Topic: Solar Panels - how much can they save per month?

[redbyrdz]

I got a grant and had some fitted last June (see earlier post}) and they were saving me £20 a month even in this winter they are saving me money even with the price increase and still get 4 or 5 hours a day when the panels are covering my energy usage which isn't that much really

I looking forward to tomorrow I also got a grant to fit a air source heat pump heating and hot water system, it's been fitted and being wired in tomorrow

They are saying the heating system is 1 to 3.7 which means for every kW of electricy it uses you get 3.7 kw of heat and seeing how much the panels cut the cost of heating.

I see myself as lucky I got around £20,000 of grants over the last 5 months or so I got fitted for free..

The solar panels installed
New Loft insulation up to 100mm
A electric air vent fitted in each room
Internal wall insulation that was a nightmare took 4 days and was very dusty
And the air sourced heat pump heat and hot water system.

It will be so strange it will be the first time I have lived in a house with proper heating before it was a fire or plug in heaters... As a kid I remember a paraffin heater

I'm interested how that is all going for you, its  rare that you get so much investment into turning an older house into an energy-efficient building.

It will be strange for you to have constant heating, especially because the heatpump prefers to keep the temperature stable and not turn it on and off. Every time it needs to work against a big temperature difference, it uses more energy. But because you didn't have central heating before, you are more used to it getting warm quickly and then turn it off when its enough. Probably leaving it on and a low temperature is the better way for you.

Hopefully the solar panels will contribute most of the electricity to the heat pump.

[Red Raw]

I will put the document up they emailed me with their working outs, I got it wrong it's 3.4 but can get it higher if i get double glazing and new main doors in right now I have old metal frames that are really letting the cold in and badly fitted front and back doors.

...

So thinking of getting the double glazing done in 2 stages first the front windows and door a d then the back window and doors.

...

The company is MCS certificated and has done its calculations according to the prescribed method so hopefully it will all be good.

Although I can see there is an error in the estimated cost of electricity with the ASHP because they have left out the standing charge for electricity which would be about 46p/day on the basis of the price cap figures they are using. The ASHP cost will therefore be £168 more expensive then they have shown (although still cheaper than gas). These caclulations obviously exclude the effect of your PV.

Your seasonal performance figure (SPF) is as you say 3.4 and is the most useful figure for calculating the relative costs and emissions.
Before you start looking at double glazing I would ask the installers out of interest what SPF to expect if you did replace the windows (the heat loss/SPF calculations will all be in a spreadsheet and should be reasonably easy to recalculate).

You will then be in a position to see how long it will take to recover the outlay. If they reckon (for example) double glazing would bring the SPF up to 3.6 (around the current UK average) that would reduce your annual heating bill by £133. If the double glazing (say 8 windows and 2 doors) cost £12,000 it would take about 90 years to recover the cost (i.e. never in the lifetime of the windows).

There are other reasons doing double glazing of course (existing windows are knackered, sound insulation, improve the look of the house etc.) but energy performance improvements can often be modest because windows are usually a relatively small part of the surface area through which heat escapes.

In some cases secondary glazing can be a much cheaper option and while not as good as primary double glazing could still halve the heat loss from your windows at 25% to 50% of the cost of double glazing. Might be worth a couple of phone calls.

[Trada]

Thanks for the advice Red Raw

Got my heat pump installed yesterday the electrician was here all day wiring it up and the other workmen came back when he first turned it on to check everything was OK. It was just warming the house up when they turned it off and they will be back when SSE electric have upgraded the main house fuse from 60amp to 100amp and only they can do that because its classed as their property or something

Which they will do in a week or two.

At least its all installed and ready to go.

Checked the airing cupboard it's a maze of pipes and cylinders I wonder what each tank does I will have to check youtube

[Red-Soldier]

Thanks for the advice Red Raw

Got my heat pump installed yesterday the electrician was here all day wiring it up and the other workmen came back when he first turned it on to check everything was OK. It was just warming the house up when they turned it off and they will be back when SSE electric have upgraded the main house fuse from 60amp to 100amp and only they can do that because its classed as their property or something

Which they will do in a week or two.

At least its all installed and ready to go.

Checked the airing cupboard it's a maze of pipes and cylinders I wonder what each tank does I will have to check youtube

The white one if your water tank for your solar thermal heater.