Homeowner Blog

Whether you’re looking to buy a house with solar panels or it’s come time to sell your property and its PV system, you may have some questions. We’ve gathered the common queries to answer based on our years of experience supporting solar PV owners.

Image source: Joseph Brent.

There is an ever increasing demand to decrease greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions as global awareness of climate change continues to grow. In the UK around a third of our total GHG emissions comes from the transport sector. To try and combat this, the government aims to phase out petrol and diesel cars, with sales of new combustion engine models to be banned by 2035 and a desire for almost every van and car to be zero emission by 2050. At the end of 2018, electric vehicles accounted for only 0.5% of the vehicles on the road. A lot therefore needs to be done if the government’s targets are to be reached.

We’re regularly contacted by customers, who have received an unsolicited call or letter from another company, offering them a ‘free solar panel health check’ or warning about their solar PV system being at risk of failing. This is a common scam.

Getting your latest electricity bill is rarely a fun experience, yet it seems to become ever more painful. The national grid has undergone a huge transformation in the past decade from coal-heavy to embracing wind and solar, the costs of which have crashed. So there’s a logical disconnect - why are electricity prices rising if renewables are getting cheaper?

Obviously during the current lockdown, you should only drive if it is absolutely essential. But while in isolation, you may be thinking about your next car and what effect the COVID-19 outbreak might have on the growing EV market.

So, is now the time to buy an electric car?

How is COVID-19 impacting our energy demand?

The world is currently going through unprecedented times, with the majority of the population confined to their own homes, practicing social distancing to help curb the spread of COVID-19. This has had a significant impact on our day to day lives, with most working from home, and as a result there has been an increase in daytime energy usage. In a study by Octopus Energy, almost a third of households have noticeably changed their usage patterns, with a daytime electricity usage increase of up to 32%, resulting in an average electricity bill rise of £1.34 - £2.85 per week.

While there has been an increase in domestic energy usage, the national energy demand has decreased due to the number of industries and factories temporarily closing their doors to comply with the government’s regulations. The UK’s total energy requirement is down by about 20%, with the electricity demand on the first day of lockdown (24^th March 2020) showing a decrease of about 8% from the monthly average.

In just a few short weeks, the world has become unrecognisable. Flights are grounded, whole countries are on lockdown and few can remember the last time they saw pasta.

With the coronavirus spreading across the globe, and the lockdown imposed by many governments in response, we are living through unprecedented times. While 2020 was set to be the ‘year of climate action’, it will now be remembered as the year of the pandemic. But actually, albeit by default rather than design (and whether you agree with it or not...), for a few weeks now the lockdown has allowed a glimpse into how we might re-model life as we previously knew it to create a world in which the environment and our species can co-exist in improved harmony.

Certainly we are witnessing a test that no politician would dare to sponsor in the name of improving the environment.

Here are some of the key environmental impacts of the coronavirus lockdown:

In light of the recent news, the idea of being grid independent with your own power cut protection has become a lot more attractive. 

We have had a number of customers interested in upgrading their solar PV or battery systems to protect them from power cuts. As we mentioned in a previous blog, a solar PV system alone will not protect you from an outage. With no batteries, if the power goes out, your PV system will switch off. This is a safety mechanism so that you do not discharge any excess PV energy to the grid and seriously injure someone if they are working to repair the grid near your house!

Even if you have a battery, some of them will not be able to island your property from the grid, which is the crucial step needed to have a backup system. Batteries need to follow strict DNO regulations to operate during a power outage as well, and will always need prior grid permission before installing.

We’d like to reassure you that we are determined to serve our customers and continue driving the switch to renewable energy during the COVID-19 outbreak.

We are following government advice to keep our staff and customers safe, and will update you on any changes to our operations.

Over the past year there have been a couple of fairly large changes which have impacted the payback period of a solar PV installation. Firstly the Feed-in Tariff (FiT) closed for new applicants at the end of March 2019 and then the Smart Export Guarantee (SEG) was brought into effect at the start of this year.