Dillon wrote: There are a number of companies offering free installed solar panels, have a look here, http://ashadegreener.co.uk/ad-g1?gclid= ... tAodPFCu6Q The householder gets free electricity offsetting metered consumption for the life of the solar panels, any excess fed back to the grid is credited to the service provider who also claims Voluntary Carbon Credits against their scheme which they can trade on the carbon exchange, householder also saves somewhere between £5,000 and £35,000 on installation costs.
BM wrote: Don't you need sun for solar power? A house in the Uk would need panels the size of a football pitch to generate excess solar power surely?
The PV Solar Panels generate electricity when exposed to photons of sunlight. PV Solar panels do not need to be in direct sunlight, daylight will produce solar energy, this works exponentially; the more sunlight exposure, the more solar energy produced. Therefore PV solar panels are most efficient when tilted towards the sun’s sky track.
A standard solar panel has an area of about 1.2m x 1.8m and will produce between 180 and 250 watts. To produce 1kW of power, 4 to 5 solar panels will be required. Figures show that a 1kW solar array would supply about 25% of an average family's energy demand in a year, this would be classed as a smaller installation, the more panel space available on the roof, the greater return will be seen.
If you wanted to finance the installation yourself and reap all the benefits, typical installation costs would be around £5,000 per KWp, and for a better understanding of potential performance here is an online Photovoltaic Information tool, http://re.jrc.ec.europa.eu/pvgis/apps4/pvest.php just fill in the location and details of the proposed installation and the tool returns an estimate of the actual generated power for that installation.
http://www.solarpages.co.uk/Solar-PV/#how
Welcome back BM, what didn't you do this time?