Talk Morgan Forums Community The Malvern Arms Is your PV solar array generating more

the Bank of Mum and Dad... it pays out and then when you die they get what is left!
We are over the main support, both kids are homed and have jobs that pay enough to meet their daily needs.

At least our generation is able to be the bank: I wonder if our kids will ever have the wealth to be bankers to their kids?

Boomers are probably the only generation that were lucky enough to find themselves in that position. My parents were unable to provide me with any money at all to get started, and I think that would have been pretty common for people whose parents were born around the 1920's - 1930's.

And following us, I'd be very surprised if there were many GenXers/Millenials who have a secure enough financial future to be able to provide cash injections to their kids.

So, good on one hand that the Boomer generation are wealthy enough to do that - but we extracted a heavy price. Like the youngsters say

When we were young our parents would say "If you don't stop crying, I'll give you something to cry about". We thought that meant they would smack us, but instead they destroyed the housing market, quadrupled further education fees, melted the ice caps and voted Brexit.

My late father had no money to help me along the way as he was a divorcee with his own financial worries but that possibly helped me make my mind up to marry the right girl and work my ass off to help our youngsters.

Well our three are certainly in a position to do just that and they range from 38 - 43 possibly in part due to the leg up we were lucky enough to have afforded them, but mostly due to the serious nature of applied studies and degrees (no ologies for them, Sciences and Law) they have achieved they now are able to rent out their first houses as additional income, pension or to support their growing families.

It's all about mindset, determination and willingness to work and as a responsible parent you have a large role to play in this I think imho.

Update on our Energy Balance for the 12 months of 2020.

We buy gas and electricity from Scottish Power and have a 4 Kwh PV array installed in November 2011, plus a 4kw battery storage installed in late 2019.
The FIT "paid" for the capital cost of the PV panels at the end of 2019.
This means that the year of 2020 is the first "real world" test.

Electricity we used 6641 Kwh which cost £1024. We have LED bulbs almost everywhere, but otherwise are not excessively frugal..with an AGA TC we couldn't be.
We generated 3935 Kwh and were paid £2331.96 (tax free!) FIT income.

Gas we used 14819 Kwh which cost £594.23: since we had the device to switch any unconsumed electricity, in excess of charging the battery, to heating hot water our gas consumption has fallen by 10%, I estimate. We also had an air source heat pump installed in late 2019, it functions as a A/C unit in the summer, a heater in the winter. I think this has saved both gas, at the cost of a small amount of electricity.

So our total energy coat was £1618.23, so offsetting the FIT income our energy is free with a Tax free profit of £713.73 a year. 

I think that I need to look at adding to the "power wall", so we store more of the electricity we generate, but can't use that day.

Overall, a good result, I think!

Has anyone else analysed their 2020 Energy Balance?

I take it you are on the highest rate FiT which ended in 2012, I seem to remember? I have just broken even for the panels and battery back up so it's all profit from now on for 15 years. I've not worked out any figures apart from that.

Peter, sadly in our new house we are on a crap scheme vs the 45 p or so we got in Bucks so the payback is way longer.We have a 3.9kWh array facing perfectly south.

The array went live 27/12/18. 3 years later we have saved £1300 , half of that being saved power as we heat the water if the power is good enough.

Power wise we have generated 8400 kWh over the 3 years being ahead of the quoted installed generation. Today for 2020/ 2021 we are at 45% of the quoted planned out put with 347 days to go.

Our system went live on November 13th 2020. Twin 4.8KW arrays with two 7KWh batteries (two MPANs as it's two houses knocked together)

Total production to end of 2020 134KWh, saving us £27. Total cost of installation £34k. No excess generation, even if we do the Smart Export Guarantee scheme only offer 5p/KWh

Good job we're not doing it for the money

Yes, we went live 4 days before that tarif ended for new installations.

Indeed. That is why we decided against the batteries. I hope their cost will fall rapidly as more ex EV car batteries flood the market

Just in case anyone's interested, yesterday (22nd Jan, one month after the Solstice) was the first day we hit the point when more than 50% of our consumption for the 24 hours was provided by solar energy.

The batteries did an excellent job of spreading the supply, the one feeding the main part of the house kept going until 20:00, the one feeding the 500W greenhouse heater kept going until 05:00 this morning. Total generation about 12KWh in yesterday's sunshine, total consumption over the 24 hours was 21KWh. Keeping the greenhouses warm when the outside temps drop below 0degC uses a fair amount of energy this time of year.

I'm interested to see how soon it will hit 100%, hopefully quite soon once the overnight temps rise a bit.