Has anyone had solar panels fitted?

IronGiant

You only get free electricity during the daytime, all your night time you still pay for, and if you put the kettle on in in full sunshine you will use more than the panels generate while it is boiling.  So you only get a contribution towards your bill, you will never get a zero bill.  Unless you go to bed at dusk and turn everything in the house including the fridge off...

  you get a cash return on all electricity generated whether you use it or export it.


Agreed

The Dark Horse

if you decide on the free panels is there 'small print' you have to be wary of, for example maintenance fees, difficulty if you want to sell your home in the future or other things to be aware of?

IronGiant

There are three hundred pages of small print

They should be completely responsible for maintaining and insuring them for the 25 years. After that they are handed over to you.

They need reasonable access to maintain their income and if you can't give them access to mend them they can charge you pro-rata for the lost income.

If I willfully damage them they will sue my arse.

They will remove the panels from your roof for necessary maintenance to the roof, at their expense, twice in the 25 years.  But will charge you for the lost income while they are removed.

If the government moves the goal posts and the feed back tariff becomes economically unviable they reserve the right to remove the panels or leave you in charge of them.


That was my biggest concern, but if they are making no money on my roof they won't make any money on anyone else's  so I doubt they'd take them away and put them on Ebay.

As for selling, they are now welded to the deeds of your house, a new buyer has to take them on.  Depending who you believe this is incredibly bad, or a freebie the new owner will be delighted to get for nothing along with your loft insulation.

saintie1

Sorry I am not taken in by this get PV panels save bigs bucks, make money hype etc.

When the government moves the goal posts, starts removing the subsidies etc, because we cant afford to give money away these days, what do you think will happen.  All these PV companies that have sprung up overnight will evaporate.  All these folks with the the panels left on the roofs will have something that has little value that they cannot sell on apart from visiting the dump.

I also wonder how they can be "welded" to the mortgage deeds of the house?  The contract will be with the purchaser of the panel and the PV company.  If you sell the house then the next owner who has just bought the house has every right to dump these in the nearest bin. To link this directly to the house deeds will take quite a bit of legal work to re-jig the deeds and this costs bucks.  These companies are not about spending good money they are about making a fast buck on the back on dodgy projections of how much the can client can supposedly earn.  

Better than money in the bank is one line that is regularly mooted.  How about this I spend £15K on panels and get whatever return on my "investment" or I stick the 15K in a bank account. Give it a few years when everything goes tits up in the PV world and what would you rather have your money in.....worthless flat panels on your roof or money in the bank?

Remember an old saying "if it sounds too good to be true then it usually is".  Free money is in short supply these days, the only folk making any money out of this is the guy who is flogging these panels!

Now this has turned into a wee bit of a rant, and appreciate my view will not be shared by others.  No doubt by folk who have these panels and "making" money, or those who are trying to be green.  My question is........if it wasn't for these unrealistic subsidies who would buy them?

Now lets see how many out there have there hands up?

IronGiant

You may be wrong, shall we start here?

They have a legal document that leases the air space above the roof of this property for 25 years, whoever owns it. Which is why Land Registry and our Building Society who hold the Deeds were all involved.

If the company evaporated tomorrow they wouldn't be worthless.

I could detach it from the grid and pump it into whatever I wanted.

I could easily heat a small swimming pool for nothing

I've easily had £120 free electricity off them in 3 months and over 25 years that's £3000 pounds, just if they only generated for 3 months a year.  It's not going to be £120 every three months, but you get the idea.

Anyway, this is why I didn't invest, i'm happy with the free electricity.

The Dark Horse

I'm looking into them but I have these very concerns. Warranties and contracts are void if a company goes bankrupt and I can't see everyone of these companies staying in business. Plus if I had 15K spare it would be better spent on my mortgage, far greater savings could be had.

saintie1

This is interesting about leasing the air space.  I am no lawyer, but I have never seen a title deed that includes ownership of the air space above your ground/property.  There are bits in the deeds linking the ground and everything below to your ownership but not the air space.  If this were true then when a plane flew over your house you would be entitled to some recompense for it infringing your air space.  Also if everybody who owned property, surely this would be another tactic used for example to ensure no development happened around airports. Nobody who lived there would give any airline the right to fly through their "air space".  As far as I aware air space is "owned" by the country/government not the individual.

Any lawyers/solicitors out there like to shed any light in this?

IronGiant

Do not shoot the messenger... he asked, I told.

I can check the contract and report back.

therixonator

What will the feed in tariff be reduced from and to in march? Do you get the rate you start on for life or can it move?

saintie1

IG - Sorry if you feel I am getting at you, I didn't mean it to come over as this.  You have shed some more light on the subject and I am curious?  Anything that would come complete with a 300 page contract would (for me anyway) raise concerns.

Lets face it marriage doesn't even come with that.  A one page certificate suffices for a life time contract, or life sentence depending which way you look at it!