Solar panels on Listed Buildings?

[Pford75]

Wanted to get some forum perspective on the addition of solar panels to Listed Buildings.

We have a fairly large south facing roof. We also have a fairly large annual electricity bill (apx. £3000).

W are not in a position to afford the installation of solar panels right now (we were quoted £27,000), but we have noticed that some companies will install for free and provide free electricity, but in return they take any excess from the feed-in tariff. I appreciate that we could make some money doing this ourselves, but in the absence of the funds...what are the drawbacks of this approach? On face value it seems like an opportunity to save £3000 per year for doing very little...but i'm sure there are problems I've not thought about

Secondly, what are the general reactions of CO's to the addition of solar panels? The elevation is to the rear of the property and not overlooked.

 

[Moo]

Ooh, I like that idea!
We, too, have a south-facing roof that would be perfect for solar panels, but have been put off the idea by the rather long payback time (Penners will understand what I mean).
Getting free electricity sounds much more attractive.

 

[AMc]

The payback is around 8-10 years and the return on investment is guaranteed for now by the Feed in Tarrif payments which are linked to the retail price index this will be reviewed next spring and is expected to be less generous so there is an impetus to get on the board sooner rather than later and lock in the current deal.

The rent-a-roof schemes provide you with free electricity from the panels - in the day, more in summer than in winter - with the panel owner pocketing the substantially FIT payments which provide a very generous ROI for them. If you can't use the free electricity when its being generated you won't see much benefit, you can't bank it for use in the evening.

The complexities are you are leasing your roof so they have a title over your property. If you are mortgaged then you will need to work that through with your lender.
There are also building insurance issues.
You also need protection against them becoming insolvent leaving you with their assets on your roof.
Finally if you decide to sell you will need to either pass on the lease to the new owner, buy the installation or pay early termination costs to remove the panels. None of which is insurmountable but all of which could complicate matters.
In most cases you can choose to buy the panels at any point in the contract and get the FIT payments yourself.

I have a couple of friends in the PV installation business both of who have predated the current "subsidy farming" gold rush and they are both seriously concerned about some of the practices they're seeing.
One operates a "rent-a-roof" scheme and quotes the same prices to buy the system from him as if he were quoting for a customer bought installation. That cost slides over the lifetime of the system. He came across a competitor's quote of more than double the retail value of the system to buy it back in the first year and a very slow slide in value over the contract. Obviously the investor was trying to either discourage the home owner buying them out and securing the subsidy income for the next x years OR they were simply profiteering as once the panels are on your roof and the contract signed you have no option to look for competitive quotes.

Even if you decide to go for a "free" installation then you need to have your eyes wide open and get at least 3 competitive quotes examining the details of the contracts.

£27K is a hell of a lot of money so either you have a lot of room - you don't need to cover it all! - or a very awkward installation or you need to get a couple more quotes. If you intend to stay where you are for a while and think you may see the time when you can buy in the installation then I would go for it. My pal has been pitching me to put his panels on my coachhouse, but as we're not convinced we can stay here we're not going to take the risk and complicate moving any further for the sake of a couple of hundred pounds of "free" electricity a year.

FWIW my mum and dad have just fitted 3.4Kwp of panels at a cost of around £11K - they are expecting to be a broadly even on their consumption/exporting in terms of units and with the FIT they expect to significantly reduce their electricity costs.

 

[Flyfisher]

My instinct is to avoid allowing a 3rd-party to have any form of 'hold' over our house, though AMc has described some of the the specific issues rather better a 'gut feeling'. I'd also be wary of the unpredictable returns if the supplier is taking all the FIT payments. £3000 pa is a lot of electricity and, presumably, a lot of it is used at night, which would still need to be purchased from the grid, thus reducing your value from the system. A bit of time playing with a spreadsheet and using your seasonal consumption figures from old bills would probably make things a bit clearer, but you probably have a life to get on with. :wink:

I take AMc's point about not being able to store any surplus generation, though it might be possible to do this to some extent by using PV power to heat the DHW system. Indeed, if you had one of those big 'heat store' thingies then you could use PV to heat that during the day and then use the stored heat to drive the central heating during the non-summer evenings. Indeed, it could be fun trying to work out how to use all the available power such that there were no FIT payments for the installers to collect. :wink:

As for the siting of the panels, I recall a discussion here some years ago where is was suggested that public visibility wasn't really a major consideration and that such things would be decided on the merits of the changes themselves, regardless if they could be seen by anyone other than the house owner. I suppose this is fair enough, given the number of listed properties that are not publically visible at all.

 

[Penners]

I take AMc's point about not being able to store any surplus generation, though it might be possible to do this to some extent by using PV power to heat the DHW system. Indeed, if you had one of those big 'heat store' thingies then you could use PV to heat that during the day and then use the stored heat to drive the central heating during the non-summer evenings.

Yes, that point seems to me, also, to be the crux of the matter. Will you be able to use the daytime electricity that the panels generate?

I suppose you could try to ensure that you always run your washing machine, dryer, dishwasher and so on during the hours of maximum panel output, but even that would require a fairly rigid programme of what runs when - in order to use the available free power, but to avoid excessive demand at any one time.

 

[AMc]

I take AMc's point about not being able to store any surplus generation, though it might be possible to do this to some extent by using PV power to heat the DHW system. Indeed, if you had one of those big 'heat store' thingies then you could use PV to heat that during the day and then use the stored heat to drive the central heating during the non-summer evenings.

The problem with this is you'd have to get the system to trigger based on the output of the panels - it isn't dependably sunny every day. If you set timers on your tumble dryer, dishwasher etc. based on a guess about the weather you'll often end up paying peak rates for grid energy.
You won't be able to do this more intelligently with the standard systems a "free" installer will put in as they make their money from the generation capacity and have no interest in what happens to that energy after its metered - it's effectively a by product of a subsidy

If you want to heat a thermal store then solar thermal systems that directly heat the coils in the tank are substantially more efficient but you don't get the free FIT money so the cost will struggle to pay back over the lifetime of the system. And the amount of solar energy is substantially lower in winter when you would want to harvest it.

Indeed, it could be fun trying to work out how to use all the available power such that there were no FIT payments for the installers to collect. :wink:

FIT payments are paid for what you generate regardless of where it's consumed locally or exported to the grid - that's why its worth having.
If you have a large system or a willing energy company they may fit an export meter that will pay for energy sent into the grid but at well below what you pay for a retail unit IIRC 5p to export 15p to import a unit on peak rates. More commonly the output of a domestic system is "deemed" which means they calcuate that half the energy is exported and pay a couple of pence over the standard FIT payment for that energy.

The best reason I can see to get a "free" system installed is if you have a suitable roof and want to secure the higher rate of FIT now before the rules change next year and don't have the capital or the equity to borrow against to buy the system yourself.

 

[Flyfisher]

If you want to heat a thermal store then solar thermal systems that directly heat the coils in the tank are substantially more efficient but you don't get the free FIT money so the cost will struggle to pay back over the lifetime of the system. And the amount of solar energy is substantially lower in winter when you would want to harvest it.

I agree that PV heating of water may not be as efficient as solar thermal, but if someone has already paid for the PV then surely it's worthwhile to use any 'spare' output to heat a thermal store? I take your point about needing a reasonably intelligent control system to ensure that only unused PV electricity is used. I don't know if such things are commercially available but it wouldn;t be a complex thing to do - though I appreciate a 3rd-party installer would have no incentive to do so as part of a 'roof rental' PV system.

FIT payments are paid for what you generate regardless of where it's consumed locally or exported to the grid - that's why its worth having.

Wow - I didn't realise that. I guess I was misled by the term 'feed-in tariff', assuming it meant electricity fed into the grid. So such systems could be installed in houses not even connected to the grid? In which case, you'd still receive 43p for every unit of generated but unused energy? What a mad scheme!

 

[88v8]

That £27,000 would 'generate' about £1,200 in dividends if you bought the right shares, and now is a good time to buy, so you have to make that in electricity savings just to stand still in terms of return on capital, never mind payback. £1,200 is a lot of daytime electricity. Also, I can tell you that the output from solar panels plummets when the sun goes behind a cloud.

Ivor

 

[Pford75]

I'm already well invested. I see this as a diversification of my investment portfolio :wink:

As I said at the start of the thread, our annual electricity bill is just over £3000, so even if the arrangement just removed or reduced this, it would be a good return. Especially if I can get a return with no up front investment!

What I hadn't appreciated is that these arrangements only allow you free use of what is being generated, when it is being generated. In other words, no option to 'store' the energy you've created. This is a major drawback to the scheme. Is anyone aware of schemes where you consume from the daily/weekly/monthly net energy?

 

[Penners]

That £27,000 would 'generate' about £1,200 in dividends if you bought the right shares

It's such a tiny word, isn't it? "If". But its ramifications can be so enormous.

If I'd bought the right shares 40 years ago, I'd now be sitting in my beach house in the Bahamas, wondering whether to spend the winter in my waterfront apartment in Cape Town or on my private Indonesian island.

Ho hum...

 

[AMc]

Wow - I didn't realise that. I guess I was misled by the term 'feed-in tariff', assuming it meant electricity fed into the grid. So such systems could be installed in houses not even connected to the grid? In which case, you'd still receive 43p for every unit of generated but unused energy? What a mad scheme!

I don't think you can get FIT payments for an off grid system.

Is anyone aware of schemes where you consume from the daily/weekly/monthly net energy?

None that I know of.

If you have had a quote for £27K of PV then you presumably have an estimate on it's output in KW hours per annum?
Multiply that by the cost per unit for peak energy and you should get an idea of the financial impact. Reducing your bill is possible but removing it seems highly unlikely to me.
I was given a rough estimate of a couple of hundred pounds a year saving from putting 3Kwp on my coachhouse so unless you have a great deal of roof I doubt you'll put much of a dent in that £3000 electicity bill.
The FIT payment is the only reason that installing a domestic PV system is currently an economic proposition the "free" electricity - saving you about 15p a unit for every solar unit you consume during the day isn't worth all that much.

To get to a £3000 bill you must have some serious consumption to cover - my bill is somewhere in that region and that includes my space and water heating and we're not especially frugal with appliances and gadgets.

 

[Flyfisher]

That £27,000 would 'generate' about £1,200 in dividends if you bought the right shares

It's such a tiny word, isn't it? "If". But its ramifications can be so enormous.

If I'd bought the right shares 40 years ago, I'd now be sitting in my beach house in the Bahamas, wondering whether to spend the winter in my waterfront apartment in Cape Town or on my private Indonesian island.

Ho hum...

Yes, and imagine the torment such decisions would entail. Such stress cannot be a good thing.

 

[Pford75]

Estimates from initial conversations are that we can install 15-20 KW's of panels on our south facing roof.

I don't happen to know the cost per unit or our consumption (in units) as I am overseas at present. But I think you are right, it won't be enough to offset our bill completely.

One problem we have is that a significant drain on our electricity is electric u/flr heating in some rooms...which tends to run when there isn't much sun.

 

[Penners]

Aye, there's the rub. Less sunshine, lower output from the PV panels, more need for electric heating.

I don't see how you can square that circle.

 

[N & S joinery]

Hi folks im new on here and thought i would comment on this as i part own a solar company so know a bit about it.
first off 27k is a ridiculus amount of money to be quoted for a standard domestic system i assume they was quoting for a 4KWh system? (as it gets very difficult to go above that as you go into a different set of regulations if you are producing over 16A) if so the cost should be much much much less than that!
The draw backs of the free schemes is that is that it wont save you as much as they will tell you it will, i worked out roughly that on a 4KWh system you would only save around £250 per year on your energy bills providing that you are at home in the day to use it , realisticly the only person who makes the money on them is the man gettin the FIT, but i suppose that if you can put up with them on your roof for 25 years then its better than nuthing?

i would be very carefull of who you have doing the fitting of the pannels too as the reason we got into doing it was that one of my existing customers wanted them and was put off by all the people coming round who didnt know the first thing about buildings or how the pannels were conected to the roof or if the roof would take the weight all they wanted was a signed contract, one even had the cheek to ask me if they got the job would i fit them for them! theres alot of chancers out there!

 

[N & S joinery]

ahhh sorry just realised you was being quoted for a 15-20kwh system that is about the right money for a system of that size, as said in previous post, its all well an good if you are there to use the electric being produced but as we all know we nly use lights at night when
there is no sun, and heating in winter when there is also less sun. it really is only the FIT scheme that makes them worth having

 

[N & S joinery]

would also like to point out that if you did pay the 27000 for them you could look to make around 10% on that per year and the fit is guaranteed for 25 years so on the 27000 0ver 25 years you could expect to make around £67,500 and that doesent include the money saved on the electric you wouldnt have to buy

 

[AMc]

15-20KW is a big array, about 4/5 times the typical domestic installation.

The FIT payment your potential panel provider would be 32.9p per unit compared to 43.3p for a <4Kwp install but it would still be an attractive proposition for the right company.

That underfloor heating sounds scary. We have 5 beds, 5 receptions running a mix of radiators and wet underfloor and an variable amount of insulation but don't hit your consumption - and that's without your oil I can see why you're trying to find a way to reduce your costs.

Aye, there's the rub. Less sunshine, lower output from the PV panels, more need for electric heating.

I don't see how you can square that circle.

You simply install the panels on the opposite side of the world and gain the maximum energy in the middle of our night in the middle of winter.
You might need a long extension lead though.

 

[Penners]

You might need a long extension lead

Here's one that might suit...

 

[biffvernon]

Our solar pv system was just one year old last week. It's 3.98kWp and cost £14300. Cost for panels have dropped a bit over the year so if I was installing today I would look for quotes under £14k.

It has produced 3783kWhr, well in excess of the projected figure (3269kWhr) and returned 11% on capital invested. Result

My house is not listed and has a rather dull concrete tile roof c.1960 which almost nobody looks at. I have a friend in a listed building that did not need messing up so they put their system on a frame on the ground. It doubles up as a bike shed and log store. I have another friend who built a new outbuilding especially for their system. It is to become the changing room for the planned natural swimming pool. (One needs to pick one's friends carefully.)