One hundred and four months into the journey and less than halfway through the life of the FIT contract and we passed another milestone. Since December 2013 – wow that feels a long time ago now – we have generated thirty MegaWattHours of electricity using our 4kWp roof mounted solar array. We will certainly have achieved cash payback of the original £6250 investment within ten years of the twenty year contract, but of course we’ve saved so much energy during the journey we’re already in good credit.
FIT is no longer an option for new fit solar, but others in my village are now ‘living on sunlight’ as the energy price crisis bites ever deeper. Rather than offer the excess generation from their new and larger installations up to the local distribution network, they’re pushing it into household battery installations and even loading their electric cars and back feeding the house load during the evenings! I don’t have their data but it would be interesting to know the payback on their own investment. I was told by one that he has not imported electricity for (on that day) at least two full days, albeit they weren’t washing days nor was the dishwasher in use etc.
Even so, our not very green consumption in 2013 was 6300kWh electricity and 15000kWh of gas. Not a lot has changed really in terms of our energy use (ok, daughter left home lol), but our metered consumption has dropped dramatically. Electicity is now about 3900kWh and gas (with a funky calculation to work out the kWh from the volume) is about 9000kWh. The consumption in 2013 at today’s prices would be about £3100 whereas our annual bill is today standing at about £1860. Ok, it’s hard to be accurate but still…
And the bill is going up. And the FIT is index linked. And lasts for us until December 2033. Overall perhaps that original six thousand pound investment was one of our shrewder moves.
Rosher.Net 
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