Interesting facts coming up...

I have just received our latest energy bill which marks 6 months of our solar panels. Compared to the same period last year we have used 40% less gas and 67% less electricity! Admittedly we have been very frugal this last few months but even so that is far better than I was expecting. At current rates we have saved £22 on gas and £678 on electricity. Plus we have earned £105 from the electricity we have exported back to the grid so we are about £800 up in 6 months. At this rate we will have recouped the installation cost in 3.5 years.

Happy bunny! 

Cheers,

Chris

I've generated 4,732.81kWh this year. From. 4.8KV array ( 17 panels)

I haven't converted this to LSD yet,, but it must have helped!

Either way, you should get a fair amount of LSD from the savings 

Quote from: Railwaygun on December 24, 2022, 12:10:24 AM
I've generated 4,732.81kWh this year. From. 4.8KV array ( 17 panels)

Very similar to us then. We've generated about 2700 kWh in 6 months from 12 panels. I don't know how your house is oriented but we are fortunate to have a perfect south-facing roof, with an uninterrupted view of the sky, except for this time of the year when it is slightly shaded by a neighbour's house until 0930.

For once, I got something right!

Cheers,

Chris

Quote from: Papyrus on December 26, 2022, 04:51:08 PM

Quote from: Railwaygun on December 24, 2022, 12:10:24 AM
I've generated 4,732.81kWh this year. From. 4.8KV array ( 17 panels)

Very similar to us then. We've generated about 2700 kWh in 6 months from 12 panels. I don't know how your house is oriented but we are fortunate to have a perfect south-facing roof, with an uninterrupted view of the sky, except for this time of the year when it is slightly shaded by a neighbour's house until 0930.

For once, I got something right!

Cheers,

Chris

I forgot the pigeon guards!

However SolarCentury employed cowboy fitters, and Coolpower had to come round and refit every roof in Ealing that the rogues had done!

I got them to fit the guards ( and a local Church Hall! )

10 panels, Enphase micro-inverters, cost about $9000 all up.
Yearly production is around 5MWh.  40% independence from grid.

Quote from: NinOz on December 27, 2022, 06:18:31 AM
10 panels, Enphase micro-inverters, cost about $9000 all up.
Yearly production is around 5MWh.  40% independence from grid.

It's a bit sunnier down there!

Eight south east facing panels in a sometimes sunny Orpington have generated 430kWh in the last three months. We have had them for about seven years and they have paid for themselves and a bit extra now.

Dave

I noticed our solar was not working last week, a visit to the loft showed the inverter's display was completely blank with a slight smell of burnt electronics. Checking the paperwork revealed the system was almost ten years old with just two months left of the inverter's warranty period. Unfortunately the installer went bust shortly after installing it, but they had set up an insurance scheme to cover this eventuality, however the insurers went the same way in 2016. A bit of research showed that repairs to the inverter, a Sunmaster XS3200, were not economical, so it was time for a new one. I only have eight panels, all in the same direction, so I chose a basic model, a Solax X1, which arrived the next day. Installation was straightforward, there are only five wires, the only tricky part was removing the panel's plugs from the inverter. There is a special tool to remove them, just a plastic spanner with two prongs to release the clips, but it can be done with two well positioned screwdrivers like getting the body off a chassis. It was a happy moment when the new inverter started working, and it has built in wifi so that it can be checked without going into the loft, the old one had two fans in it and could just be heard sometimes the new one is fanless with a massive heatsink on it back.

Internals of a Sunmaster XS3200


The burnt resistors

Wow , that could have been a lot more expensive than just a new inverter.

I hadn't planned to do a follow-up on this thread, but I was in a minor dispute with my energy company, so while I was wrestling with the monthly statements, I decided to see what difference the solar panels had made. We had them fitted in 2022 so I compared 2021 with 2023.

Electricity - in 2021 we used 4666 kWh, in 2023 it was 1500. Gas - in '21 we used 13728 kWh, in '23 it was 8074. It's difficult to work out how much we have saved in £ because the unit price has fluctuated so wildly, but at a very rough estimate we have probably saved about £2000 on electricity and £1000 on gas in the 2.5 years we've had the panels. Plus, we've earned about £1150 on the electricity we've exported, so a total net gain of about £4000. The panels cost £5400, so at this rate we should have broken even by the end of next year, or, as I said back then:

Quote from: Papyrus on December 23, 2022, 12:12:58 PMAt this rate we will have recouped the installation cost in 3.5 years.

Chris

So, I'm still a happy bunny. The main pain-in-the-neck appears to be the smart meter, the gas part of which has broken down after only 3 years. Before then we were still using the original meters from when the house was built in 1965! It seems to be a fairly hit-and-miss system at the best of times and doesn't always credit us with our exports. But Octopus are usually pretty quick at resolving problems, so it's not a big issue.

Cheers,

Chris