Gareth J
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- 3,333
- Location
- North Cornwall
Solar in Wales?
Is there any point?
About 3 years ago we had a period of 3 months where we didn't see any blue skies at all. Continuous cloud cover and torrential rain for 86 days.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-south-west-wales-35360798
I was living in the Brecon Beacons at the time. Same in Swansea. We drove to Monmouth just to get a glimpse of blue. It was lovely there
One of our local Tesco superstores has a huge solar array on the roof. There used to be a big LED display showing how much it would generate. 30kw peak in summer. In wet winter weather down to less than 1kw. It cost them £2 million to install. Without expensive subsidies it will take them 300 years to break even
A lot of this so called green stuff is a scam that is costing us billions.
Now, solar stacks up, without subsidies.
I put in a 4kw array last year for ~£2500 +vat. Not the cheapest but convenient.
It did ~4300 kWh last year. (Hopefully) the majority of it will displace electric but excess is used to displace burning oil.
So, take a worst case scenario, each kWh produced saves me 6pence (with the right energy supplier, you'd get paid that for export anyway) They'll be paid for in 10yrs. In reality, I'll be displacing (hopefullya fair bit) of kWhs at ~15p. A reasonable guess might be 7-8yrs payback.
Kit should last 20+ yrs.
There were, at one point, what now look like crazy subsidies that we all still pay for. But they helped drive the market to where it is now which is basically at the point where, if you can get a connection, and can use most of your generation, it's a no brained.