP

This spring has perhaps been sunnier than the long term average but that makes the income for my first 6 month period better and claws a bigger than anticipated chunk from the capital outlay. Add to that the benefit of the FIT being increased from 41.3 to 43.3 pence per unit on April 1st and the publicised increase the energy companies are going to hit everyone with in the near future and all I can say is I am glad I took the step when I did!

[David WE Roberts]

*Why not install storage heaters?

*MBQ

Probably only get enough charge into them to supply heat through the night during mid-summer. You certainly couldn't rely on them to heat the house in mid-winter.

[The Natural Philosopher]

You could if you built a seriously big one.

However on cold days I need about 10KW continuous to keep the house warm that means 30KW to recharge in the wee small 8 hours of cheap rate plus

10KW to keep the house warm..

so I.d be pulling 40KW at night.

Or around 40A. That's on the limit for a domestic supply.

I'd need a heatbank about the size of a car..probably multiple immersion heaters in a car sized pond of water, in a concrete shell in several inches of polystyrene, buried in the garden.

I did calculate that if that tank were of similar area to the whole house, and about 2-3 meters deep, you could store enough in it to keep the house warm for a month or so.

It' almost feasible I reckon. use heatpumps to maintain a huge mass of water or concrete at a steady temp that can be piped around (water) or blown around (concrete) to heat the house..

If I were to do an 'eco house' that's probably where I would go..make a huge massively insulated swimming pool in the basement, and use that to pump heat in and out.

[Bob Minchin]

Plus the fact that you cannot separate the output from the PV system from the grid input so that every time a cloud crosses the sun, the storage heaters will be using grid power.

It is quite difficult to automate a system to draw only the power produced by PV and not extra from the grid. If the PV system does not 'see' the grid to get voltage and phase information continuously, the inverter will shut down.

Bob

[Andy Dingley]

Simplest way for a solar-powered storage heater is a trombe wall.

[Steve Firth]

Ah yes, I remember those, the sight of nets of logs hanging from branches in the autumn is one to quicken the heart. Of course the twenty five years needed to come to maturity is a bind.

[Chris J Dixon]

However, you don't detect flow direction, so you still can't tell if there is net import or export, simply that they don't balance.

Chris

[hugh]

Headline in DT today Solar panel firms "using dodgy sales tactics" according to Which? Returns overestimated taking no account of roof orientation or shade etc etc. No differentiation between counties with regard to hours of sunshine, so Cumbria is treated the same as Devon and so on.

[Bill Taylor]

Ex double glazing salesmen do seem to be getting into solar, but the MCS SAP rating that registered installers are obliged to provide does not take into account location, so blame OFGEM for that.

[hugh]

Yes that point was made in the DT report - but that doesn't stop an honest salesperson pointing that out.