Are domestic solar panels financially beneficial - or just ideological?

Dominic Ó Galla said:
Which is a 17.5% annual return on the €8,000
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thats misleading quoting like that since it makes it look like an investment with dividends and capital appreciation, with a typical investment the 8,000 euro initial capital can always be sold back to the market reclaiming your capital and usually asset appreciation. With solar panels you cannot get back your investment so you really need to be adding depreciation cost aswell for 10 years, 10% per year probably . Then after 10 years if the panels are still working you can use 17.5% return but probably the system won't be so effective after 10 years in operation.
 
joe sod said:
probably the system won't be so effective after 10 years in operation.
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The warranty documentation for my Trina solar panels states that their performance will decline by a maximum of 2 % after one year
and that the maximum degradation from year 2 to 25 will be 0.55% annually, meaning that after 10 years the panels will be about 93% as efficient as they are today. And the battery performance will decline; it is guaranteed to hold at least 60% of the full charge after a decade.

The expected lifetime of my inverter ranges between 10 - 15 years, so it will be approaching replacement time in a decade.

On the positive side, in ten years time, the price of replacement inverters and batteries is likely to have fallen significantly.
 
The proof of the pudding is in the eating, and myself and anyone i know who gotten solar is getting a very good return on their investment.

The only people questioning the return on a solar panel investment are people who haven't gotten them and likely never will because it'd be in conflict with their world view. People who can do maths either have them already or are planning to.
Windsor23 said:
Made some enquires about getting them installed on my house. Quoted 15k or thereabouts
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That's gouging verging on outright theft. If you drop 65% over the going rate for anything it'll look like very poor value. But to be fair that's basically just another form of market segmentation- same kind of pricing strategy that has some people paying €45 a month for eir sim only while I pay them a third of that through gomo....
 
mathepac said:
But if you are generating electricity, then you could hang the clothes on the clothes line and dry them electricity free in the fresh air and sunshine. This is not a criticism. I'm wondering is the default these days to use s tumble dryer instead of using absolutely free drying. There may be other reasons, local air pollution, lack of a garden, or communal drying areas in apartments, etc. Just wondering
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Today I dried 2 loads on the line, 2 loads in the dryer, 1 load on the clothes rack (still not dry) and I have another load in the washing machine. With working I am time poor so need to get stuff done as quickly as I can. But for the last 5 weeks I line dried everything, but that would be unusual for me.
 
To solve the clothes drying question while also delivering solar power, there's the option of a solar panel canopy, with a clothesline underneath. This keeps the rain off clothes while still letting the wind get to them. And you have panels on top for electricity generation.
 

A good site for analysing your solar quote. You definitely should get a few quotes and shop around, and evaluate suppliers. The FB page mentioned above is a good resource.

Having installed in March this year, with a couple of batteries and using a 'set and forget' strategy with the equipment, I have to say I'm delighted with the return, from a fairly modest 5.7kWp system on a south facing roof with a couple of batteries and a smart plan that allows me to take advantage of very cheap 2-5am rates (7c). Basically we charge the batteries at the 2-5 rate which lasts most of the day. What's produced from the panels is mostly exported to the grid at 19c, with the rest topping up the battery so it's fully charged to run the house in the evening/night when the system ism't producing. It's even possible to dump what's left in the battery back to the grid at the FIT rate before charging again at the 2-5 rate. This is not difficult to set up and is basically a bog standard approach. I could tweak it but you can get a bit obsessed with this stuff and I think it's important to remember that you want the electricity and the system to be working for you rather than the other way around!

Winter will obviously be different, but I will certainly post back here in March with a complete analysis of the first year of operation.

While it works for us - all electric house with teenagers, EV, annual usage of around 8,000 kW, obviously it's different for people in different situations.

It is certainly not 'ideological'.
 
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extopia said:
It is certainly not 'ideological'.
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The ideological people adopted earlier at higher cost points. For at least the last 18 months it's a financial decision not ideological.


jim said:
Its outdated for example
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Yeah it seems to lag current costs which are dropping. But I could probably have saved over a grand by waiting longer to install my panels but I would have spent the saving on electricity anyway so what's the point?

As with any significant purchase it's important to know what you're buying, do the maths using an appropriately detailed spreadsheet with correct data inputs and (maybe most importantly) shop around for suppliers of both panels and electricity- the biggest sunniest roof in the world isn't going to help you much if you're getting robbed on every side because you went with the first Instagram add you saw..
 
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Got them three years ago. Added more last February. I figure they will have paid for themselves in four years time. Nothing particularly ideological about the decision. It makes financial sense and it is the right thing to do if you have the cash to do so.

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