We’ve settled into our new house now and as its directly South facing it makes sense to look into Solar PV panels. We have a local MCS firm coming round next week to survey the house and give us a quote. So far they reckon a typical 4kW array of 16 panels:
Canadian ones – £5799
Sharp ones – £6300
Panasonic – £8300

The first two are appartently “identical” and the Panasonic are about 3% more efficient /m2.
Over the past 13 months we’ve used 3060kWh of Electricity.
Using the Energy Saving Trust website it looks like a no brainer if we are to stay here for more than 8 years, which is very likely.

Any thing I should keep in mind or questions to ask when the surveyor comes round?

Just getting quotes now – I have a complicated roof that I can’t use as much of though. Is the rest of your house pretty good – you need an EPC as a pre-requisite for the feed in tariff I think. I guess you’ll have this if you’ve just moved. Have you looked at a voltage regulator too? Steps the voltage down to 220V like most of Europe and saves c10%.

Can you make use of the ‘free’ power during the day. Or will you both get home after 6pm and bang everything on?

Yep. Installed Feb 21st 2012. Generated so far 3450kWH.

3.99kW installation via 21 panels (Upsolar) spread across a south west / south east roof slopes . Sunny Boy Invertor – £7800 install cost.

Can you make use of the ‘free’ power during the day

You get paid the FIT on what you generate, irrespective where it goes, and then you get paid a nominal rate (1.55p/unit) for what you supply to the grid. So if you use it, you lose 1.55p/unit, so it’s cheap. However, many meters can’t measure what you feed back, and for the present, if you have one of those, they just assume that you feed back half of what you generate. In that case, what you use is effectively free.

It’s better to use as much of the electricity you generate as possible. Set washing machines, dishwashers etc. to come on during the day. That can speed up the payback quite a lot.

Had it fitted last year – almost to the day and have produced just under 3000 kwH in year. We are on the old tariffs which is good! I work from home, so we try to use power during the day. I also bought a monitor to show how much power you are generating and how much you are using. You can get obsessive about turning off stuff!

Greybeard , you get paid for it going to the grid regardless of whether it gets there or not. There’s no way (unless you have an export meter) to measure if it goes to the grid or not.

I run a renewables installation company, the prices quoted are reasonable, depending on the company offering them – the Panasonic are not worth the extra in my opinion – and I’m a Panasonic premium installer!so should be pushing them!

As for questions to ask…….

Are they MCS accredited – the Nswer will be yes, and that leads to some fun with the guy, depending whether he’s a salesman or a proper surveyor…..

Who will do the wind load calculations? Get him to show them to you. If its a salesman, they won’t be able to.
Who will do the structural survey? Ditto above.

The regulations for MCS accredited companies to follow have been tightened recently and you must get both done, or your FIT payments could be jeapodised.

MCS standard

Is the MCS standard, the document referred to for the design of the system is a couple of hundred pages long!

We charge 6-7.5k depending on the install, so the prices quoted seem reasonable so long as the company does a proper job. Check if they subcontract the installation – in which case you are dealing with a sales company, not the installer. Check how long they have been going – many PV sales companies are6-12 months old and fold as soon as they get enough complaints only to emerge next day under a new name to start again – ask for reference sites.

Ask them what modelling they use to ensure compatibility of the panels/inverters – not all combinations are efficient.

If you are in Scotland, I could offer a quote, if not, feel free to contact me to review the quotes if you want further advice – email in profile.
HTH

Also the EST have some good advice….

Finding an installer

The house EPC is D, so we qualify at the current 15.44p/kWh

Smudger666, thanks for the pointers. They appear to be installers and have offered to arrange visits to some of their installations if I want, subject to getting consent from the other side. I may contact you once they’ve been, thanks for the offer.

Unfortunately we’ll both be at work during the day 4 days per week but thanks for the pointers on timing dishwasher and washing machine cycles during the day!

Had our 4kw system fitted in Dec 2011 in a split East/West configuration and it’s produced 3250 so far.
It’s not perfect but it’s quite cool. Our live power generation can be viewed here

Edukator will be along in a minute to inform you that you won’t see any new installations nowadays.

Oh…wait…

Sharkbait, brilliant! I can have a look at other peoples set ups local to me!