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.

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?

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.

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.

Many of our customers are keen to use the greenest energy possible in their home. There are substantial benefits (whether you have solar panels or not), from cutting your carbon footprint to maximising bill savings and energy independence.

Image: Ofgem.

What is DNO permission and when do you need it?

The DNO or District Network Operator is the company responsible for distributing electricity from the National Grid to your home or business. In the UK there are 14 different district networks or DNO regions which are owned by six groups. For our installation zone, the distributions network operators which we are concerned by are Scottish & Southern Electricity (SSE), UK Power Networks (UKPN), and Western Power Distribution (WPD).

Today is a big day at Spirit Energy.

It’s our 10th anniversary.

Most importantly we are celebrating with a big cake, but we have also taken time to review some of the milestones reached within the last 10 years, both at Spirit and within the wider community, focusing on cleaner air, climate change mitigation and sustainable fuel supply.

More and more of us are becoming aware of the urgency of the need to decarbonise our lifestyles. The latest warning from the IPCC gives us only 10 years to cut global emissions in half, or risk catastrophic damage to our climate. Whether you’ve gone solar or not, you may be thinking about how to reduce your carbon footprint. But where do you start?