Solar panels - advice please

Susie2017 said:
Hi all. Am thinking of perhaps installing solar panels.
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If you do make sure that you use someone who knows what they are doing to design and install them.

Every day I drive past two houses which have solar panels installed. One house on the left and one on the right, they both have the panels facing the road. Somebody sure didn't know what they were at.
 
Nice paper above by Lund University. I do not own a dog but I have done in the past. Based on this fact around their carbon footprint I will not get one in the future. I already plan to move entirely to a plant based diet. My family is complete with two children ! Back to the solar panels I am finding it hard to believe that they do not pay for themselves in terms of hot water. The temperature of the water in my garden hose in the last few weeks sitting in the sun was vv hot ! Would be interested to hear from anybody who has them installed and whether they have a buffer tank - where does this go ? I plan on getting some more facts from an installer in the coming weeks. Also found an interesting website of a company that plans to introduce wind power energy generators using oscillation technology (no blades) in the future. They are small compact vertical rods that oscillate and generate energy through wobbling in the wind with no audible noise or maintenance - not available on the market as yet. They are anticipated to be similar in price to solar panels. Does anyone have a wind turbine ? I have seen some on the programme 'grand designs' in the UK but have not seen any in Ireland other than on wind farms.
 
cremeegg said:
If you do make sure that you use someone who knows what they are doing to design and install them.
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Without grid buy-back here, PV panels should be oriented to align with sun position around peak usage. Little point in having them directly south facing if you have no consumption around lunchtime. Most Irish suppliers favour south facing roofs even though many homes can't make use of most of the electricity generated.
 
Susie2017 said:
Nice paper above by Lund University. I do not own a dog but I have done in the past. Based on this fact around their carbon footprint I will not get one in the future.
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The study's conclusions are still not credible though. The excuse that pet food is highly processed doesn't really wash either. Most animal-based food consumed by humans is processed too. And an awful lot of dogs live on what are effectively vegetarian or near-vegetarian diets.

Susie2017 said:
Back to the solar panels I am finding it hard to believe that they do not pay for themselves in terms of hot water. The temperature of the water in my garden hose in the last few weeks sitting in the sun was vv hot !
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Not unrelated to the fact that we've experienced the sunniest summer in over 20 years. Try it again in October.
 
Regarding solar panels not paying for themselves..
I have the (oil) heating on for around 1/2 an hour per day this summer to heat the water cylinder. This gives us enough hot water for the day. (admittedly 2 working adults). I'd guess it amounts to less than a euro a day.
You said it would cost you around 4k to have solar fitted. At that rate, even if it was 100% efficient, and I got all my hot water from solar, it would take 4000 days to pay back, which equates to 10 years.
Very simple figures I know, but you get the idea (why I don't have solar).
 
Back to the solar panels I am finding it hard to believe that they do not pay for themselves in terms of hot water
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I think it's important to realise that there's a difference between 1. something paying for itself for you personally, 2. something that makes you personally greener for the environment and 3. something that helps move the green agenda as a whole forward for everybody. Working out the cost of the panels compared to the amount you would spend on gas/oil over the lifetime of those panels will tell you whether they save you money personally, addressing item 1 and whether they 'pay for themselves'. Entirely missing from that calculation is the improvement to the environment and the value you put on that, so if you care about point 2 then this needs to be factored in - would you pay €1 extra per month to know your energy was completely green? €2 extra? €20 extra? And sorry I know this might be quite obvious, but I think your original post was really around how to be greener, not how to make something pay for itself or how much money solar might save you, which is relevant to some people for sure. Point 3 should not be ignored either however, and that is that while solar panels on your roof might save you a few quid and might make you feel a bit better about using greener energy, it's really not that efficient/cost-effective/green compared to large-scale centralised generation. So if it's being greener you're after, it's worth considering whether it is better for you to save that money on the solar panels and just buy your electricity from a green energy provider, then take that saved money and do something with it that cannot be done centrally, for example swap to an electric car (typically a little more expensive to buy), swap your petrol mower for an electric, swap to LED lights, buy a more efficient boiler or install a heat pump, whatever.

switching to an EV may not make as much of a difference as you think in terms of CO2
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It's certainly not as good as walking, but there's no real doubt it makes a big difference and as the grid gets cleaner, EVs get even cleaner, whereas the grid getting cleaner has zip effect on petrol cars that are still plodding around. There's a fair amount of misinformation around about this, but here's a good lifecycle emissions article from a reputable source - https://www.ucsusa.org/clean-vehicles/electric-vehicles/life-cycle-ev-emissions

I'm all for green, but us individual plebs aren't going to save the planet on our own.
Without affordable alternatives, that will never happen. I'd love to go green with the vehicles I'm driving
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We certainly cannot save the planet on our own, but if those that can would swap to electric cars (which I'd bet is >75% of the population of Ireland) that would create the demand for electric cars and you would quickly find the price coming down and a greater range of options for the likes of yourself and towing needs. Electric cars have wayyy more torque than any petrol/diesel jeep you can buy, there are countless videos of the Tesla Model X pulling 737s and lorries up hills, the price just needs to come down. This is a classic technology adoption cycle, demand goes up, price comes down, so demand goes up more, rinse and repeat to the point where EVs are cheaper than petrol/diesel.

When I hear of green initititives from ther government, it's usually in the form of more taxes.
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It's worth calling out that the way a carbon tax is supposed to be implemented is that you apply it to carbon emitting goods, so yes the price of these goods goes up, but then you take the money collected and simply give it back to people (as a direct payments, through VAT/income tax cuts or whatever) so the average person will not actually be down overall. Those who make choices that create more emissions than average will pay more, those who make less will come away with more. It's actually a pretty cool model if you ask me

No one ever looks at the bigger picture and works out if the overall result is a net reduction or increase in emissions, or whether the money would be better spent on more efficient centralised schemes.
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With respect, while you may not have seen these questions being asked and answered it most certainly happens. For example from our very own country - https://www.dccae.gov.ie/en-ie/ener...lysis to underpin the new RESS in Ireland.pdf. Page 36 shows where money would be better spent in-terms of efficiency. The rest of the paper looks at other stuff like the net reduction in emissions. There's tonnes of this stuff out there from reputable sources. There's about the same amount of misinformation unfortunately .
 
It they are PV panels the may know well what they are at the may be positioned to max output when car is home so energy can be stored,
 
T McGibney said:
Of course there were carbon emissions a few generations ago. And vehicles were generally dirty, disgusting and inefficient to a level that we wouldn't accept today.
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I accept that, but today we have a massive world population and a massive increase in vehicles, all of which contribute to carbon emissions, exhaust fumes etc.
 
PaddyBloggit said:
I accept that, but today we have a massive world population and a massive increase in vehicles, all of which contribute to carbon emissions, exhaust fumes etc.
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I'm puzzled that you conflate the two. Carbon dioxide is a naturally occuring gas, essential for life to exist. It's not a pollutant.
 
Curious what your actual argument is here, I'm struggling to understand from your posts if you are just correcting the other poster on their conflation of greenhouse gas emissions and poisonous emissions (a common and not entirely unreasonable mistake)?

Or are you saying greenhouse gas emissions have gone down because cars are cleaner or that poisonous emissions from cars have gone down because cars are cleaner, that latter which is certainly true, but when we know they can go much lower (to zero in-fact) in areas where we are prone to breath them in, I'd ask why we're setting the baseline at a horrifically polluting time in our history and congratulating ourselves for having improved only somewhat upon that?
 

My posts should speak for themselves.

There's really no need to look for hidden meanings in them.

And I'm not going down the rabbit hole of answering loaded "Or are you saying..." questions about things I didn't say.
 
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Susie2017 said:
Hi all. Am thinking of perhaps installing solar panels.
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Hi Susie. I hope you found the discussion that your question raised interesting, I have enjoyed following it.
I do appreciate that our individual contributions to both climate change and to going greener can seem minuscule, but hopefully the sum of the parts does become significant. You only have to look at the impact of the plastic shopping bag levy to see that through combined government and personal effort environmental progress can be made.

We started our energy journey with a BER assessment, and that is what I would recommend for you too. As others have pointed out, the aim is to reduce your consumption of energy rather than to start generating it. We completed a list of energy projects in 2010 starting with improved attic insulation, replacement windows, external insulation, boiler controls and thermostatic radiator valves. Last on our wish list were solar panels and a wood burning stove. When we got everything priced we were able to afford everything we were looking for so we went for it. We knew that the solar panels were going to take longest to pay for themselves, if ever, but we accepted that in the context of the overall project and in the face of ever-increasing energy costs at the time.

If it's any help to you in your decision making, we got 2m2 of evaporated tube solar panels installed on a south facing roof and use them for water heating in a 3 person household. We were fortunate with the roof orientation, and that the hot-press was directly below that roof, which minimises the pipe-runs. When the weather is good, they can easily meet all our hot water needs, and with a 200 litre hot water cylinder we even have enough to tide us over if a dull day follows a good day. We have generally found them to be reliable, we had some initial issues addressed by the installers and we subsequently had one other repair call-out. We have a dual cylinder which can also be heated off our gas boiler. The system makes a small contribution to heating the water in winter and on dull days. We also have an electric shower which is handy on days when the cylinder isn't hot. Part of our justification for the solar panel was in replacing an old hot water cylinder which was in poor condition and badly lagged.

You do have to remember if you are generating hot water you have to have a use for it! For instance our dishwasher only has a cold water intake, so if you continue to use the dishwasher, you will be drawing in cold water and using electricity to heat it, the alternative being to wash dishes in the sink using your 'solar' water.
There are some concerns around solar heating of water leading to tepid water stagnating in the cylinder and providing conditions that could cause legionella bacteria to develop, so it is important that the water regularly reaches high temperatures and prevents this.

Sorry for being so long-winded, there is a lot to consider, I hope that our experience helps you in your decision.
 

Page 36 in that report detail the LCOE, the levalised cost of electricity. Based on that data alone, all consumer grants for EVs, solar, insulation, etc. should all be scrapped. So if the questions are being asked and asnwered, how do we have quite a range of such grants available? Where are the calculations supporting EV subsidies, or those that apply to air-to-air heat pumps?
 
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