Solar export cost to go

[GeekOKent]

Hi,

As many would know, solar export tariff meant that people with solar excess that gets fed back to the grid, are compensated.

We had solar at our previous place, and if cut down our electronic charge massively (80%). We have abnormal conditions - in that I work from home, and was stubble to do most of our electric burn (washing machines, major cooking etc) during the day time.

Been here at our new place a few years, but just been super lazy about getting solar sorted. This place has a smaller roof, so our electric harvest will be reduced too. But just found out that export tariff is going away. And no change to storage terms, so one can't just charge up huge batteries with this charge either, without leaving the grid entirely.

I am no where near being able to leave the grid - so does this then mean no point in solar?? With kids in/out and working from home, I can still see some value, but seems like a lot of hassle.

Appreciate thoughts from all the wise folks here,

Ref: https://amp.theguardian.com/business/2018/dec/18/solar-power-energy-firms-government

 

[moggy1968]

Hi,

As many would know, solar export tariff meant that people with solar excess that gets fed back to the grid, are compensated.

We had solar at our previous place, and if cut down our electronic charge massively (80%). We have abnormal conditions - in that I work from home, and was stubble to do most of our electric burn (washing machines, major cooking etc) during the day time.

Been here at our new place a few years, but just been super lazy about getting solar sorted. This place has a smaller roof, so our electric harvest will be reduced too. But just found out that export tariff is going away. And no change to storage terms, so one can't just charge up huge batteries with this charge either, without leaving the grid entirely.

I am no where near being able to leave the grid - so does this then mean no point in solar?? With kids in/out and working from home, I can still see some value, but seems like a lot of hassle.

Appreciate thoughts from all the wise folks here,

Ref: https://amp.theguardian.com/business/2018/dec/18/solar-power-energy-firms-government

I used to own a solar installation company and the whole system has been grossly mismanaged by successive Governments who have done a lot to kill off much of the industry and leave it to the double glazing salesmen.

It's important to differentiate between the feed in tariff and the export tarriff which the article appears to confuse. Income from the export tariff is actually small, especially for someone with high daytime useage such as yourself. It looks as though established installations will be protected but if you intend to install after the cut off date you will have to wait until the Government announces the new system, just make sure you don't get caught in any time interval between the 2 schemes and end up with nothing.

If there is no scheme then you would need to look at how much of your useage comes from your solar, and cost that out against the costs of the system. Certainly just on that basis it didn't used to be a worthwhile investment but system costs have reduced significantly since then.

 

[StarCruiser]

Can’t add much to that (horse’s mouth) but I had always understood, as Andy has said, that it’s the feed-in tariff that brings in the money. This is why there were companies putting in solar for free and letting you have the benefit of the electricity generated. Their investment of course was taking it in from the feed-in tariff and probablybin profit by year 5-7 out of a 25 year contract. Not bad.
This is, however an area that everyone has wanted their slice of pie. An instance locally where a commercial site with 200A mains wanted to fit potential generation of 50A (which would offset the 200A downwards) and the electricity network provider wanted a bigger cable to be installed…at their cost. I’ve yet to understand the electrical reason as with no load on the building 50A max would flow back.

Lots of solar farms locally and visible from some of the motorways.

What doesn’t often get mentioned is where the money comes from to pay the feed-in tariff, which is from the rest of the population that use electricity and don’t have solar. This move starts to reset the balance, however it’s going to come as a surprise if the energy companies actually put bills down once they don’t have to pay for the electricity.

The answer is to make sure you generate less than you use. So, if you have a hot water cylinder, it might pay to heat that from the solar rather than the gas boiler. There’s devices out there that will do this. A colleague of mine has developed a load shedding system with energy monitoring that will do exactly this using a swimming pool as the heat load. It should be up and running in the new year.

Batteries of course are the other thing, but mainly with a smart meter (which could well be tied in with the changes) that will vary rates throughout the day. You then charge at a low rate and sell back at a higher rate.

 

[moggy1968]

As Starcruiser suggests, using energy sensibly is the key to maximising solar, because you only get 3-4p per kW for selling back to the grid compared to 12-25p you pay for electricity, so I encouraged my parents to use their immersion for heating water in the daytime when the weather is good and they have timers on the washing machine and dishwasher so they come on during the day (and at different times).
My inclination is solar thermal to heat water isn't a worthwhile investment as it requires quite a bit of maintenance. There were some devices that would monitor load and useage and allocate to things like heating the water when I was in the business, but none of them worked terribly well, but the technology has probably improved a lot since then.
Solar PV requires no maintenance beyond giving the panels a wash every now and then, so don't be persuaded into a maintenance contract!
Batteries at this time aren't an economical way to produce electricity on a large scale like for a house.

Finally, be extremely wary of the payback figures the double glazing salesman make, most of it is pure bullshit, they are assuming ridiculous rates for inflation and fuel price inflation, ask what their figures are and where they got them from. I lost jobs because my quoted expected figures were lower than other companies because I followed the regulations that give you what figures you can quote. It is unrelated to what type of panels you use or the costs, it's just demonstration figures like when you are quoted possible pension returns. I am proud to say that every installation produced more than I quoted, by 10-30%, and that I never had a single complaint.

 

[GeekOKent]

Having batteries in the loop seems to be frowned upon. Any ideas why?

 

[flint]

Cost really. A friend of mine was off grid, he went the the whole hog, wind turbine, solar and a bank of limited life deep cycle batteries with all the control gear. He still had to have a Lister genny running at times to keep the batteries topped up.

 

[AndyCook]

I got 4kw solar install in 2011
On track to break even at some point next year on install costs, via FIT payments

More recently fitted a diverted box, which diverts excess solar energy to hot water immersion heater, and a storage heater and towel rail, in sequential order. That’s has saved about £400 so more than paid for itself

 

[moggy1968]

Having batteries in the loop seems to be frowned upon. Any ideas why?

It’s because you can’t have a power source feeding back into the grid when guys are working on it in the event of a network power failure.

 

[GeekOKent]

It’s because you can’t have a power source feeding back into the grid when guys are working on it in the event of a network power failure.

Ha ha. I can see how that might be inconvenient.