Solar panels - no brainer for us?

[Spinball]

We put an offer in on a house on cofton church lane. Ended up here instead.
I really would like some options on the way forward where our energy bills are significantly reduced. The kids are going to be here for another 7 years before we pack them off to uni. So that's a warm house for 4 for that long.

If energy bills are going to rise as we're hearing in the news then I want to reduce the current energy bill by a significant amount. Like 80%?

How much would it cost us to do that?

 

[Spinball]

I've spoken with nPower and our bills are £4.50 - £5 a day for electricity and £12 - £13 a day for gas.
*Got* to bring these bills down. The gas bill is the one of most concern, obviously.

 

[Earthstore]

If you have a decent PV system, you could use the FIT's to go towards your gas bill, therefore reducing your "energy outgoings", haven't re-read the whole post, but insulate, insulate, insulate, if you are not letting the heat out, then you will need to put less in, or buy everyone a woolly jumper for Christmas and turn the heating down a bit...

 

[Spinball]

Are there organisations who visit to assess the insulation in your house? Is there a grant to improve it?
[Edit: found it - Home ]

 

[Eco Deal]

Why dont you reduce your gas bill via the green deal ?

 

[Spinball]

Why dont you reduce your gas bill via the green deal ?

That's like a 7% loan, right? You can get a 5.1% loan from Derbyshire Building Society.

 

[sedgy34]

You could have a tank fitted and have an Immersun, you may want to upgrade to a mor efficient boiler too
we can put together a plan throughout your house to make considerable savings oh we are gas safe registered too

 

[sedgy34]

Are there organisations who visit to assess the insulation in your house? Is there a grant to improve it?
[Edit: found it - Home ]

We can do you a green deal assessment also and see if you qualify for some Eco funding you may get your boiler done free

 

[Spinball]

We can do you a green deal assessment also and see if you qualify for some Eco funding you may get your boiler done free

Well we could get a loan no problem, so I think that would be preferable to getting the 7% green deal.
But we need to replace both of the old Mexico boilers and that's a £5k+ expense. If we can get that paid for for free, that would be astonishingly good news.

 

[puddy]

On my house we have 12 panels with 2.5kw system and my electric bill gone down by 30%. Our direct debit was £65 and we have reduced it to £52 and if we have a good summer this year we should be £50 to £100 in credit. Basically the last 2 price increase last have been absorbed and the cost per month has gone down by £15.

If I had paid for the system in full we would have got £1263.77 generated 2703.249kw from the feed in tariff last year but we did not have the funds to pay for it, we went with homesun so they get that money

Because we have paid our mortgage off I didn’t want to take out a secured home just to pay for solar panels and I don’t like the idea of the green deal at 7% and I don’t think it can save me anymore money.

We are on oil and have a boilermate 2000 it save money because it heat up the water while we are using it The boilermate has an emergency switch which allow us to run the heating or water or both on electric so I was thinking of turn off my oil boiler in the summer switch the boilermate to emergency to hot water on a bright summers day to see if we could save on our oil bill. We had a Bosch Worcester Greenstar wall mounted 18/25 boiler fitted 18 months ago and use 1000 litres of oil every 10 months but I want it to last 12 months.

If you want to save more money on your electric bill switch to Economy 10

 

[Spinball]

We can do you a green deal assessment also and see if you qualify for some Eco funding you may get your boiler done free

I spoke to the Energy Saving Trust today.
To get assistance with either insulation or boilers, you need to be in particular need of financial help, and we're not drawing any benefits so we don't qualify. Probably not by a long way.
Also the scheme is quite complicated and not a particularly good deal at between 6 and 8% interest.
I'll be giving it a miss, I think.

 

[jason121]

Have you looked at ASHP or Bio mass using help from the RHI.
Funding is over 7 years and mounts up to around £10,000

 

[sedgy34]

you will get something based on an assessment, you could do green deal too on the rest dont forget the repayments are taken from the savings produced after the works and there is no upfront cost to yourself and the Green deal is on you meter not you personally like a loan of say 5%
you should go with solar pv no matter what and ditch the solar thermal idea which isnt worth the cost compared to the savings. unless the RHI implement the FIT on it

 

[Eco Deal]

Well if you had EWI as a primary measure then a boiler would get ECO funds too .

the green deal is also tied to the electric meter and not you plus there is a LOSE credit check so it helps alot of people out....

what walls have you got ?

if they are soild then you could get eco funding towards the wall then the boiler and other measures become avilable under ECO too.

this includes

Solid Wall Insulation	IWI (solid): pre 1967 England & Wales, pre 1965 Scotland	IWI_solid_pre1967_E&W_pre1965_S	E	E
IWI (solid): from 1967 E&W, from 1965 Scotland	IWI_solid_from1967_E&W_from1965_S	E	E
EWI (solid): pre 1967 E&W, pre 1965 Scotland	EWI_solid_pre1967_E&W_pre1965_S	E	E
EWI (solid): from 1967 E&W, from 1965 Scotland	EWI_solid_from1967_E&W_from1965_S	E	E
Internal non-solid Brick Wall Insulation	IWI_non_solid	E	E
External non-solid Brick Wall Insulation	EWI_non_solid	E	E
Park Home External Wall Insulation	Park Home External Wall Insulation	EWI_Parkhomes	E	E
Cavity Wall Insulation	Standard CWI	Standard_CWI	S	E
Hard To Treat Cavity Wall Insulation	HTTC: Cavity wall insulation solution	HTTC_CWI_solution	E	E
HTTC: Solid wall insulation solution	HTTC_SWI_solution	E	E
Loft Insulation	Loft Insulation Ceiling Level Virgin	LI_ceiling_level_virgin	S	E
Loft Insulation Ceiling Level Topup	LI_ceiling_level_topup	S	E
Loft Insulation Rafter	LI_rafter	S	E
Room in Roof Insulation	RIRI	S	E
Other Insulation	Flat Roof Insulation	FRI	S	E
Under Floor Insulation	UFI	S	E
Hot Water Cylinder Insulation	HWCI	S	E
Pipework Insulation	PWI	S	E
Draught Proofing	DP	S	E
Window Glazing	WG	S	E
Passageway Walk-through Doors	PWWD	S	E
Boiler	Boiler: Replacement qualifying boiler	QB_Replacement
Boiler: Repair qualifying boiler 1 year warranty	QB_Repair_1_year
Boiler: Repair qualifying boiler 2 year warranty	QB_Repair_2_year
Boiler: Installation of a Non qualifying boiler	Non_QB_installation

 

[Eco Deal]

ECO funding is extra help toward the green deal so say the EWI was 10k eco funds might give you say 5k (depending on the savings)

so you could either pay the other 5k cash or pay it on the green deal.

 

[Spinball]

you will get something based on an assessment

I read this page
Green Deal and Energy Company Obligation (ECO) - Grants and savings - Energy Saving Trust
phoned the number on it and was given the clear impression that grants were available only to people drawing particular benefits.
If any grant is means tested, we would be considered having enough means to pay for it ourselves.
If it's a grant available to everyone, then why isn't that clear on the site? Because I intend to get the cavity walls filled (if they are not already) and get solar PV unless it's unexpectedly expensive. But I also need to address the gas bill and rather than shove two new boilers in there directly heating the hot water, radiators and pool, I also want to find a way to reduce our gas bill directly (in addition to ensuring we have sufficient insulation). £12-£13 a day is a lot for gas. And most of that is on heating.

If solar thermal is not a great idea until there is some kind of FIT equivalent then I'll likely wait for that to happen, but I do want to plan for that with whatever solution we put in in the mean time.

I do like the idea of having mains pressure, clean hot water. If it financially makes sense then a thermal store might be the way to go. There is very little information on the net about them, though. A lot seem to be in the low hundreds of litres.

 

[sedgy34]

there are a few things you can do rather than solar thermal i would have underfloor heatiing this is set at 50deg and more efficient than rads blasting out 80deg that will cut your gas bill down
we do UFH too

 

[lancselec]

have you looked at the baxi ecogen boiler a micro chp boiler that produces 1kw of export electricity which falls within FIT so you can get a bit more while the boiler running they are expensive but depending on your usage could give a payback.

 

[Worcester]

@lancselec - have you seen the price for those units!!!!

I couldn't make the ROI stack up even with the FiT

 

[lancselec]

did say they were expensive worcester !

4000 hrs p.a. is breakeven i think