Green Building Forum - Cost of a PV system?

Cost of a PV system?

JT101 — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 00:14:01 +0000

What sort of price should I be looking at for solar PV 4kW system?

All the quotes online I've seen were in the region Â£15-Â£18k.

But I've seen talk of as low as Â£10k. I've even seen a guy who seems to be an installer break it down as follows:

"21p is still a bloated rate. I install a 3.96 Sharp panel system, Fronius inverter, pay the electrician scaffolder and roofer and have change of Â£7K.. I charge my customer Â£10,500 pay the vat man Â£500 and I have a very tidy Â£3K for profit sales and marketing. Customer makes 10% and a 10 year payback and is happy to "save the planet" The only people bleating here are the FREE SOLAR fast monet financiers and high overhead double glazing converts. Small scale local installers can still make money by charging a reasonable price that will alow the customer a 10% 10 year payback return. Stop your bleating, we all know that labour set the FIT's way too high and the coalition could have cut more than they have."

I am in London, so I guess it's going to be tough to not get ripped

Cost of a PV system?

Gavin_A — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 00:24:40 +0000

right now around 11-12k if you can find someone to install it for you

in January maybe Â£8-10k should be possible we reckon.

Cost of a PV system?

JT101 — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 18:04:32 +0000

Thanks Gavin, but I jumped the gun a bit. Called for a quote today, and given I'm end of terrace with Bay windows I'm going to have to have a split system using a seperate inverter. 1.2kW on south facing and 0.8kW on East facing.

Seems a non split 2kW on a south facing roof system normally costs around Â£6 - 8k. How much extra could I expect for a split system roughly?

I've seen the inverters running for about Â£1200 - Â£2000 alone. But of course that's retail price online.

Cost of a PV system?

jamesingram — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 19:28:34 +0000

Seems Monday/tuesday saw pretty much all of available UK stock sold .
So getting hold of kit is currently the problem for installers that dont hold much themselves.
Not done a split smaller system but would be nice if you could get it for under Â£8k

Cost of a PV system?

Dantenz — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 19:54:58 +0000

Yep, I understand that one of the biggest challenges at the moment for getting a PV install before 12th Dec is sourcing the inverter. Demand for inverters has out stripped supply.

Cost of a PV system?

jamesingram — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 20:10:09 +0000

Yep , got some panels , waiting on inverters , with no garaunteed delivery date from supplier

Cost of a PV system?

CWatters — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 07:53:24 +0000

There was a 3kW one on ebay when I looked recently. Â£1200 ish.

Cost of a PV system?

Brianwilson — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 21:55:44 +0000

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/dec/09/feed-in-tariff-cripples-government-website
Interesting!!

Cost of a PV system?

CWatters — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 11:23:32 +0000

"9000 new applications a day"

So around 1000 an hour or 20 a min. Is that really enough to cripple a server?

Cost of a PV system?

DamonHD — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 11:52:45 +0000

Yes: getting on for 1 complex transaction per second (plus generating PDFs, etc) on the back-end database could cripple it unless it's massively overspecified for the rest of the time.

Rgds

Damon

PS. Though, really, they should understand capacity factor and intermittency there, if anywhere!

Cost of a PV system?

ted — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 13:30:58 +0000

Apparently DECC were working with Gemserv to update the servers this past week. One would have thought that they might have had the foresight to have done this a few weeks ago at least.

Cost of a PV system?

SteamyTea — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 13:48:34 +0000

Posted By: DamonHDPS. Though, really, they should understand capacity factor and intermittency there, if anywhere!

So is it the equivalent of a windturbine in Scotland catching fire, that would give DECC even more credibility

Cost of a PV system?

JSHarris — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 14:17:40 +0000

Posted By: tedApparently DECC were working with Gemserv to update the servers this past week. One would have thought that they might have had the foresight to have done this a few weeks ago at least.

One thing about DECC seems very clear. Whatever other skills they may have, planning and understanding data aren't amongst them, so it doesn't surprise me in the least to find that they hadn't thought about the consequence of their action on the FITs registration system.

I'm still shocked by the misrepresentation of data to the Select Committee, and still think that PS should be suspended for attempting to mislead government.

Cost of a PV system?

djh — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 17:47:53 +0000

Posted By: JSHarrisOne thing about DECC seems very clear. Whatever other skills they may have, planning and understanding data aren't amongst them

Perhaps they have biannual co-ordination meetings between the people setting policy and the people provisioning IT? And I wonder if they've agreed whether biannual is once every 6 months or once every 24 months? More likely I suspect is that the policy makers never meet the IT provisioners and there are at least another couple of layers of bureaucracy in between.