Period property EPC Bands

[Flyfisher]

I've been thinking about solar PV panels for a while and recently read that a property must be EPC Band D or better to qualify for a Feed In Tariff.

We don't have an EPC for our house so I've no idea what band it will be in, though I suspect it won't meet Band D requirements. Has anyone here got a period house with an EPC of band D or better?

Personally, I don't really understand why there should be such a restriction for FITs. Surely our environment would benefit most from the least energy-efficient houses being the ones using mostly renewable energy? Taking this sort of restriction to its logical conclusion, we could end up with a country full of highly efficient houses running on renewable energy but all the inefficient houses running on fossil fuels - surely the exact opposite of what would be best for the environment?

 

[MikeG]

Logic? What on earth makes you think these people would break the habit of a lifetime and run a system based on logic?

My last house was so energy efficient it cost £70 per year to heat. Heating season was December to March. The damned tick-box joke that is the EPC rated it as a D. They don't have a box for triple glazing. They counted it against me massively that there was no heating upstairs (there was no need). They assume building regs levels of insulation from the year of construction, rather than actual amounts of insulation ("but I've got 600mm of insulation up there!!"........"not according to this programme you haven't. It's calling it 150mm").

Sorry, that rant doesn't help you, does it. It may help you understand why I hold the whole EPC system in contempt.

 

[Flyfisher]

Well I'm not a big fan of EPCs either but I didn't realise they were that bad.

 

[Abi Cott]

Mine will be grade D or above when I've finished fitting the loft insulation. As part of my mortgage offer from Ecology Building Society I had to show I could raise the property by at least one grade. The LED lighting may help push it a little higher.

Loft insulation is all it will take to reach a D despite single glazed windows and solid construction so on a terraced building it's not impossible.

Ecology also take into account secondary upgrades such as installing a wood burner and secondary glazing but these are part of their own rating not the EPC.

 

[fernicarry]

We had a guy from the Energy Saving Trust come round to do an evaluation for us a couple of years ago. Not sure if this is a general service they provide as we met him at an open house event.

He rated us as a very high E, one point off D band, un-insulated solid stone walls, single glazed, detached. So some small measure like increased loft insulation, which I've done anyway, would tip us over into a D. As MikeG says the EPC itself is very arbitrary but the estimate of space and water heating demand he came up with was spookily accurate. His estimate 56k kWh, mine around 55k. Sample of one...

The FIT ruling is to try to get you to tackle any low hanging fruit in your building first before you get to benefit from the kick-backs. Reasonable in principle, in practice every case is different so a single line in the sand for everyone not exactly helpful. Expect to see the powers that be become more and more obsessed by this though, its already creeping into the rental market.

I was also interested in getting qualified for FiT's but haven't progressed. I think the extra amount you pay the MCS guy who's been on the 2 day course versus sourcing the materials yourself and DIY'ing or using competent local trades pretty much cancels out the FIT benefit. At least I'm trying to convince myself of this, I much prefer to DIY things. The kit only gets cheaper as I procrastinate.

In addition I find the whole FIT thing a bit morally bankrupt. The MCS guys like to point out how its virtually free over its lifetime. This is only true because energy companies are forced to subsidise the scheme which puts money on everyone's bill. It amounts to a transfer of wealth from all of us to those who had the capital to fund the install in the first place. Depending on your politics this might put you off, you're not forced to apply for FIT if you don't want to.

 

[mims&pip]

Our last-but-one house - a relatively sprawling (non-listed) Georgian, thatched, Shaftesbury greenstone property - was an EPC band D by the time we'd finished doing some restoration works. We fitted hardwood double-glazed windows to the front elevation of the lower two storeys. The kitchen extension we built had the same, as well as being insulated to within a millimetre of its life :roll: The original attic bedrooms were single-glazed as were a few windows to sides/rear and we retained these as they looked lovely. There was an earlier (1980s) extension that had the bare minimum of insulation and loft insulation was virtually non-existsnt beneath the thatch that had been fitted a few years before we bought the house in 2011. We made no attempt to improve this and tbh, the house with its thick stone walls, oil heating and 16kw multi-fuel stove, was always toasty in Winter and cool in Summer - unlike the sub-zero early Victorian house we've just sold.......

 

[Flyfisher]

Thanks for those comments. Perhaps a D rating would not be so hard to achieve, though I think in our case it would need an assessor with a functioning brain rather than a 'tick box' automaton and MikeG's sorry tale regarding his previous almost 'passiv haus' does not bode well

For example, we also have some rooms without any heating at all and so waste no energy at all, yet it seems we will be marked down according to the current tick-box regime. Perhaps these assessments should take into account actual energy consumption of the property rather than their theoretical performance - after all, I suspect that one of the biggest factors in any dwelling would be the occupants themselves. There's a big difference in energy consumption between occupants happy to wear sensible winter clothing and set the thermostat to 18C compared to those who wish to live in shorts and tee-shirts all year around with the thermostat nudging 80C.

All pointless speculation and ranting though because it is what it is.

I was also interested in getting qualified for FiT's but haven't progressed. . . . The kit only gets cheaper as I procrastinate.

I've been procrastinating for about 10 years now and my enthusiasm comes and goes. I suspect the winter DIY layoff has got me thinking about it again, hence this thread, but Spring will be here soon and I can then procrastinate for another year while busying myself with many other things.

In addition I find the whole FIT thing a bit morally bankrupt. The MCS guys like to point out how its virtually free over its lifetime. This is only true because energy companies are forced to subsidise the scheme which puts money on everyone's bill. It amounts to a transfer of wealth from all of us to those who had the capital to fund the install in the first place. Depending on your politics this might put you off, you're not forced to apply for FIT if you don't want to.

An interesting point. I understand the FIT incentive to kick-start this brave new industry, but how many of us believe that these surcharges on all our energy bills will ever be removed, even if the entire country converted to 'green' energy overnight? :evil:

Furthermore, by specifying a minimum D rating for FIT payments, might we end up with a country where all the energy-efficient dwellings have micro-generation and are being rewarded with FIT payments while all the energy-inefficient dwellings are running on planet-destroying fossil fuels, when surely the exact reverse would be the 'greener' outcome?

 

[Zebra]

From a purely ecological point of view, leaving the financial and ethical questions aside for a moment, what does it matter who's doing the generating and who's doing the consuming? I thought the point of FITs that any spare energy generated is meant to be "fed in" to the grid for anyone else to use.

 

[CliffordPope]

Perhaps a D rating would not be so hard to achieve, though I think in our case it would need an assessor with a functioning brain rather than a 'tick box' automaton

I briefly toyed with the idea of solar panels, and the supplier said an EPC was no problem. He as good as said it could be fiddled quite easily with minimum adaptation, and no one's to check some of the unsightly additions are still there in a few years' time.

 

[Flyfisher]

Ha! Now why does that not surprise me :lol:

 

[Flyfisher]

From a purely ecological point of view, leaving the financial and ethical questions aside for a moment, what does it matter who's doing the generating and who's doing the consuming? I thought the point of FITs that any spare energy generated is meant to be "fed in" to the grid for anyone else to use.

I thought the same about FITs as well, but it seems that it is paid based on what you generate not what you send to the grid, hence the example of someone on here high on the Yorkshire dales (I think it was) who didn't even have a mains electricity connection yet was still receiving FIT payments for the power they generated from a hefty wind turbine.

Perhaps it doesn't matter much at a national level, but at the micro generation level it must surely be better for an inefficient house to be powered from its own solar panels (or whatever) as any energy wasted through poor insulation is from a renewable source and therefore less environmentally damaging than if it were powered by fossil fuels.

We know that our precious period properties are generally much less energy efficient than new builds so restricting FITs to band D or better is an incentive for period property owners to modify their homes, which might be benign (eg roof insulation) or very damaging (eg DG Windows) to the originality of the building, but will help prevent them becoming environmental pariahs in the eyes of the green movement. Whereas, a period property with sufficient on-site micro generation to effectively take them 'off-grid' would have a zero-carbon footprint regardless of how draughty and uninsulated it may be.

 

[MikeG]

........ a period property with sufficient on-site micro generation to effectively take them 'off-grid' would have a zero-carbon footprint regardless of how draughty and uninsulated it may be.

I have to say that this is an extremely unlikely scenario. It's hard enough for energy efficient buildings to be truly carbon-neutral or "off-grid", let alone a leaky old period property. For that to have even a chance of working you'd probably need a large estate and a small house, and those aren't natural bed-fellows. Either that or just happen to have a handy waterfall in the garden.

 

[skier-hughes]

I thought the same about FITs as well, but it seems that it is paid based on what you generate not what you send to the grid, hence the example of someone on here high on the Yorkshire dales (I think it was) who didn't even have a mains electricity connection yet was still receiving FIT payments for the power they generated from a hefty wind turbine.

We've had solar hot water tubes for DHW for nearly 10 years now and they are a godsend during the summer. We also have a 4Kw array of pv panels. We had them installed when the FiTs were first started.

We get paid a sum for every unit we generate about 48p now and a sum for every unit we send back to the grid, about 4p.

They work out how much we send back to the grid by just assuming that half of the units will be sent back, therefore you could say, for each unit produced we get 50p.

As we work from home we use just about all of our produced units, so that's a small bonus for us. Those who work all day will no doubt send most of their units back.

Our rates increase every year and are guaranteed for 25 years.

If I had to get green energy to the mass market, I would have forced all new housebuilders to fit at least 50% of their new houses with panels. No cost to tax payers, lots of new houses with panels, panel prices decrease, other homeowners could then afford them etc tec

 

[Flyfisher]

We also have a 4Kw array of pv panels. We had them installed when the FiTs were first started.

Have you kept track of how many kW/hrs (units) you generate from that 4kW array?

Obviously it will vary depending on time of year and the weather, but the total generation for a year would be helpful (by quarter would be even better) for sizing purposes.

We get paid a sum for every unit we generate about 48p now and a sum for every unit we send back to the grid, about 4p.

They work out how much we send back to the grid by just assuming that half of the units will be sent back, therefore you could say, for each unit produced we get 50p.

Interesting that they don't bother metering how much is pumped back into the grid.

If I had to get green energy to the mass market, I would have forced all new housebuilders to fit at least 50% of their new houses with panels. No cost to tax payers, lots of new houses with panels, panel prices decrease, other homeowners could then afford them etc tec

Agreed.

 

[Flyfisher]

........ a period property with sufficient on-site micro generation to effectively take them 'off-grid' would have a zero-carbon footprint regardless of how draughty and uninsulated it may be.

I have to say that this is an extremely unlikely scenario. It's hard enough for energy efficient buildings to be truly carbon-neutral or "off-grid", let alone a leaky old period property. For that to have even a chance of working you'd probably need a large estate and a small house, and those aren't natural bed-fellows. Either that or just happen to have a handy waterfall in the garden.

You're probably right. After installing our boiler stove, our first winter's gas bill was only £65. However, I'll admit that only a few rooms were heated and we did burn an awful lot of wood! Probably not scalable for every house in the land.

 

[CliffordPope]

I have to say that this is an extremely unlikely scenario.

Wouldn't it depend on how hardy you are, how much of the house you heat, whether you expect to be able to walk around in barefeet and summer clothes in the depths of winter, or whether like us you wear several jumpers, wooly socks, and basically live in the kitchen heated by our own logs?
It wouldn't matter if a gale was blowing through the disused east wing - you could still have panels on the roof and flog the electricity.

 

[fernicarry]

Yeah, there's two parts to it, generation and export, with different prices. The prices are adjusted regularly, downwards, no where near 48p nowadays.

For the generation part you need a generation meter. For small generators export is deemed to be 50% of generation. You can ask for export to be metered I believe, and if the smart meter rollout ever makes any progress this could even become the norm. You get paid for generation even if you aren't grid connected which does sound kind of perverse because you'd be doing it anyway, right?

This is where people game the system even further with energy diverters e.g. into your immersion heater. These attempt to minimise your export by using more of it locally whilst you still get to claim the deemed feed-in. Another distortion of the market and of course the diverter manufacturer can also claim 'basically free'. Its a great idea, and I would do it, but it should stand on its own two legs not rely on a quirk of how feed in payments work to justify itself.

The generation meter thing gives me a problem because I want to DC couple my PV to a battery storage bank. This opens up a whole host of opportunities, you can consume your PV as you generate, you can store it for later, you can draw down from the batteries if its 'cheaper' that using mains, you can charge up from the mains at the off-peak tariff etc. etc. And you have a system that can keep going if the mains is out -- grid-tie inverters are obliged to shut down when the power goes out, so no mains means no power, even if the sun is shining. Pretty much the future you would think? Tesla, Musk, Mars etc. But, no, the only MCS certified generation meters are AC so I'd need to invert the PV output to AC, meter it and then convert back to DC to charge, more kit, more expense, less efficient, greater losses on the round trip.

On the actual EPC thing, you are allowed to take into account the improvement that results from installing the solar. Or so the guy who eventually graced me by coming round to stare meaningfully at my roof informed me.

He then wanted 7.5 grand to throw a bunch of kit onto the roof which even at retail prices wouldn't cost more than 3k, so to him even less. Alright there would be staging and labourers and a sparky, but 4.5+ grand margin for hardly even a couple days work???!! He also wasn't keen to use the DC cabling I'd already put in internally, which is fair enough, its buried in the wall now so he doesn't know whether I did it right or not, so the cables would be nailed onto the outside of the house.

Absolutely no one I contacted was the slightest bit interested in doing solar thermal. This would actually be a far better use of our limited south facing roof space, you get about 3 times the yield per unit area from thermal as you do from PV. Our heating runs off a thermal store, so heat stored during the day becomes space heating at night, perfect!

So I have a pretty serious downer on anything involving MCS. I just need to wait for the scheme to implode and then can go ahead and DIY without any nagging doubts of missing out. Sorry polar bears, it might be too late for you...

 

[Flyfisher]

Interesting stuff, thanks. Sounds like you've been more thorough in your research than me.

Interesting points about storage. I've not seriously considered a battery bank, mainly because of the extra cost and complexity. I'm thinking that using the immersion heater in our (small) heat store plus the underfloor heating would be adequate, especially in those Autumn times when the days can be bright but the evenings can be chilly.

Have you got as far as narrowing down a potential PV panel supplier? I'm hoping to build a shepherds hut this year and have been thinking about powering it with a solar panel (plus battery backup in this case), but there seems to be a wide range of prices and I don't yet feel I've got a good feel for the best 'value' in terms of reliability and lifetime. As ever, cheapest might not give best value. For the shepherds hut, I've been looking at boat/caravan systems, but I suspect they mostly carry quite a price premium - especially the 'yachtie' ones.

 

[skier-hughes]

We also have a 4Kw array of pv panels. We had them installed when the FiTs were first started.

Have you kept track of how many kW/hrs (units) you generate from that 4kW array?

Obviously it will vary depending on time of year and the weather, but the total generation for a year would be helpful (by quarter would be even better) for sizing purposes.

We get paid a sum for every unit we generate about 48p now and a sum for every unit we send back to the grid, about 4p.

They work out how much we send back to the grid by just assuming that half of the units will be sent back, therefore you could say, for each unit produced we get 50p.

Interesting that they don't bother metering how much is pumped back into the grid.

I think the cost of metering and recording is too high and due to the small payment made to cover the cost of putting electricity into the grid it's just easiest to pay a blanket payment.


Our system isn't standard - what is with an old house!!!

We have three inverters powering 3 systems, so we have 2kW and 2 x 1kW This is due to chimney and different roof angles.

Overall we generate an average of just under 8 units per day over a year. The last 3 days have seen 15/16 and 17 units. May is often our best month, we often get good sun and the angle is perfect for our roof angle.

The inverters have an average life span of about 10 years. When ours need replacing I'll change our system. Currently if one tiny bit of a panel is in shade (chimney) then all panels on that system run at the LOWEST generation - that's why we have 3 inverters. Now though, you can wire each panel up individually, to one inverter. This would increase our generation significantly to about the average of around 10 units per day for a 4Kw system. Friends of ours have 3kW and generate nearly as much as us as their roof angle is more suited to their position in the country and they have no shading.
We had our panels tilted as much as possible to the right angle, but any more and they'd have looked odd, it was a compromise we took.

 

[Feltwell]

I'm hoping to build a shepherds hut this year and have been thinking about powering it with a solar panel (plus battery backup in this case), but there seems to be a wide range of prices and I don't yet feel I've got a good feel for the best 'value' in terms of reliability and lifetime. As ever, cheapest might not give best value. For the shepherds hut, I've been looking at boat/caravan systems, but I suspect they mostly carry quite a price premium - especially the 'yachtie' ones.

It depends really on what you want to run within the hut. Solar panel systems are very common for motorhomes, much less so for caravans. I've got a single panel on my motorhome and in summer it will happily produce 3 amps or so but in winter they are much less efficient and it's often only producing a trickle, 0.1 amp or so.

But I run the motorhome - which means lots of LED interior lights, blower motor for the heating (the heat coming from gas), control circuits for the fridge etc etc - using 2 x 100amp hour batteries with no problems. We don't have the energy guzzling items like a TV or anything on an inverter like a coffee machine or hairdryer. If you're just going to have some LED lighting then a single 100 watt panel plus a single 80-100amp hour battery should be easily enough I reckon.

In winter if we use the van we're rarely in one place for more than a day, so hard to say if the solar is adequate as every time I start the van the alternator will be charging the batteries. In summer we have stayed in one place for up to a week with an energy hungry item (powered coolbox) running with no problems.