Solar Photovoltaic Panels

Benefits of Solar PV for your home

Installing solar photovoltaic (PV) panels and generating your own renewable energy for use in your home is a great way to reduce your energy demand from the grid and therefore your energy bills.

This green energy also doesn’t release any carbon dioxide or greenhouse gas emissions during generation or transmission, reducing your carbon footprint and your impact on the environment. 

The installed cost of solar panels has fallen considerably over the last decade as the market has developed and the technology has proven itself in terms of generation output.  Financial incentives are also still available in the form of the Smart Export Guarantee (SEG).

The Energy Saving Trust provide lots of information on solar investment for your home and offer a solar energy calculator to help model the financial and environmental benefits you could expect to see from a system installed on your home.

The Council invested in solar PV for some of our Council properties in 2015/16.  The performance of a 2, 3 and 4KW system has been charted below to illustrate real-time performance of systems locally in West Lancashire.  Monitoring of our PV systems over the years has provided confidence in their performance and outputs, with most systems achieving or exceeding estimated generation levels. 

Graphic highlighting the increase in performance of solar pv on council properties

 

The graphs below provide a closer look at the performance of a 3KW system located on a Council property in Skelmersdale.  As illustrated, the system has been preforming well, meeting or slightly exceeding estimated generation levels year on year since installation. 

A graph showing daily solar increments. The increments show high solar reading increments in the summer months and low solar reading increments in the winter.

A graph which shows the cumulative solar kilo watt hours across a year. The graph shows the solar energy increases throughout the year above the expected rate.

This system has been generating an average of 2,250 KWh a year.  Using an average electricity price of 30p/KWh, this system has been providing between £162 and £450* of savings annually for the property.  Using this energy rather than that from the grid will provide a saving on your energy bills and a provide a return on your investment.

This system is also saving over half a tonne of greenhouse gas emissions a year, reducing the carbon footprint of the property and contributing to our carbon neutrality aspirations.

For more information and estimated costs and outputs for other renewable technologies for your home e.g. air source heat pumps and solar thermal hot water, please visit the Energy Saving Trust website.

The Survey and Installation Process

Before solar panels are fitted to a home, the company may complete a desk survey to check key information like the orientation of the roof before visiting the home to complete a site survey. The site survey may include:

  • checking the age of the roof,
  • the number of panels that can be fitted and
  • where the invertor can be fitted inside the property (the invertor changes the electricity produced from Direct Current (DC) to Alternating Current (AC) which allows the electricity to be used in the house or supplied to the National Grid).  

If the panels are being installed on your roof, it may be necessary to erect scaffolding. The installation of the panels and other equipment may take less than a day - depending on the number of panels and the size of the roof. The company will attach the fixing brackets on to the rafters of the roof and the solar panels will be clamped on to the fixing brackets. The panels will be wired to an invertor inside the property, such as in the attic. The invertor may include a smart meter or one will be fitted separately. A smart meter is needed to receive Smart Export Guarantee Payments.

 

*Calculated using https://pvfitcalculator.energysavingtrust.org.uk/