Energy Bills...that time again
Comments
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We took a different tack and bundle our 'utilities' the only exception is water.
We changed to Utility Warehouse where we buy Gas & Electricity and get the phone line and broadband included. The tariffs for G&E are competetive but the real saving is in not paying for telephone line and broadband, so if you look at the total 'utility'
costs it cannot be beaten.We then put solar PV on the roof where we get a Feed In Tariff that actually gives us payments, a 4kWsystem.
In order to make the solar beneficial you change the way you run the house. So only use high electrical appliances whilst daylight and you are generating. Example get up have breakfast put dishes in dishwasher with last nights dinner dishes. A quick 30 minute
cycle, job done. Then you put the clothes washing machine on (the largest single user of electricity in a house). Hoover after that using the electicity you are generating. Cut the lawn using solar generated electricity.As your appliances need renewing go for AAA rated where you use less power. Change lights for LED, if pensioners the utility companies issue free low energy bulbs.
There is also a pre paid debit card that you can tie to your account that gives you % of spend off your utility bills. From 2-10% of spend. Example sainsbury fuel in car, spend £50 per fortnight on shopping get 2% off utility bill. M&S can be up to 10%.
So if you use cash you earn.We don't actually pay for electricity now. The solar panels have been paid for in 4 years, another 21 to earn with. Probably better than a pension.
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I've had mine four years as well. It'll be another year before I've recouped the capital outlay. I suppose if I factor in the savings on the electricity to date, it's probably getting on for break even.
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Ian - along similar lines I am always annoyed by the 'Daily Meter cost' why cannot the energy companies include it in their cost per KWH?
After all one does not buy petrol by the Litre with an additional charge for using the pumps!
Similarly the purchase of, say, Rhubarb at a supermarket does not include an extra charge for delivery and storage. perhaps the energy regulator ought to get to grips with this aspect of fuel costs or resign his post.
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We've had our solar panels for 6 years now so have had our initial investment back. With us being away for so many months a year now, our electricity consumption is about a third of what it used to be. We don't have mains gas we have LPG, so no dual fuel
accounts for us. We don't pay a standing charge for the electric but we do pay a rent for the gas tank. We do use the dishwasher, washing machine etc. during the day when its light, a lot easier now we are at home during the day.0 -
Had a call (on home phone) purporting to come from our Energy Company telling me my current deal was about to end and I needed to do something about it Asap. I fob them off as I was busy at the time. Checking my account confirmed 2 things, my account runs
until June 2017 and the Energy company don't have my home phone number. I immediately e-mailed the company and below is the reponse:Thanks for getting in touch.
It seems like you were right not to give out any information. We don't call when your renewal is pending, we send an email, and you can renew through your online account. Thanks
for letting us know about the call, I'll pass it on that this has happened!Kind regards,
The callers number was 01616945845 apparently from an outfit called Mail chimp.
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Those of you who are "breaking even" in such a short time.....
are you factoring in the loss of interest on the capital that is no longer in the bank?
The money we used to pay for our panels was originally earning 4%, then that dropped to 3%, which is the highest rate we would now be earning (meantime!), so I have made a spreadsheet to take the loss of interest into account.
We will on those rates, break even on that basis after 8 +years.
As we are always meantime away when the most power is generated, thus unable to use it, we have ignored savings on our bills, so ours is the worst scenario
We will certainly be in profit by 8 years, and this is as predicted by most official sites.
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Take your point Kj about loss of interest, I think we have come in under the predicted time frame due to our having retired and away more. Couple that with when at home taking advantage of 'free' electricity when its sunny for the white goods etc. Unless we had, had the money in a 5 year account I doubt we would be getting great interest rates now.
We bought the panels using some of my pot on retiring so never touched savings
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Those of you who are "breaking even" in such a short time.....
are you factoring in the loss of interest on the capital that is no longer in the bank?
The money we used to pay for our panels was originally earning 4%, then that dropped to 3%, which is the highest rate we would now be earning (meantime!), so I have made a spreadsheet to take the loss of interest into account.
We will on those rates, break even on that basis after 8 +years.
As we are always meantime away when the most power is generated, thus unable to use it, we have ignored savings on our bills, so ours is the worst scenario
We will certainly be in profit by 8 years, and this is as predicted by most official sites.
Does your spreadsheet take into account the FIT tax free payment and the tax payable on your savings before the advent of £1000 tax free interest?
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Does your spreadsheet take into account the FIT tax free payment and the
tax payable on your savings before the advent of £1000 tax free interest?Don't know about Kj, but all our savings are in my name as I don't pay tax, OH does so we moved everything into my name, OH only has ISA's now and they are just about reaching the end of the good rate he had.
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The solar panel investment is an interesting debate
see here If we installed them now we probably would not see much value in our investment. Possibly our savings, as people in our sixties, need to go towards future living costs in general. I'm not sure how long solar panels remain efficient either, improvements
will no doubt come along too as they do with other heating systems. We're "investing" in a more efficient gas boiler next week, we probably won't recoup the costs of the instalment but hopefully our general fuel costs will decrease.0 -
There are several factors that can be introduced into any spreadsheet on the issue, loss of interest on capital outlay being just one. No-one has mentioned the effect of inflation on your capital which will also affect the value of any interest accrued.
The bottom line is that anyone who installed solar four years ago is quids in. As the likelihood of me lasting the twenty five year payment period is fairly remote, I must find out what the position is regarding payments after my demise.0 -
The solar panel investment is an interesting debate
see here If we installed them now we probably would not see much value in our investment. Possibly our savings, as people in our sixties, need to go towards future living costs in general. I'm not sure how long solar panels remain efficient either, improvements
will no doubt come along too as they do with other heating systems. We're "investing" in a more efficient gas boiler next week, we probably won't recoup the costs of the instalment but hopefully our general fuel costs will decrease.Brue you should see a differnce in your gas bill with a better boiler, we certainly have. We opted for a combi boiler when we changed ours 6 years ago. With us being away so often including winter I didn't want tanks up in the attic, plus we changed the
bathroom from a bath to a shower thinking ahead for old age our consumption is much less yet we were in the house from end Nov - March last
year and it won't be much differance this year, we are on LPG so for us it is important to keep costs down.Cyber, as far as I remember you can gift the solar panels to your children (or others) in your will.
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Those of you who are "breaking even" in such a short time.....
are you factoring in the loss of interest on the capital that is no longer in the bank?
The money we used to pay for our panels was originally earning 4%, then that dropped to 3%, which is the highest rate we would now be earning (meantime!), so I have made a spreadsheet to take the loss of interest into account.
We will on those rates, break even on that basis after 8 +years.
As we are always meantime away when the most power is generated, thus unable to use it, we have ignored savings on our bills, so ours is the worst scenario
We will certainly be in profit by 8 years, and this is as predicted by most official sites.
Does your spreadsheet take into account the FIT tax free payment and the tax payable on your savings before the advent of £1000 tax free interest?
Yes, like TG, our savings were previously mainly in my wife's name as she is not a taxpayer, so the FIT being tax free makes no difference.
Had we not used the money on the panels we would actually now have an additional £10k in the NS&I 4% fixed account, so really I should still be using 4%.
We do save a bit on bills, but very difficult to know exactly how much, so I have left that out of the calculations and look at it as the "icing on the cake".
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See I take a different view. My capital costs will be paid off in 5.5 years. The capital cost if not put into solar panels would have been in a fixed rate ISA at approx 3% for 4 years, then transferred to either another ISA at about 1% if lucky or some
other savings account which would have been taxable. After paying the capital cost of my panels we will have nearly19 years of tax free income of close to £2k a year
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Just been reviewing my figures, which I had not done since last year, and find that after a couple of slightly poorer years, it will now be 9 years before we are in profit.
Being further north presumably cuts down on the production, plus due to the shape of our roof the best size panels for us were the slightly more expensive ones. Our FIT brings in between £1650 and £1700 each year.
Just over 5 years since we had the panels installed, so I need to survive a while yet!!
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There are several factors that can be introduced into any spreadsheet on the issue, loss of interest on capital outlay being just one. No-one has mentioned the effect of inflation on your capital which will also affect the value of any interest accrued.
The bottom line is that anyone who installed solar four years ago is quids in. As the likelihood of me lasting the twenty five year payment period is fairly remote, I must find out what the position is regarding payments after my demise.I looked at that a while back, the FIT goes with the meter unless you assign it to someone else, a bit like those "rent a roof" schemes.
So essentially whoever inherits/owns the house gets the FIT.
If the house was to be sold, I think you would find it very difficult to sell if someone else was to retain the right to the FIT payments.
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We also have an 'i-heat' unit in the solar PV system where the immersion heater draws power generated but not used, to heat a tank of hot water. We changed the boiler a few years ago due to old age and decided to go for a condenser boiler with a new larger
hot water storage tank. During the summer the hot water tank is heated by solar, that by changing habits ie shower of an evening means we don't use gas for hot water.The step daughter stayed here whilst we were away at Easter and rang us early 1 morning to say there was no hot water for the shower, when asked if she used the shower the evening before and she confirmed then asked her how solar works at night!! They don't
teach the yoof science on facebook.In the winter when the gas central heating is on, hot water is a by product effectively.
The missing link currently is storage of electricity generated. Yes there are batteries out there, but as with the first solar panels are exhorbitantly expensive currently (pardon the pun). I'm sure in the lifetime of our solar panels, storage will be viable.
Our roof is directly south facing and by chance we got the higher performance panels fitted as the supplier was unable to get the ordered lower quality panels in time to meet the installation date
Apparently the first working solar PV panel was in service in 1957, made by Sharp.
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Just been reviewing my figures, which I had not done since last year, and find that after a couple of slightly poorer years, it will now be 9 years before we are in profit.
Being further north presumably cuts down on the production, plus due to the shape of our roof the best size panels for us were the slightly more expensive ones. Our FIT brings in between £1650 and £1700 each year.
Just over 5 years since we had the panels installed, so I need to survive a while yet!!
How many panels do you have Kj to get a return like that, we have 10 but not getting anything like you. Ours are SW facing so do get loads of sun.
I remember when we bought our panels we were told that if you move house they would remove and re-fit the panels once for you for free, or you could add the cost of the panels to the house sale and keep the fits for yourself but the new owner would get the cheaper electricity. In practice not sure how all that would work.
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I've got friends up on Orkney and another couple locally who boost their water heater with solar, seems to work quite well. They don't have solar power for anything else, just the water.
The council here have fitted 2 panels to some of their properties for boosting the hot water, some of the other properties have been fitted with 10 solar panels, I think they are trying them out to see what is best.
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Just been reviewing my figures, which I had not done since last year, and find that after a couple of slightly poorer years, it will now be 9 years before we are in profit.
Being further north presumably cuts down on the production, plus due to the shape of our roof the best size panels for us were the slightly more expensive ones. Our FIT brings in between £1650 and £1700 each year.
Just over 5 years since we had the panels installed, so I need to survive a while yet!!
How many panels do you have Kj to get a return like that, we have 10 but not getting anything like you. Ours are SW facing so do get loads of sun.
I remember when we bought our panels we were told that if you move house they would remove and re-fit the panels once for you for free, or you could add the cost of the panels to the house sale and keep the fits for yourself but the new owner would get the
cheaper electricity. In practice not sure how all that would work.We have the max allowed for the 4 (3.6 really)kwp allowed for the max FIT. We have the maximum rate, so probably paid the maximum price!
Our roof is just west of totally south facing, but being shaped, not rectangular, a certain size/brand of (more expensive) panels worked best for us. We also have a 20 year warranty on the invertor.
So higher initial cost but a slightly better return.
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Our son got panels just after we did, same installer. He has a property in East Ayrshire, an old farmhouse with a nearby cottage which his MIL lives in, it has a separate supply and address.
He has max panels on the cottage, and his (max allowed) are on his byre, both have a nice ordinary roof, so he was able to go for the larger, cheaper panels.
They have similar weather to us, but do seem to get very slightly more sun, and are exactly south facing, so are getting at least £1700 per year on each installation.
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I was led to believe that domestic properties cannot have 4kw as that puts you into another FIT band. We have 16x240watt which do give a true 3.8kw when recieving maximum light. More important our FIT supplier BG informed us that our ROI is currently 13.1%
which gives pay back in under 7 years.0 -
Can I just ask......does anyone know whether all this solar energy actually does go back into the grid to be used by someone else?
I recall reading some time ago that in many areas the grid wasn't capable of accepting / using it......but maybe things have changed?
Also, when they reduce the FIT do they ever do it retrospectively or do you keep the level that you had when the panels were installed?
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Can I just ask......does anyone know whether all this solar energy actually does go back into the grid to be used by someone else?
I recall reading some time ago that in many areas the grid wasn't capable of accepting / using it......but maybe things have changed?
Also, when they reduce the FIT do they ever do it retrospectively or do you keep the level that you had when the panels were installed?
First part of your question I don't know.
Second part, yes you do keep the level at which you signed up for the panels and its linked to the CPI.
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