I originally posted this on my Facebook page as it’s aimed primarily at my friends. I imagine posting it here will go completely unnoticed!
After some not-so-gentle nudging by my daughter, we decided to have solar panels installed a couple of months ago. This post isn’t about the installation, which went really smoothly – the Forever Green Energy guys arrived at 8am and by 1.30pm all the panels were up and the inverter and battery were installed and hooked up to the house’s wiring. Their consultant Ian Williams prepared a pre-installation report which took into account our normal energy usage and the orientation of the house and provided estimated energy generation and cost savings based on an optimum number of panels and size of battery. So far his figures aren’t far off – in fact I think the system looks likely to exceed his predictions.
But that’s not why we’re here. I plan to go into more detail in a forthcoming post, but for the time being I’ll just share my latest energy bill with you, the first one I’ve received which covers exactly one month since a few recent changes have settled down. If you’re considering having solar panels installed but you’re not quite sure, this information might prove useful to you. The bill can be viewed at the bottom of this Web page and I’ll explain the numbers for you. Obviously I’m only looking at the electricity since solar panels don’t generate gas… not yet, anyway!
So at the start of the billing period (July 9th), we had a credit balance with Octopus Energy of £18.53. During the month in question they charged us a total of £19.11 for electricity – £1.54 usage plus the unavoidable standing charge and VAT at £17.57. (The usage is so low because the house has first call on any electricity generated by the solar panels.) Gas was £14.21 including standing charge and VAT, so the total charge for both fuels was £33.32.
In return, Octopus paid us £79.92 for the surplus energy which our system exported to them, so we made a nett profit of £46.60, which put us £65.13 in credit with them. (The panels are generating around three times the amount of energy we use daily.)
In addition to this, which I can’t show you a statement for, we also earned £20.78 by exporting power to Axle Energy, a virtual power‑plant service which provides load- and demand-balancing services to the National Grid. This brought our total profit for the month to £67.38.
Our normal electricity usage for July-August over the past few years has been 11kWh/day, which would equate to £86/month at today’s prices. However, instead of paying an energy company this £86, they’re paying us £67, so the solar panels are effectively earning around £153/month at the moment. (It’s summer and the sun is shining.)
I should like to stress that I don’t work for a solar energy company and I won’t specifically push the company who did my installation or either of the energy companies I’m subscribed to, however I do recommend all of them and admit that I could potentially earn a small commission if you decide to use them yourself.
If you’d like me to share my solar panel experiences with you – the cost, the return on investment, the equipment and anything else – plus my thoughts on how they perform on cloudy days, and how they’re likely to perform when we’re in the depths of winter and the days are shorter and less sunny, drop me an email and I’ll put the kettle and/or coffee machine on. I mean, it costs me nothing to run them, right?
Our energy bill
Yeah, it says “based on your meter readings” but we’re on a smart meter, and Octopus take readings every half-hour.
A brief description of our system
15 x Aiko Neostar N-Type Gen3 475Wp Solar Panels – YouTube review – Aiko Web site
1 x Fox ESS H1 G2 6.0 Hybrid Inverter – YouTube review – Fox ESS Web site
1 x Fox ESS EP12-H 11.5kWh High Voltage Battery – YouTube review – Fox ESS Web site
Back-up Emergency power supply