Our Solar Journey: How It Works And The Process

If you follow me on Instagram or read my April wrap up post you’d know that we now have solar panels on our home. I did a post earlier in the month why we choose to get solar right now. But I wanted to do a post more around how it works, what we went for and our journey.

We used a company called Gechnology located by us in Dunstable and they’ve said that they’ve had so many more enquiries since the energy prices went up in April. And we were lucky as we started our enquiry just before this happened to get in as early as possible and hopefully beat demand.

How does solar work

Now I don’t know much about the technical side but solar works by harnessing light (not heat) into panels that can be used to power your home. Solar power generated will power electricity so you will still pay for gas, but you can limit it by getting an electric induction hob, or an electric boiler.

We have 14 panels across our house and garage which is quite a lot. But the more panels you have the more you can generate as each one can make a certain amount of kilowatt per hour.

Our solar usage without a battery

Other than the panels themselves the only other gadget we have is a white box on the side of our house which transfers the electricity into our home. The panel also has the space if we want to attach an electric car charger to it in the future we can.

We currently have a panel system without a battery. What this means is for the hours we generate power (at the moment its from around 7am until 7pm) we can use the power generated. If we generate more than we’re using (which is most of the time) that power can be sold back to the grid. Although the only negative to this is that they pay such a small amount for it.

If we’re either generating nothing, or not enough to cover our usage we then take power from the grid like normal. We try and use appliances like the dishwasher and washing machine during the daytime when we’re producing a lot. So generally we take from the grid during the night, and sometimes if we’re cooking as an oven/ hob uses a lot of power.

Smart solar hot water

One thing we are getting fitted when it comes into stock is a smart solar hot water device. What this means is if we generate surplus, before it goes back to the grid we can divert it to heat our water.

This means not only do we save money as we are heating some of our own water but we’re also reducing our fossil fuel consumption. We can only do this as we have a hot water cylinder with an immersion heater.

What will happen when we do get a battery

We are planning on getting a battery for our solar very soon, and when we do any surplus energy will go into a battery first to be stored before going to the grid. This means during the night or when we’re not generating enough we can use power stored in our battery.

From our app I can see that currently every day we use less energy than we consume over the day. So once we have this we should be able to become almost fully self-sufficient when it comes to electricity within our home.

Keeping on track with solar

Our solar is powered by Solar Edge and so we use their app to track everything and it is quite addictive. When we log on we can see how much energy we’re producing at that moment and how much of that we’re using vs selling to the grid. Or for the times when generation is low how much we’re using from the grid. This gives us a good breakdown of how much energy we’ve used in a day, how much we’ve produced etc.

As solar electricity is a green renewable energy and doesn’t release harmful carbon dioxide into the atmosphere we can also see how much CO2 emissions we’ve saved and how many trees planted thats equivalent to.

Our process from start to finish

The guys that we had both during the process and doing the fitting were absolutely faultless. It took around seven weeks from our initial conversation to the solar being fitted which I thought was incredibly quick. A lot of this time period was waiting for an accurate quote to accept and waiting a few weeks for stock.

Once we had a date to start scaffolding went up on our house and the actual fitting and set up only took two days. The guys worked so hard getting it all done for us ahead of the Easter weekend and we couldn’t have been happier. I know they’ve said now demand is going up some items have longer order lead times, and because of demand prices have gone up a bit. So we got in at thr right time.

The cost payback

As I mentioned in my previous post the cost for us was £19,000 (and this includes the battery and hot water device which aren’t fitted yet). Based on our projected cost of electricity being an average of £200 a month we’ll have paid off the solar unit in less than 8 years. And that’s without factoring in anymore potential price rises.

As our home is at least an almost forever home we’re looking to be here for 20+ years meaning it’s well worth it for us.

Have you considered solar for your home?

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