Anyone else had a call ?

Got a call yesterday from some firm claiming to be able to give me free solar panels, I could keep the money from the electricity generated (gee thanks!) after a period (cant remember how long) but would pay during hours of darkness.
Is this some kind of scam?. They said it was Government backed hence why im suspicious.

Did he also tell you that you won the Nigerian lottery

No, it's absolutely accurate. I'm a bit out of date with it now but I'm pretty certain the grants are a lot less generous than they were but maybe still worth considering. Someone I knew about 7 or 8 yrs ago went for it in such a big way that his annual electric bills were in minus figures or something like maybe £10 a year. His initial outlay was paid back very quickly. At that time you were almost guaranteed to get a better return than your average investment portfolio. Then the system changed. Again, I'm not sure how it works now but I believe you can either pay for installation yourself and get back the free energy immediately or allow the installation company to pay for it and they would keep the profits for a certain number of years and after that the profit's yours. Or something like that.....   

BUT

there are a lot of cowboy companies out there who will take advantage and some of them did big time! Personally I would NEVER buy anything from cold-calling on the phone. If you are at all interested take a look at this web-site link. And this page tells you how the Feed-in Tariffs work. They tend to bull-shit at times but they have the right connections and are able to point you in the right direction towards registered installers. They are/were independent of government. Worth a look.

Doesn't solar power need a smidgeon of the bright thing in the sky now and again.
 
If my memory serves me right we seem to be getting a lot of continual heavy rain and howling gales in the last couple of months.
 
Now wind power which I think is the biggest financial disaster and con for years, needs you to be under twenty five and using it until your doddery old pensioners before you make any profit of course.
 
With the winds we are getting lately you would need to stop them rotating...and there are cases of them self destructing and collapsing because they are rotating themselves into oblivion.
 
Okay a lot of this is said with tongue in cheek......but their is a case that I have read about where hundred of thousands of pounds worth of wind turbines will need to work well into the next century befor any profit is made.....producing something like £5 profit a year....does that include the maintenance and manpower required....who knows ?

It doesn't need bright sun - though that makes it more efficient as does its orientation into the sun - it simply needs light.

Small-scale wind- turbines - the sort that were being sold to attach to your house, (as recommended by David Cameron a few years ago), are an almost total waste of money.

There is lots of controversy about wind-power. Their carbon footprint is enormous. They don't work when the wind is high and they don't work when the wind is low. They don't work when they're down for maintenance. And that's not to touch on their various environmental impacts. My prejudiced view is that they are being pursued because they are big, sexy and highly visible. That allows the government to claim they are doing something. I had a long chat with a very prominent expert in power-generation a few years ago. He was vitriolic against wind-power, saying that the Scandinavian wind-industry had sold us a lie. Mind you, he was very much in favour of nuclear and that's not without its controversy......

The government's calculations pissed off the electricity providers as it would have eventually dented their profits quite considerably, hence the lower return for those that now install a solar electricity system and less dosh by way of bribery 'donation' to the political party of the day bank account.

Zyph, even on the dullest and rainy days solar panels produce a return for those that have had it installed but as per most things you get what you pay for. I understand that at the moment the market has been flooded with cheaply designed and manufactured Chinese products that are substandard to most others and give a considerably lower return, but this is only what I have been told.

My brother in law had a big solar array fitted at his farm, as a result he gets free electricity during daylight hours, he didn't pay a penny to have them installed. He does own a farm and has a big roof to put them on. I tried the same thing and my roof is too small to make it pay.

Knecht & GOB......I did say with 'tongue in cheek'.....I do realize that solar panels produce during dull & rainy days.......but at my age (nearly 75), the cost against return of some profit isn't very realistic....unless I live till 95.......although Argyle have probably knocked a few years off my life expectancy already.

May I say it is good to have a conversation on here without the usual suspects rubbishing my comments or other peoples comments....so thank you both....I do miss sensibles posts, maybe he's had enough of some of the dross that gets thrown at him.....you know ATD could be a pleasant place if the chip on some shoulders could just be ditched and they didn't keep looking over the 'fence' to see what is going on.....I nearly walked away the other week and stayed in my own little backwater on 606.

You're 75    I thought you were a lot older than that.   

The length of pay-back is certainly an issue. It's too early to be definite about it but it may be that the value of houses with solar power or water-heating would increase as buyers will see the benefits of free electricity & after a period they get profits from selling the electricity on (if the installation was tied into the company doing the installing or sooner if it was done with an up-front purchase by the house-holder). In that case your nearest & dearest would benefit from the increase in value.

The other consideration for individuals and for the country is a greater degree of independence from the vagaries of oil, gas & coal production costs & political fall-outs.

elias, buy your own panels. 8 x 50kw panels will do most people. youre not in contract to anyone then and you can take them with e when you move house. if you know someone at the local council you could prob bung them a few squids for the panels too    makes things really cheap..
check out ebay... panels and fittings and control box and batteries for a couple of grand.. payback 3 years tops.
the companies that fit them and give you the payin tariff have to give you permission to move them (and will charge you for the pleasure) in the event of roof damage or tile replacement, they have you by the short and curlies. steer clear.

Mapperley, darling wrote:

elias, buy your own panels. 8 x 50kw panels will do most people.  youre not in contract to anyone then and you can take them with e when you move house.  if you know someone at the local council you could prob bung them a few squids for the panels too    makes things really cheap..
check out ebay... panels and fittings and control box and batteries for a couple of grand.. payback 3 years tops.
the companies that fit them and give you the payin tariff have to give you permission to move them (and will charge you for the pleasure) in the event of roof damage or tile replacement, they have you by the short and curlies. steer clear.

That's all very well for competent people like you but for those of us who live in a house that has five floors (basically one room on each floor in case you get the wrong impression   ) that's about 160 years old so has a questionably strong enough roof, I'd prefer to get in the experts.

Though where I lived previously I had the cavity walls filled. The installer, after a survey, when he came to do the job assumed I was Joe Public who didn't have a clue & claimed one of the walls wasn't possible to do because of its structure (because it was more difficult to do in reality), I strung him along for a bit before I blinded him with science and he backed down very quickly. NEVER trust someone who claims to be an expert!

Mapperley, darling wrote:

elias, buy your own panels. 8 x 50kw panels will do most people.  youre not in contract to anyone then and you can take them with e when you move house.  if you know someone at the local council you could prob bung them a few squids for the panels too    makes things really cheap..
check out ebay... panels and fittings and control box and batteries for a couple of grand.. payback 3 years tops.
the companies that fit them and give you the payin tariff have to give you permission to move them (and will charge you for the pleasure) in the event of roof damage or tile replacement, they have you by the short and curlies. steer clear.

I look at a lot of solar instalations out of interest, I would love to have one myself, and I have to agree about the installers. It's the same as any trade there are good and bad. Some of the panels I've seen on older slate roofs I just can't see how they've done it and kept the roof dry? The average age of a slate roof if well done is 25 years, it should be in perfect order fro that length of time at least, yet I've seen solar panels which should be on the roof for 25 years to pay really are put on roofs already that old. It would be a real twat trying to fix a couple of slipped slates underneath a solar panel. Trouble ahead for a lot of people.
The feed in tariff is half of what it was, it's difficult to make it pay now. If you have the money it's great, the less bills the better. My mates old man is a millionaire who lives in a big house and he fitted loads on the original tariff and hied nets all his electrcity for free and gets paid by the grid. He reckons 9 years until payback time.

I hate to say it lads, with all this talk of net electricity cost, not one person here has actually suggested the idea of being frugal, and not consuming so much.  
All I've read here is how to get ahead in money terms. Isn't that the language of the "enemy" in "green" terms, or am I barmy ?
My advice if you're interested in the ludicrous price of electricity ?

1..Buy at least a couple of decent panels, and a battery storage solution. And then begin to understand what power individual appliances use and change your behaviour if at all possible. Slowly invest in 12v gear.... there's plenty out there now. It's the future, and it won't kill you. Your friends will think you're cool, and you will be. You'll be Jason Banton for the day, just like him.

2..I've actually been in homes, where some folk constantly turns off their lights through fear of the cost, and rightly so, but insist on leaving the huge flat TV thing running 24/7, consuming far more than all the lights could ever do. And yet it is hardly watched. If communal sound is required, put on a radio.

3.. Get out more. Not only will you save on electricity costs, you will save on those vitamin D tablets.

Winter Green wrote:

I hate to say it lads, with all this talk of net electricity cost, not one person here has actually suggested the idea of being frugal, and not consuming so much.  
All I've read here is how to get ahead in money terms. Isn't that the language of the "enemy" in "green" terms, or am I barmy ?
My advice if you're interested in the ludicrous price of electricity ?

1..Buy at least a couple of decent panels, and a battery storage solution. And then begin to understand what power individual appliances use and change your behaviour if at all possible. Slowly invest in 12v gear.... there's plenty out there now. It's the future, and it won't kill you. Your friends will think you're cool, and you will be. You'll be Jason Banton for the day, just like him.

2..I've actually been in homes, where some folk constantly turns off their lights through fear of the cost, and rightly so, but insist on leaving the huge flat TV thing running 24/7, consuming far more than all the lights could ever do. And yet it is hardly watched.

3.. Get out more. Not only will you save on electricity costs, you will save on those vitamin D tablets.

I agree, Mr Green. I was just aiming for the possible.

The three Rs are important.

I'm all over the twelve volt and LEDs.

I like the concept Penz but being frugal and not consuming so much means only one thing, the prices go up.