I have looked at Air Source Pumps and been told that they only really work well in summer, when you dont need heat.Eatsweets wrote:Paul is right solar is a good investment only if you are south facing and have give or take a 30 degree pitch on your roof. The original trials were based on studies carried out in the south coast on a building practically on the cliffs, therefore no one has an exact generation calculation.
Other things worth noting are:-
The feed in tariff will rise with the retail price index, if you believe the government then your feed in tariff will be about £3 per kw in £25 years, realistically it will be about 50p.
Things like trees and chimney stacks may need to be moved moved due to shading, even a satellite dish can cause upto 60% shading.
The max system a house can have is 4kw unless you are lucky enough to have a 3 phase supply, then you can have 4kw per phase (3 phase is only usually found in either older or large domestic properties).
Most roofs will hold the weight as one panel weighs less than a bag of sugar. A 4kw system using bp panels takes up 36 square meters.
There are rumours that a green tax will be levied in 2014, which means that any house that does not have some form of renewable energy will pay a higher energy bill.
At the moment there are no grants available for solar, despite what some companies will have you believe. There is however again another rumour that as of April next year every homeowner will be eligible for a £10k grant secured against their property by the government.
Solar is a viable option but a costly one, another option is to install an air source heat pump (looks like an air conditioning unit) this uses the air temperature outside to heat your hot water and heating. These can be installed from as little as £2k and I think they also have a generation tariff of about 12p per kw.
With any renewable energy product when you sell your house you can exclude it from the sale, the buyer gets the feed in tariff and cheaper energy, you get the important one the generation tariff.
Loophole - if you own a field of let's say an acre, fill it up with solar panels but don't connect them back to the grid. You will still get paid for generating the electricity even though it goes nowhere.
Claim to fame - I was the 288th approved solar installer in the uk.
Paul