I live in the UK, I have no savings (so would have to take out a loan of about ?8000), I don't know how long I plan to stay in my house, I might want to move in a year or two to take advantage of a better job so I want to keep the option open of being able to sell my house without having to pay off the cost of having the panels fitted (which I probably won't get back on the increased value they add to my house).What are the main advantages of having solar panels?What are the pitfalls the ever so eager cold callers with quotas to fill don't tell you about?Basically is it worth having them?Thankyou.
If you're talking about photovoltaic panels, for making electricity, they're very expensive. Around here I think it runs around 2 bucks a watt of capacity, just for the panels. Then they have to be installed of course, which means an electrician has to be paid, and you need an inverter also. You can also spring for a bank of deep cycle batteries if you want to be able to store the electricity from the panels to use at night or on cloudy days, but that adds another very large expense. Now if electricity is very, very expensive where you are, you could maybe pay this off in a few years, but I doubt you could pay off 8000 pounds worth of this stuff in only a couple years. If you're talking about solar for water or air heating, well, that's another deal. But those kind of setups cost a lot less to put in, I can't see anyone paying that much for it.
View okorder /. Too expensive and it may be illegal.
Payback for your investment is 5-25 years, depending on sunny skies, durability of your system, rate of your utility company/taxes, and luck. If you have storm damage, accidents, or equipment failure, add that expense. It would be tough to get full value at the sale of your property, based on actual productivity (kwh produced) and relative condition/durability.
In 2007, the cost of solar photoelectric power was 38 cents US per kwh while the cost of coal power was 0.6 cents per kwh but consumer costs for power were 2 cents per kwh as additional coal power plants are not being built so wind and natural gas are being built. Without government incentives, solar power are not economic. However, the UK has extensive subsidies for solar, I would suggest that you learn how to perform Internal Rate of Return ( IRR ) calculations and Net Present Value ( NPV ) calculations to evaluate your financial decision, excel has an excellent =XIRR() function to do this with. Most people talk about payback periods but that's due to the poor level of financial education in the population and payback periods don't give you an appropriate evaluation of the time value of money. With solar power, it's a razor thin line of economics so you have to get the calculations right to know what's in your best interest, the laymen hearsay isn't going to do it.
