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Solr, Unit 3 Capitol Park
Pearce Way, Gloucester
GL2 5YD
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Frequently Asked Questions
In the perfect world, a home would consume 100% of its solar production for maximum benefit. In reality, this is almost impossible, and most people will consume around 40% of the solar energy produced. Batteries allow some of the energy that would be otherwise exported or wasted, to be stored at a later date. This can then increase your self-consumption figure, increasing your ROI. With clever timing for when certain devices are used (car charging, tumble dryers etc), some people can get up to 65-75% self consumption of power, which improves their rate of return.
In it’s standard configuration, no. This is for safety reasons. If there was a powercut, and the batteries were to continue to feed power, they could potentially feed power back to the grid. If someone was working on the grid to restore power, they would be unaware the cables were live and it could be fatal. As a result, the battery will shut down to ensure the safety of grid operators.
However it is possible set up an Emergency Power Supply (EPS). With an EPS system, the battery will isolate your electric network, separating yourself from the grid. This can then power your home electricity network from your solar production and any stored battery power. There are limits to how much power it can provide at one time – we recommend only a few essential circuits are wired to the EPS (lights, fridge, etc), as a high current device could overload the battery causing it to shut down.
There is no user-serviceable parts of the battery storage system.
The battery is linked through the inverter, just like the solar panels are. There does need to be some room near the inverter for the batteries to be installed.
Lithium batteries do degrade over time, and are normally rated for a number of charge and discharge cycles. Like the solar panels, even if the batteries are rated for 10 years expected use, they will not suddenly stop working, you would just notice a decrease in the maximum stored capacity.
This is simply a question of how many batteries you have. If the array is too small, it will charge up very quickly and stay full – meaning lots of energy is getting exported back to the grid. If the array is too large however, you would be paying thousands for storage that never actually gets filled, so it is a waste financially. All of our batteries systems are scaleable and additional batteries are easy to retro-fit, so we would recommend installing 5-6kWh initially, and monitoring your battery usage for a few seasons.
Battery storage along with Solar PV is eligible for 0% VAT currently. Also, if your property gets a reduced rate of electricity at night, some battery owners are charging the batteries overnight to take advantage of the cheaper rate.
With battery storage, rather than excess solar production being sent back to the grid, it is stored inside the battery. This means in the evenings where solar production is low or none at all, the house can continue to use that power that was stored earlier in the day. This allows your “self consumption” (the % of solar production you consume yourself) to be much higher as less power is exported back to the grid.
Battery storage systems require a different inverter, which allows it to charge the battery as well as convert the solar PV power. The extra cost for this hybrid inverter, plus the battery cost and labor, starts at around £3000. This would be for around 3kWh of battery storage (enough to run a typical household for around 4-5 hours).
On domestic properties, we only use all black panels, these look fantastic and blend into roofs well. If you check our portfolio page you can see some examples of the types of panel we use.
The panels all have a performance guarantee of 25 years, however the panels will continue to work after that, albeit the performance will slowly degrade over time. There are still panels from the 1980’s working today!
This does vary between products, but almost all offer a guarantee of up to 10 years, with a performance guarantee of 25 years on panels also.
We only use the most efficient panels on the market, but there is some periodic maintenance that needs to be done to keep them working at their best. This is normally cleaning the panels of any debris that accumulates on them, this does depend on your environment as to how often this needs to be done.
All of our quotations will include a financial estimate to give you a ROI figure. For most domestic installs, with a decent roof orientation we normally see payback times of 5-10 years, with the panels returning a 10-20% ROI after that.
Currently their are two incentives in the UK available for Solar PV. The first is that all domestic Solar PV installs are 0% VAT until 2027. As we are an MCS approved installer, your install is eligible for the Smart Export Guarantee (SEG). SEG allows you to sell back excess solar production to the grid and be paid for it. More information on SEG can be found here.
The UK actually has good conditions for solar PV generation. The three factors which affect solar generation primarily are the angle of the panels, their orientation, and shading (if any). A 35 degree pitch roof, facing dead south will generate around 1000kWh annually per kW of panels installed (so a 5kW system would be expected to produce 5000kWh over the course of a year). In the non-optimum case, a east facing roof for example would produce around 30% less.
Shading is another factor in solar PV output – the panels act as one giant panel – so any shading on one panel will effect the whole array. This is something we can check on survey to ensure there will be no issues. In the case of something unavoidable like a chimney or a very large tree, we can use a special type of inverter which can work with partially shaded systems.
This will depend on 3 factors – the size of the system, how easy the roof is for access, and the existing electrical wiring in your home. For a standard 4kW system installed on a typical detached home, the cost will be around £7000 inc. scaffolding.
In short, no. Great examples where a battery isn’t the right choice are commercial properties that are only manned in the daytime, or very high consumers who wouldn’t export a lot of energy anyway. The best candidates for battery storage are people who aren’t at home during the day, or have very low usage and therefore have a lot of export.
Yes, all of our systems allow batteries to be retrofitted later. There is very little work on our end to add a battery later, so it’s really just the cost of the battery itself that you are paying for.
For most people, with an appropriate sized battery, you could expect to not consume any grid energy for several months of the year. However, due to our short days in the winter, it is very difficult to be totally grid-independent in winter. To do so would require a very large solar array, and would almost never be viable financially.
For safety reasons, all inverters shut down in the event of a power failure. This is so energy produced by your solar array doesn’t travel back to the grid and potentially hurt someone working on the powerlines. There is also the issue that in the event of a power cut, the ground supply from the grid cannot be relied upon. However, we can setup systems with a special EPS (Emergency Power Supply) mode, which will allow usage even during a power failure. There is additional safety measures that need to be installed, along with a separate earth. Get in touch if you wish to learn more.
