– experiences of fitting household solar energy – Getting FITS XV is part of a series of blog posts by Limu on the attempt to install solar power at home with the help of the UK Feed in Tariff.
Its Easter now and its been a very sunny March – great for solar panels. I’ve also had our first electricity bill with the panels operating. Our bill for 3 months in the autumn was £120. You’d expect this to increase for the 3 months of winter due to longer hours of darkness. However, our bill fell to £70! Saving more than £50 – the first bit of payback on our investment.
The next payback will be our first FITS payment. I’ve received confusing information on this from our electricity supplier SSE. The letter confirming we had registered for FITS said they would need the first reading from the 31st of March. However, a recent letter said it should be for the 31st May.
The company who installed our panels has given some useful advice. I need to take reading for the 31st March as the FITS payment rates go up from the 1st April with inflation. Therefore, I need to take a further reading on 31st May, and then send in both the March and May readings by 5th June. So I am now getting 45.4p per kwh generated according to this DECC document (which didn’t get checked for plain English).
On 31st March the generation meter read 572kw. To repay the loans and investment as planned we’ll need to have generated around 2670kwh by November. That might seem like a long way to go, but the next few months offer much greater generation potential due to the longer daylight hours. Certainly a few more months like March and I think we will reach that target.