Solar Panels

Coo-ool, that is badass.

We used to wonder why crude oil storage tank roof drains got blocked by dead rabbits at a place I used to work at until we observed how seagulls killed them, picked them up and flew up to a great height above concrete and dropped them, sometimes they got dropped on the crude tank roof and washed into the roof drains

 

Who do you really work for

 

You’ve blown my cover now. And you know what that means.....

 

It was the MiB sunglasses that gave you away oh, and the hat

 

An assassin always has to blend in and wearing a bright red trilby never fails to achieve that

 

So we bought our bungalow 18mths ago and it came with 16 solar panels, crucially they are an owned system and not one of those “you get free solar and electric, we scoop the feed in tariff” arrangements.
Oh and Barclays said nothing about the structural side of the install?

the system is about 10yrs old, so installed during the good days when you actually got a decent gov tariff. It’s not perfect as the roof side is south/west facing and it’s also a shallow pitch but we still get around £1800 a year from it.

I believe now the feed in tariffs are woeful it takes around 25yrs to recoup your investment, by which time the system is end of life? although that changes slightly I guess with the new gov green grant they are offering, I’ve also no idea what a solar install costs nowadays?
But the fact that a lot of the solar companies jacked it in when the gov tariff dried up I guess that tells you something?

 

For interest, my weather station has a solar energy measuring thing (not sure how accurate it is) which has shown a maximum of 600 W/m2 but is usually a lot less. South facing with no shade

 

You've got yourself an electric boiler..... don't expect any miracles.
£1 worth of electric IN and £1 worth of hot water out.
Gas would be 25% of the price and so would an air or ground sourced heat pump.

Can I pop round and show (sell) you these magic beans, only £2000 each, but think of the savings in the long run - Free Beans.

 

Typical UK mortgage/insurance shite. They want to charge more for anything that they can.
Solar panels weigh very little. 6 inches of snow weighs 20 times as much.

 

To be honest we never did it for financial gain it was just to get a ‘warm and fuzzy’ feeling that we were doing something, that said we reckon it will have paid for itself within 18 months to 2 years time. We’re on the 16 pence tariff and have a device called an i-boost fitted so any electricity produced gets used by the house and any surplus gets diverted to the hot water system before being fed to the national grid. We also get paid for anything we produce that gets fed Back into the grid. During the summer our electricity bill is minimal but when the intensity of the sun reduces we make very little electricity.
our inverter has a great app which shows us how much we’re producing, and how much we’re consuming and we aim to use everything we produce so if you have the time to get organised as long as the suns out you end up buying in zero electricity during sunny days.
overall though in answer to your question we have no regrets.

 

absolutely no worries, it was all installed by a contractor to EDF, as already pointed out the panels weigh bugger all, the inverter is mounted in the loft out of the way so basically other than having the panels washed off every 18 months or so its all ‘fit and forget’.

 

I asked my architect/urban designer girlf about this and she said that while modern solar panels are lightweight, older ones are a fair bit heavier. However, more importantly, it’s not so much the weight pressing down on the roof that’s the issue, but the fact that if a gust of wind catches panels which have fixings that have deteriorated, they can act like sails and put an awful lot of stress on whatever they’re attached to (presumably the roofing timbers?). Plus, they might blow off and land on somebody who has injurylawyers4u on speed dial.