Opinions on solar panels, please

Spreckly · Post by **Spreckly** » 18 Nov 2014, 16:56

Received a phone call today from Gr..n En....gy, touting for business. We have a south facing 1930's semi, which I am not prepared to pepper with solar panels, but the chap said they can now be installed on a garage roof or on the ground.

They are coming tomorrow morning to inspect, but I am certain the cost will be prohibitive, and that we will not be around long enough to reap the benefit of raiding our nest egg.

But I would be interested to read what any Laners think, and we do have a tiny one to boost our caravan battery.

Jon · Post by **Jon** » 18 Nov 2014, 18:28

Been looking into this myself recently.

You can go on or off grid. If you go on grid, then you will lose power when there is a power cut, so you are not really self sufficient in that sense...on the other hand, you can sell back any excess power generated to the grid.

Cost should be about £5000. This sort of effort http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/4-kw-Solar-PV ... 4adef42e64
Takes about 8 years to get your money back before you break even and then start earning nominal amounts from it (as a rough estimate including what you use and may sell back per annum).

The younger you are and the longer you plan to stay in the place, the more sense it makes.

Also, solar panels are butt ugly and do not let anyone convince you otherwise. I wouldn't buy a house with them plastered all over the roof. If you can stick them out of sight in a spare field, great. If not...
And with land costing about 10k an acre in this country, simply selling off the spare field instead may be the preferred option...

But that's just from a half day of research...

Spreckly · Post by **Spreckly** » 19 Nov 2014, 11:56

Jon - thank you for your reply. After much discussion, we have cancelled the surveyor's visit. We feel that the money we would be forking out is better in our savings, given our ages!

silverback · Post by **silverback** » 27 Nov 2014, 22:34

The other point to take into consideration is, if you have them fitted to your roof, then make sure your roof is sound!, as trying to fix a leak after they have been installed can be costly, especially if they all have to come off again!, then back on, not cheap!!. }hairout{

Spreckly · Post by **Spreckly** » 28 Nov 2014, 12:53

Thankfully we had a new roof three years since! Had we gone ahead with the panels, we would have had them on our garage (recently re-felted roof), there was no way I would have had them on the front of our house roof.