Anyone with solar panels on their roof?

[(*steve*)]

I'm contemplating putting about 5kW of panels on my roof. With various feed-in tariffs it's looking like a pay-back period of around 10 to 12 years.

Has anyone else considered (or done) this?

I only have 50 m^2 of roof with the correct orientation, so I'm limited by space.

 

[MattyMatt]

Considered it for my parents house actually... decent orientation, but due to the climate up here, the pay off would take a fair amount of time (I was thinking somewhere in the 20 year range)... and the roof would probably need serious repair before then (due to the age of the house).

Though I have seen an excellent installation in a college I went to... their setup had some sort of a tracker built in, was on a large pole and had a 3 m^2 panel... it was for primarily demonstration, but it was pretty nifty... due to the lack of intelligence of other school departments, it was put in an area where it is almost impossible to track the sun though (between a building and trees! DOH!). I have seen it move.... thats the only way I know it ACTUALLY works

I actually wanted to see if i could work out a similar circuit for tracking at some point.

 

[rob_croxford]

Matty makes a good point...

We did some reaserch on this while at uni for a project and solar panels that are in a static posistion are up to 40-50% less efficiant than those that are able to track the movement of the sun. However it is obviously not possible for many people to have lavish moving solar panels as the space is just not avaliable.

I guess it depends on how you are goin to be using your solar panels?? for instance if it is to heat some of your water and perhaps run the lights in your house then the setup remains relativly simple. However if u plan on using high spec solar panels and feeding back into the grid things may start to become expensive as high efficiancy inverters etc.. are needed.

Saying that tho, anyone takleing renewable energy has got my vote.

I am currently working on an inverter that is used in a renewable energy design to convert the heat created by landfills back into energy for the grid!!! its all fun and games until you have to go and visit the site... lol

 

[rob_croxford]

Here is an interesint article regarding renewable energy i thought you might like to read. It contains some contravesial points that i found quite interesting.

http://www.newscientist.com/article...d-affect-earths-energy-balance.html?full=true

 

[(*steve*)]

Yeah, I'd not considered the possibility of exhausting wind or tidal power, but I guess people never thought oil would run out either.

One of the benefits of getting solar i(for me) is that because of the high feed-in tariff, each extra kWh of power costs me around 50c in potential lost income. (based on the difference between paying for 1kWh and being paid for 1kWh). So although my cost of power does not increase, the marginal benefit of each unit saved is huge.

We're already looking at ways to improve the house in the *big* ways that save power (leaking heat mostly). Things like energy efficient appliances are relatively small change in comparison.

If we were to go tree-huggingly green, we would probably reduce the payback period to under 10 years -- and that's pretty impressive.