solar panals

Due to the angle of the Sun and the UK's location, the panels sold to the UK only work 'properly' at certain times of the year. The further north, the less efficient they become.

I was told this during my RF training - how the subject came up, I dont know but it seems to be true.

The inverters are RF noisy and can cause interference. If your unlucky enough to live near a radio ham like wot I is then you'll get a door knock from OFCUM and you'll have to spend money fixing it.

On an environmental note, how many years would they need to operate to pay lack the energy and pollution caused by refining/ creating the raw materials and their production?

legrandefromage":23znrq5f said:

Due to the angle of the Sun and the UK's location, the panels sold to the UK only work 'properly' at certain times of the year. The further north, the less efficient they become.

I was told this during my RF training - how the subject came up, I dont know but it seems to be true.

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Is that true overall? Mid summer in the northern hemisphere further North has more sunlight hours than the South.

The Earth's tilt is 23 1/2 Deg.

How do they mount them to the roof? Do they drill holes in your tiles? If so could that cause issues 5-10 years down the road or in high winds. If it does it could be a costly repair.

£10K sounds a lot. Is this for a 4KW or 2KW installation? We had ours installed a month ago for £6.5K for a 4KW installation plus an immerson. The projections are for ours to earn around a £1K a year for 20 years. Too early to say if that'll prove true. Our installation is guaranteed for 10 years, and the actual panels for 20.

Worth bearing in mind that you may have replace the inverter at some point during its life. That's roughly a grand. But otherwise they are pretty much maintenance free. The panels themselves should last 30-40 years although they will lose efficiency over that time.

The immerson is worth considering if you have an immersion heater and/or electric storage heaters. It costs £500. Basically, it diverts any electricity you aren't using to the immersion heater and so heats the water. This means we get a tank of hot water everyday for free. That's worth 60p a day on its own. A neighbour who has the same reckons he gets hot water about nine months of the year - but he has a 2KW array so I'm expecting to do a little better than that.

In terms of how they look - well tastes vary I guess. Ours are pretty much black/dark grey all over and very nearly blend into the slate roof. They fit them by lifting the tiles slightly, slipping a bracket under which hooks onto the rafters - and then bolt the array onto the bracket. We get 100 mph winds here in the winter - and the installer said they hadn't lost any yet (and that seems to be borne out by the neighbours installations) .

Finally, check out the Which website on solar panels and solar panel salespeople.

We get 100 mph winds here in the winter

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Get a wind turbine as well.

I was working on a kiosk that was built by the company i work for on the Devon Cornwall border a few weeks ago.
I got talking to the Western Power Employee that was overseeing our work. He said the Solar farm that our kiosk was on had 52,000 panels, they were about 3ft by 6ft in size.
He said they produce loads of power when the sun is out, as you would expect, but obviously none during the night with huge fluctuations during the daylight hours caused by cloud cover etc. Apparently this is a bit of a headache for the power stations as the power usage during the day doesn't flucuate very much but the varying input from the solar farm means output from the power station needs to be adjusted all the time where before it wasn't necessary.
He was a bit of an enviromentallist and he voiced concerns re carbon footprint.
Of bigger concern, the 3 in Devon(soon to be 6 i believe) are all owned by companies based in eastern europe :roll:

cheers for the info guys n gals, weve not signed owt yet and gonna look into it lots before anything is signed. A good friend works for a company lincoln way on and they are gonna pop and have a chat, i trust them more and are a legit company etc.

appearance isnt that much of a concern, back of roof is south facing and we dont plan on selling, ever lol. its for a 3Kw set up as well as the roof isnt quite big enough

will keep you all updated

ta

Grannygrinder":10mezugh said:

He said they produce loads of power when the sun is out, as you would expect, but obviously none during the night with huge fluctuations during the daylight hours caused by cloud cover etc. Apparently this is a bit of a headache for the power stations as the power usage during the day doesn't flucuate very much but the varying input from the solar farm means output from the power station needs to be adjusted all the time where before it wasn't necessary.
He was a bit of an enviromentallist and he voiced concerns re carbon footprint.

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that's the main issue with all this so called green free energy, its very dependant on the correct type of weather to work, when the conditions are right and they are pumping power into the system the generator stations have to slow down and go into tick over mode, then the moment the demand is greater than what the green systems can provide they have to spin up the turbines which uses a lot more fuel and kicks out a lot more crap into the atmosphere!

My brother has his own business doing commercial installations in the States.

I don't know how his figures would scale down to domestic, and the incentives, etc. are totally different over there.

Saying that, the grants, etc. are different all over the UK too.

The cells are much more efficient than they used to be, producing power with much less light.

How they stack up over time is going to depend largely on how long your unit price is guaranteed for feeding into the grid.

We have several small turbines across the farms and such, much more efficient than having huge turbines that don't even work in high winds and lose so much power in transmission.

Good luck picking through the maze!