hop
Well-Known Forumite
It depends on your use case.
We live in a conservation area and AONB as well as a historic building so would not want panels on the house or outbuildings visible from the house.
Our typical base power draw to keep the house ticking over is 220watts - fridge, freezer, alarm, router, backup devices etc...
In the end I bought 2 * 250w panels and a micro invertor and connected these in a discrete location.
This reduces the amount of energy we buy at peek and enables us to take advantage of economy 7 for higher use appliances.
We will receive no feed in tariff but that was never a concern. I estimate that with my use case the system will pay for itself in 4 years. A lot of the costs is the installation.
If your happy to just reduce the amount you buy in and also have a suitable location where you could mount panels yourself you may find it works out best to just buy a few panels and fit them yourself. The best way is to find a trade supplier and pick up the parts yourself, the panels are over 1 metre so an internet purchase will be shipped on a pallet - the shipping costs being about the price of a panel so altering the pay back time.
We live in a conservation area and AONB as well as a historic building so would not want panels on the house or outbuildings visible from the house.
Our typical base power draw to keep the house ticking over is 220watts - fridge, freezer, alarm, router, backup devices etc...
In the end I bought 2 * 250w panels and a micro invertor and connected these in a discrete location.
This reduces the amount of energy we buy at peek and enables us to take advantage of economy 7 for higher use appliances.
We will receive no feed in tariff but that was never a concern. I estimate that with my use case the system will pay for itself in 4 years. A lot of the costs is the installation.
If your happy to just reduce the amount you buy in and also have a suitable location where you could mount panels yourself you may find it works out best to just buy a few panels and fit them yourself. The best way is to find a trade supplier and pick up the parts yourself, the panels are over 1 metre so an internet purchase will be shipped on a pallet - the shipping costs being about the price of a panel so altering the pay back time.