I’ve been offered a ground-mounted 4kW solar system by a friend who is moving house soon. I’m with Octopus for electricity and it seems they still require an MCS cert for their export tariffs. It seems the only option if I want to get paid for export would be to try and convince an installer to install and sign the system off for me. I can’t imagine there will be many installers interested. Does anyone have any suggestions?!

Cheers,

if I want to get paid for export would be to try and convince an installer to install and sign the system off for me.

almost impossible – unless you get a Bent MCS installer who feels like taking a massive risk on their MCS certification.

How ever if the system was cheap enough – id take it and have it fitted without MCS cert forget exporting and just get your bills down .

If it wasnt cheap enough to warrent that – then id buy new with warrenty and MCS certification.

Hardly worth bothering for the export tariff on a system that size, it’s a few £ a month….

Hardly worth bothering for the export tariff on a system that size, it’s a few £ a month….

85 quid a year at 4pence a kw/h without battery storage.

Without battery storage – most of the high payment export tarriffs such as flux are out of bounds to you as itll cost you more than youll make without being able to control your export/use timing.

Its now called the Smart Export Guarantee (SEG) and the only guarantee is that the export rate must be greater than zero pence per kWh. Basically the grid don’t want your spare electricity, they are having no trouble generating it themselves. Its a competitive market having said that and rates seem to be between 2p and 15p per kWh but many companies require you to sign up to one of their supply packages as well to get the export rate so the highest export rate may not offer the best import rate.

Don’t forget that even without MCs you must do a g98 dno notification

Its a competitive market having said that and rates seem to be between 2p and 15p per kWh

It’s not really though is it?

They happily charge you 50p per kWh (capped at 35p) for a kWh, but at the same moment in time, will only pay a few pence for your export.

It’s a regulated quasi-monopoly with some very bizarre and perverse rules.

Eg as a generator and I notify NG I’m taking my generator offline at peak time, which then causes a crunch in supply. Yet I can immediately tender to supply during said crunch time, using the very same generator I’ve just threatened to take offline. Only by threatening to take it offline first I push the the price up, which I then bid for.

Its a competitive market having said that and rates seem to be between 2p and 15p

Assume your not UK based then ?

Octopus’ fixed feed in tariff is 15p per kWh. Their dynamic one goes higher, approx 20p per kWh at peak times.

Octopus’ fixed feed in tariff is 15p per kWh. Their dynamic one goes higher, approx 20p per kWh at peak times.

It wasn’t so much the values more the reference to it being a competitive market.

Yes I’m uk based and the rates I quoted came straight from a Google search of UK SEG rates. The fact that there are many rates available over a wide range shows it’s competitive even for the small amounts we are talking about. At the end of the day you don’t pay out for solar PV to make cash exporting it, you do it to reduce your own grid import usage so anything you manage to export is a bonus and costs you zero to do.

You will also need planning permission for that size of ground mount array.

They happily charge you 50p per kWh (capped at 35p) for a kWh, but at the same moment in time, will only pay a few pence for your export.

But they supply that power on demand 24/7. It costs for that. If they could sell you power only when they had a surplus of cheap wind they would charge you less.

But they supply that power on demand 24/7. It costs for that. If they could sell you power only when they had a surplus of cheap wind they would charge you less.

Which is fine, they could just link the export tariff to the spot market price, so if there is a surplus on the grid, you get bugger all, but at peak times you get a fair market value.