Friday 15 October 2010

Solar Photo-Voltaics - finally a decision!

We have finally made a decision on the installation of a Solar Photo-Voltaic system - we've gone for a 3.9Kwp system which will be installed on the 8th. November 2010. The four quotes we received varied widely in price, quality of components and warranties on offer. It makes sense to shop around and compare Brands, Warranties and prices.
We are looking forward to generating some of our electricity - and the 'Feed-in-Tariff' -the money we get paid by The Government to generate our own electricity- is a good incentive.




We changed our mind on the Air Source Heat Pump - from various sources we had reports that a lot of UK installations don't work, and the figures quoted by the various manufacturers don't really add up.  The issue was that currently we use mains Gas for space heating, which is approx. 1/3 of the cost of electricity. The Air Source Heat Pump needs to run on electricity and has an Energy Coefficient of 1:3.5 . In itself 1:3.5 is great - but if our space heating by Gas has to be replaced by electricity we see no real gains. Yet.
Therefore we'll look at this technology again in a year or so.