I am going to try and do monthly reports on my solar installation to keep track of how it is going. You can see details of it here.
I had to expect production to drop as we headed into winter. As well as the weather changing the days get shorter. In the summer we were getting almost 900 kWh per month, but it was just 160 kWh in November. You can see the days when we got some sunshine, but even when it is cloudy all day we get something.
I will be interested to see what the total for the year is. This is with 8kW of panels that face due west on our roof.
We get our energy from Octopus (this is a referral link so we get a bonus if you sign up with them). They are really into encouraging alternative sources and cutting consumption. We have a tariff that provides cheap power overnight. So we pay 8.5p/kWh for those five hours and 26.7p otherwise. We only spent a little less than November last year, but those peaks are where we charged up the electric car that we did not have then.
We did not export much, but then it mostly went into powering the house and charging up the battery. As there is less sun there are days where the battery does not get to 100% charge during the day. Hovever, at the start of the month I was able to move to a different tariff that pays 15p/kWh rather than 8p. That increases the incentive to export, so I set up the system to fully charge the battery at night rather than just going to 60% so that we could export more. It is only a few pounds, but it all adds up.
Before we got the solar we were paying over £130 each month the cover electricity and gas. We had built up some credit, so I reduced that to £30 and will see if that is enough to keep us in credit over winter. In the summer we earn more than we pay. The new tariff should shorten the time until the system pays for itself.
People may think that the UK would not be viable for solar, but I think it is worthwhile, especially if you have a battery to take advantage of off-peak prices. If you live somewhere that gets a lot more sun then it ought to be standard, but it will depend on what the energy companies charge and whether there are other incentives. If every roof had some panels then we could burn a lot less fossil fuels.
If you have questions on this topic then I will try to answer them. I am interested to hear about the experiences of others.
Shine on!
