Homeowner Blog

"Can I go off-grid with solar?" is a question we are asked at least once a week. When the Big 6 hike electricity prices, make that once a day.

It's a particularly enticing proposition, especially if you are 'self-building' your dream home and aiming for PassivHaus standards and Grand Design prizes.

The short answer is "Yes you can go off-grid with solar."

A better answer is "Don't do it unless your grid connection is really expensive." Instead, make the grid work for you by taking full advantage of time-of-use tariffs (off-peak charging).

To illustrate our better answer, we've modelled an off-grid residential property with an annual electricity consumption of 5,000 kWh.

As you may know, the Feed-in Tariff solar subsidy scheme ends in March 2019.

After that, solar PV (solar electricity) has to stand on its own two feet.

The question is, can solar PV stand on its own two feet? 

And more to the point, if you can’t make the March 2019 installation deadline, should you still consider solar for your own property?

Equally if you want to extend your system (which wouldn’t qualify for subsidy even if you were to extend before March 2019), should you do so?

To help you work that out, we’ve launched a brand new Solar PV Calculator...

Since April 2010, more than 800,000 solar PV installations have benefitted from the hugely successful Feed-in-Tariff scheme.

The scheme was originally expected to be open until March 2021. However it is now closing to new entrants at the end of March 2019, due both to government cuts and the reduced costs of solar panels. The subsidies paid to existing members of the scheme will not be impacted by the closure.

If you haven't already installed solar PV you have nine months to claim your share of the pot...

Believe it or not, spring is just around the corner.  And with it, the start of the sunny-but-not-so-hot season in which solar panels thrive.

Clean panels do better than dirty panels. And a well-maintained, serviced system does best of all.  

Which begs the question, how proactive should you be in looking after your solar system? What do other Spirit Energy customers do by way of servicing?

Our Tesla rep Jerry came to our office this week to update us on the latest Powerwall 2 developments.

The most exciting thing? Timed charging and discharging is due to go live in January or Feburary 2018.

If you own a domestic solar PV installation it’s likely that you will have been cold-called recently about a solar panel upgrade. We get emails or calls from our customers along the following lines about once a week:

Last summer I installed a 14kWh battery system alongside my existing 7kWp home solar PV system. All went to plan until one day we had a letter from SSE saying they would be turning off our power one Saturday for 'routine maintenance', or something like that.

Anyone thinking about getting battery storage for solar panels, should monitor their electricity usage for at least 3 months using a specialist energy monitoring device.