The day after our solar panels had been installaled on the roof, a delivery driver called at our house, took one look at them, and said, "But, it's a scam, isn't it!" I was inclined to agree with him - a cold January morning and only a trickle of electricity being produced.
The important thing to realise is that the solar power companies are loose with the truth. We live in the Republic of Ireland, which has a broadly similar climate to the UK and many northern european countries, i.e. it's not the sunny mediterranean! The sales blurb will tell you that, even when the sun isn't out, the panels will still generate electricty. This is true. What the blurb won't tell you is there is an enormous difference in the amount of power generated, depending on the strength of the light.
For example, midday on a sunny day in winter, our eighteen panels give us 6 kW of free electricity. That's enough to run three fan heaters simultaneously full-blast. Pretty good, huh? At the other extreme, on a dull, rainy, misty morning. winter or summer, we might get only enough to run an old-fashioned 100 watt lightbulb. So, it's definitely not electricity on demand. Sometimes you will get more electricity than you need; sometimes you'll only get a trickle. And you'll get all amounts in between, depending on the cloud cover, the time of day, and the season of the year.
Think of solar as a kind of eccentric bank manager who hands out free money, except as well as being eccentric he's extremely moody, so sometimes you'll get a big handout, other times a pittance. Having said that, mine gives me 2500 euro profit per year, composed of savings on electricity bills plus money earned from selling summer surplus back to the power company. That's significant money. However, the amount of money earned depends on making the right initial choices, including getting the right kind of panels, making a good decision re the backup battery, configuring the system to maximise the benefit. These are all subjects I'll be advising on (in layman's language) in future blog posts.
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