We finally had a response from our electricity supplier to confirm that they had processed our first meter reading and we would be receiving our FIT payment soon - hurrah ! We have also just had the first full quarters electricity bill since the system was installed, this looks very promising. We have only used around 65% of the electricity compared with the same quarter over the previous three years. This would mean a saving of at least £50 on our electricity bill this quarter and should mean a saving of around £200 over the full year. I will calculate the exact figures once I receive the FIT statement which should arrive in the next week.
I have just updated the statistics page and added a couple more useful links - take a look !
Back soon with some more accurate figures once our FIT payment arrives and we have our electricity bill.
Saturday, 28 January 2012
Sunday, 1 January 2012
Our first quarter
The end of the year meant that it was time to submit our first quarterly meter reading to our electricity supplier and then wait for our first payment to arrive. This is where the system finally starts to pay us back in a tangible way, the meter reading on the 31 December was 679 units which should work out at just over £300. The website said rather gloomily that payments may take up to 65 working days, if that is true then we may well be submitting our next reading before getting paid for this one. I will post an update when payment arrives and I can say how long they actually took, reports of other suppliers taking months and needing to be chased doesn't bode well.
The other part of the equation that we are currently missing is how much of our own electricity have we been able to use as this will result in savings on our bill. There is an assumption by our supplier that we will use 50% and export 50% but this seems hard to believe. When the sun is out the system generates something between 1 and 3 kW during the day. The household devices that are always on like the fridge etc. only consume a total of 200-300W so unless we are running the dishwasher, laundry, vacuum cleaner or other high power devices we are only likely to be consuming 10-25%. I have am going to compare the electricity usage this year with the previous two or three years and see how much less we are using and try and calculate the savings. This will probably take a full years worth of reading before we will get a clear picture.
Another thing worth exploring is getting an export meter installed by our supplier. This will not only tell us how much electricity we export but also allow us to calculate exactly how much we have used. I am guessing that we will probably export something like 70% or more so it would enable us to get paid for anything more than the 50% estimate. It only comes to 3p a unit but it would still be nice to have.
We are now looking forward to 2012 and the longer days of spring, its going to be very interesting to see just how well the system does in prime months from April to September when it should really start to pay us back.
A happy 2012 to everyone.
The other part of the equation that we are currently missing is how much of our own electricity have we been able to use as this will result in savings on our bill. There is an assumption by our supplier that we will use 50% and export 50% but this seems hard to believe. When the sun is out the system generates something between 1 and 3 kW during the day. The household devices that are always on like the fridge etc. only consume a total of 200-300W so unless we are running the dishwasher, laundry, vacuum cleaner or other high power devices we are only likely to be consuming 10-25%. I have am going to compare the electricity usage this year with the previous two or three years and see how much less we are using and try and calculate the savings. This will probably take a full years worth of reading before we will get a clear picture.
Another thing worth exploring is getting an export meter installed by our supplier. This will not only tell us how much electricity we export but also allow us to calculate exactly how much we have used. I am guessing that we will probably export something like 70% or more so it would enable us to get paid for anything more than the 50% estimate. It only comes to 3p a unit but it would still be nice to have.
We are now looking forward to 2012 and the longer days of spring, its going to be very interesting to see just how well the system does in prime months from April to September when it should really start to pay us back.
A happy 2012 to everyone.
Thursday, 8 December 2011
The last minute rush
Perhaps not surprisingly there has been a last minute rush to get systems installed before the 12 December deadline to qualify for the current FIT rates. In our own immediate neighbourhood there are at least another three systems that have gone up, the installers were working on Saturday and Sunday last weekend. A neighbour of ours who had been thinking about installing a system had their system put up on Saturday. I just hope she can get her application in and accepted on time - fingers crossed for her.
Our own system has been doing nicely since the weather got a bit brighter in mid November, we just managed to achieve the predicted yield for November and seem to be doing very well so far in December. Our generation meter has just passed the 600kWh mark. I am regularly updating the information on my daily statistics page so do take a look at them if you are interested in how the system is doing.
I am still unsure how much of the energy generated we manage to use ourselves, we will probably only find out when the next quarters bill turns up and I can compare with last year. It seems likely that we are probably using most of it at the moment as it is only a few hundred watts on the cloudy days and the PC, central heating pump and fridge will probably consume that amount.
Our own system has been doing nicely since the weather got a bit brighter in mid November, we just managed to achieve the predicted yield for November and seem to be doing very well so far in December. Our generation meter has just passed the 600kWh mark. I am regularly updating the information on my daily statistics page so do take a look at them if you are interested in how the system is doing.
I am still unsure how much of the energy generated we manage to use ourselves, we will probably only find out when the next quarters bill turns up and I can compare with last year. It seems likely that we are probably using most of it at the moment as it is only a few hundred watts on the cloudy days and the PC, central heating pump and fridge will probably consume that amount.
Sunday, 20 November 2011
Keeping up with neighbours
The house on the left was the first to install panels in late spring and was followed by the neighbour on the right a few weeks later.
They were followed a few weeks later by their neighbour and in the last couple of weeks the next house along has installed an identical looking system, the scaffolding is still to be taken down.
A little further down the road another house had a system installed in the last two weeks.
A bit further down the road and another house had a system installed in the last week.
With the reduction in the feed in tariff rates due in the next three weeks it will be interesting to see how many more appear before the deadline.
Tuesday, 15 November 2011
Changes to FIT scheme
There was a rather sudden and unexpected change to the UK FIT scheme announced on 31 October. A review of the scheme was taking place and an announcement on changes of the rates paid was expected. The big shock was both the amount that the rate was to be cut and how soon the cut would be applied. The scheme was expected to apply the new rates from April 2012 but they were applied from the 12 December. The cut was also much larger than had been predicted with the amount paid per unit falling to 21p from the current 43.1p.
This has had the effect of causing a rush to have systems installed in time to claim the current higher rate with most installers quickly having all available slots booked up. What will happen after the 12 December is the big concern, it seems these companies will see their work dry up with inevitable consequences.
One of our friends was caught out by this as she was interested in getting a system installed but had not seen the need to do anything in a rush. All of a sudden there was no time to make a considered decision, should she jump at an offer that might not be ideal or accept that she had missed out. It seems very unsatisfactory for both installers and customers.
This has had the effect of causing a rush to have systems installed in time to claim the current higher rate with most installers quickly having all available slots booked up. What will happen after the 12 December is the big concern, it seems these companies will see their work dry up with inevitable consequences.
One of our friends was caught out by this as she was interested in getting a system installed but had not seen the need to do anything in a rush. All of a sudden there was no time to make a considered decision, should she jump at an offer that might not be ideal or accept that she had missed out. It seems very unsatisfactory for both installers and customers.
Sunday, 13 November 2011
How solar power works
It might sound simple enough to turn sunlight into electricity but there is a lot more to a Solar PV system than you might first think. Here is my quick not too technical guide to Solar PV.
Solar panels generate DC electricity something like a battery cell hence them being called solar cells or solar batteries. The panels will typically generate 40-50V each and are wired in series as "strings". An array of 12 to 16 panels will usually be split into two even sized strings which are then connected to an inverter. The inverter takes the DC electricity and converts to AC at the correct line voltage to feed into your house mains supply. The reason for splitting the array into strings is two fold, first it keeps the DC voltage at a suitable level for the inverter to work efficiently with, typically between 200 and 400V. Second there is also the chance that should one panel have a fault you will only lose half of your system, only the string with the faulty cell would cease to work.
In practice the inverter does quite a lot more than just do the DC to AC conversion. Most home Solar PV systems are "on-grid" which means that they are permanently connected to the grid, this is necessary for you to export electricity and earn money for it. For the system to work the inverter has to sense that the grid is up and then synchronise to the voltage and phase of the grid when it generates electricity. If the grid goes away it shuts down and stops generating. Most prospective owners dream that they can be self sufficient in electricity to some degree at least when it is sunny, sadly this is not the case.
I hope this simple description helps to shed some light on how the systems work, there are quite a few good technical articles available which go into the full details of how systems work which you can find with a bit of Googling.
Just a quick update on how our system is doing this month. We are currently well behind the predicted yield due to two weeks of almost unbroken grey cloud. Today was only the second really sunny day of the month, and we managed to generate 9.5kWh. The total for the whole month so far is only 41.6kWh, we are going to need a decent run of sunny days for the rest of the month to get anywhere near the predicted yield.
In the next post I will discuss the changes to the FIT after the 12 December.
Solar panels generate DC electricity something like a battery cell hence them being called solar cells or solar batteries. The panels will typically generate 40-50V each and are wired in series as "strings". An array of 12 to 16 panels will usually be split into two even sized strings which are then connected to an inverter. The inverter takes the DC electricity and converts to AC at the correct line voltage to feed into your house mains supply. The reason for splitting the array into strings is two fold, first it keeps the DC voltage at a suitable level for the inverter to work efficiently with, typically between 200 and 400V. Second there is also the chance that should one panel have a fault you will only lose half of your system, only the string with the faulty cell would cease to work.
In practice the inverter does quite a lot more than just do the DC to AC conversion. Most home Solar PV systems are "on-grid" which means that they are permanently connected to the grid, this is necessary for you to export electricity and earn money for it. For the system to work the inverter has to sense that the grid is up and then synchronise to the voltage and phase of the grid when it generates electricity. If the grid goes away it shuts down and stops generating. Most prospective owners dream that they can be self sufficient in electricity to some degree at least when it is sunny, sadly this is not the case.
I hope this simple description helps to shed some light on how the systems work, there are quite a few good technical articles available which go into the full details of how systems work which you can find with a bit of Googling.
Just a quick update on how our system is doing this month. We are currently well behind the predicted yield due to two weeks of almost unbroken grey cloud. Today was only the second really sunny day of the month, and we managed to generate 9.5kWh. The total for the whole month so far is only 41.6kWh, we are going to need a decent run of sunny days for the rest of the month to get anywhere near the predicted yield.
In the next post I will discuss the changes to the FIT after the 12 December.
Tuesday, 8 November 2011
So how much does it earn ?
Probably the most obvious question is how much can you earn from Solar power ?
In the UK the government introduced a feed in tarrif scheme (FIT) for renewable energy generation. When we signed up for the scheme we were guaranteed a payment of 43.1p for every unit (kWh) of electricity we generate. This was paid even if we used all of the electricity ourselves. In addition our electricity supplier will pay us 3p for every unit we export to the grid. As we don't have an export meter they assume that we export 50% of the electricity generated. This means that in practice we will be given 44.6p for every unit we generate. Using this it is quite simple to calculate the revenue from our system. We had the system for the last 10 days in September and it generated 145 units which earned us around £64. In October we generated 307 units which earned us around £137.
The unknown factor is how much of the solar power generated did we use ourselves, this would gives us a direct saving on our electricity bill and so should also be counted in any calculation. We are about to be billed for electricty for the quarter ending at the beginning of November so I have used this meter reading to see how it compares with the same period last year. It showed a drop in electricity use of around 200 units, this would equate to a saving of around £28 assuming a cost of 14p/unit. We can't be sure that all of the saving is due to the use of our own solar power but a significant amount must be. We will get a better idea once we have a couple more quarters of bills to compare.
In the mean-time its just nice to be saving something on our electricity bills and also to be generating some income at the same time.
More about the feed in tarrif scheme as the goverment announced the result of a fast track review of the scheme on October 31. It was not good news for people who were still thinking about installing solar power as the tarrifs were being cut by more than 50%. This certainly changes the equations with regard to return on investment. We are hoping our system will pay pack the capital we invested in around 8 years, possibly a bit sooner if it continues to do as well as it has been. With the new tarrif rates it will take a lot longer, probably between 12 and 15 years. I do wonder how many people will want to plan that far ahead. We had doubts about making a commitment to a system that may not pay back for 8 years.
Enough ramblings for today, I will describe how solar PV systems work in my next post.
In the UK the government introduced a feed in tarrif scheme (FIT) for renewable energy generation. When we signed up for the scheme we were guaranteed a payment of 43.1p for every unit (kWh) of electricity we generate. This was paid even if we used all of the electricity ourselves. In addition our electricity supplier will pay us 3p for every unit we export to the grid. As we don't have an export meter they assume that we export 50% of the electricity generated. This means that in practice we will be given 44.6p for every unit we generate. Using this it is quite simple to calculate the revenue from our system. We had the system for the last 10 days in September and it generated 145 units which earned us around £64. In October we generated 307 units which earned us around £137.
The unknown factor is how much of the solar power generated did we use ourselves, this would gives us a direct saving on our electricity bill and so should also be counted in any calculation. We are about to be billed for electricty for the quarter ending at the beginning of November so I have used this meter reading to see how it compares with the same period last year. It showed a drop in electricity use of around 200 units, this would equate to a saving of around £28 assuming a cost of 14p/unit. We can't be sure that all of the saving is due to the use of our own solar power but a significant amount must be. We will get a better idea once we have a couple more quarters of bills to compare.
In the mean-time its just nice to be saving something on our electricity bills and also to be generating some income at the same time.
More about the feed in tarrif scheme as the goverment announced the result of a fast track review of the scheme on October 31. It was not good news for people who were still thinking about installing solar power as the tarrifs were being cut by more than 50%. This certainly changes the equations with regard to return on investment. We are hoping our system will pay pack the capital we invested in around 8 years, possibly a bit sooner if it continues to do as well as it has been. With the new tarrif rates it will take a lot longer, probably between 12 and 15 years. I do wonder how many people will want to plan that far ahead. We had doubts about making a commitment to a system that may not pay back for 8 years.
Enough ramblings for today, I will describe how solar PV systems work in my next post.
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