There
are several offers around at present for the installation of
Solar PV modules on your home for £100 or even less. This
sounds like a fantastic offer, but be careful. The way this
offer works is that the company who fit the solar PV system
for you, take the Feed In Tariff (FIT) generation payments
and all you get is the savings in electricity usage costs.
There are a couple of problems with
this arrangement.
-
1. The
money saved on your electricity bill from installing a
domestic sized solar PV array is fairly modest. This is
partly because it is difficult to predict actual amount
saved, because the amount of electricity generated by a
Solar PV installation is affected by the orientation and
angle of the roof to which the panels are fitted. Also
it depends upon much of the electricity you normally use
is during daylight hours, i.e. when the solar panels are
generating.
As a very rough guide, a 1kW
system, roughly 4 to 5 panels (modules) fitted on a
South facing roof at an angle of 35 degrees will
generate approximately 860 kW hours in a year. If you
were to use 50% of the electricity generated, this would
save you approximately £43.00 (per year)
-
2. The more
important problem is that if you want to let someone
else use your roof for fitting their solar panels, you
are effectively entering into a lease for a section of
your roof and the air above it.
(see:
http://www.housingenergyadvisor.com/blog/obtaining-consent-of-a-lender-to-a-rent-a-roof-solar-pv-scheme-123/).
This may incur and annual charge to you, and if you have
a mortgage, you will need their permission to enter into
the lease. Also, it means if you want to sell your home,
the people buying it will have to take on the lease,
which may make selling your home more difficult than it
already is.
When you take these two issues into account,
it does make the offer for free, or very cheap solar PV,
seem less attractive. For example, the generating payments
for the Feed In Tariff in a system like the one described at
item 1 would amount to approximately £370.00 per
year!
In general, the cost of installing a solar PV
system will take about 10 years to pay back (less if
electricity prices continue to increase). So if you fit a
solar PV system, and after 10 years want to sell your home,
if the buyer doesn’t want the solar PV system, you can
remove it. Though why someone will not want to keep a system
which provides an indexed linked, tax free, income and
savings figure of approximately £420.00 per year, we don’t
know!!
Very cheap, or even free solar PV systems
might sound like a fantastic offer, but in all likely hood
they will benefit the people who install them, far more than
they will benefit the home owner.
We have to show a
potential client projected savings and income for a solar PV
installation and these are based on the governments Standard
Assessment Procedures (SAP) calculations set out within the
Building Regulations
For a free, no obligation quotation
for installation of a solar PV array, along with accurate
estimates of likely income and savings, please call 0161 437
2128 or see the other pages on our website for more
details..
