Here's a photo of the solar panels which were fitted to our roof today by Rayotec. They should provide us with 1kW electricity per hour in peak sunshine, but just around 100W per hour in horrible foggy weather like today. Tomorrow morning they will be grid connected, so any extra electricity we don't use will go back into the grid. With Southern Electricity giving us slightly more per unit than we pay for our electricity, there's still an incentive to use as little as we can. We expect the unit to just about cover our usage, over a yearly period. It cost around the same as having all our doors and windows replaced a few years ago and we're promised a similar length of service. So, we're just looking forward to the grand switching-on ceremony tomorrow morning!
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3 comments:
Did you consider solar heating panels at all? If so, what are the pros/cons compared to generating electricity? (I guess one factor is that you couldn't sell excess hot water to anyone!)
Hi @jt, yes we did - actually we had a combi boiler fitted a little while back, so that removed our hot-water tank! It also seems to me that it's more efficient to generate electricity... everything you generate can be used by *someone* on the grid, whereas if you generate excess hot water, it is just wasted in your tank. Lastly, the time you produce most hot water is in the summer, which tends to be the time you need it least.
Did you consider solar heating panels at all? If so, what are the pros/cons compared to generating electricity? (I guess one factor is that you couldn't sell excess hot water to anyone!)
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