Solar Panels For Homes

Solar PV systems are becoming increasingly popular across the UK, becoming cheaper and easier to produce, meaning there has probably never been a better time to have solar panels installed. With energy prices having escalated in recent years, many households are looking for ways of being more energy efficient through renewable energy sources.

Solar panels offer a straightforward and convenient way of harnessing solar power and using this to generate your own electricity. While there are other solar options such as solar thermal panels, which are used to generate hot water, these are not as commonplace and don’t usually generate sufficient hot water to fully meet a household’s hot water demand.

No. No red tape, no hassle – most solar PV systems don’t need any special permission from your local authority to be fitted onto your home.

The only exception to this is if you live in a listed building or live in a designated Conservation Area or World Heritage site. Even then, you can still have solar panels installed – they just need to fit onto a roof that isn’t visible from a road.

There’s a big difference between sunlight and daylight. Solar panels need daylight to generate power – not the sun’s rays. In recent years, solar panel manufacturers have become more adept at producing solar panels that are better able to generate electricity even when the conditions are less than perfect.

This means you can still generate power with solar panels even on cloudy days. In fact, less direct sunlight can sometimes be beneficial – too much heat can reduce the power solar panels capture and the electricity generated by up to 25%.

Effective Home offers a choice of ways to pay for any upgrades to your home, such as solar panel systems, with finance options available. We appreciate that not everyone has the money set aside to pay for investments in renewable energy or ways to make their home more efficient.

You’ll find details on our boiler, heating, home insulation and solar product pages – along with any relevant funding that may be available to reduce your costs, such as the ECO Scheme or Boiler Upgrade Scheme.

The 0% VAT on energy efficiency measures such as solar panels was introduced in April 2022 and will run until the end of March 2027. We are able to install certain energy efficiency products in homes, including solar panels, and charge 0% VAT to customers.

The switch to zero VAT is part of government efforts to encourage households to adopt more green technologies, such as having solar panels, insulation, or heat pumps installed, to reduce carbon emissions, and help them with the cost of energy bills. The zero percentage rate is applicable only in England, Scotland and Wales, with different rules and rates for Northern Ireland.

You don’t have to add a smart solar battery when you install solar panels. However, without battery storage, you will only be able to use the electricity your new PV panels generate for your home at the time it is generated, rather than generating energy for later use.

When there is no solar energy to tap into, your energy supply will revert back to the Grid for its electricity supply. A smart solar battery stores your energy ready so you can use it or store it for when you need it. It is also possible to sell surplus electricity produced by your solar PV system back to the grid in return for payment under the Smart Export Guarantee (which for new applicants replaced the previous Feed in tariff (FIT) scheme).

Absolutely! One of the main appeals of solar systems in general is that they can be tweaked to suit you. Of course, we recommend installing solar panels and batteries together right away to maximise your system from the get-go, but you don’t have to.

If you decide at first that a solar battery isn’t necessary for your system, that’s fine. You can always change your mind after the fact, and one of our expert installers will be more than happy to come back and fit a battery, so your solar panels work better for you.

During your free home survey, one of our solar energy specialists will assess your home and rooftop – this will determine what solar installation, if any, is suitable for your home and how many solar PV panels you will need to produce sufficient energy for your household requirements.

We can calculate how much electricity your household is likely to need and also give you a good idea of how much money you could make by trading your solar energy on the Grid via SEG.

Solar panels have an average lifespan of around 20-30 years, and some solar panel manufacturers even provide 25-year warranties as standard. Most will also allow you to extend their warranties for a small fee, so confident are manufacturers in their technology.

Some modern panels could last for closer to 40 years in the right conditions and with the proper care and attention.

Installing solar panels is clearly a big investment for many people and not a decision to be taken lightly. Clearly, there are annual bill savings to be made by generating electricity through your own solar panel system, and there is also a reduced carbon footprint to be taken into account.

When having solar panels fitted, your main concern is ultimately likely to be whether the solar power your system is producing is going to be sufficient for your needs and will bring you energy bill savings, and possibly some excess electricity, that you can sell back to the grid under the Smart Export Guarantee.

In the best case, payback with SEG payments can happen within around 10-12 years, but in some cases, it could take much longer. With solar panels lasting around 20-30 years, and sometimes longer, you are going to enjoy many years of free electricity and clean renewable energy, and an improved Energy Performance Certificate (EPC), but most importantly reduced energy bills that make solar panels work out as a good investment in most cases.

Once your solar panels are fitted, they will start to lose some efficiency over time. As with anything you might own for 20-30 years, their efficiency reduction probably isn’t going to come as a huge surprise.

What might surprise you, though, is how slowly it will reduce.

On average, solar panels will drop off in efficiency at a rate of around 0.5% per year – although there are some that will reduce at around 0.9%, and the very best ones might only see a reduction in efficiency of around 0.2%.

What that means for you is that even after 10 years, you can expect your solar panel to be performing somewhere close to 90-98% efficiency.

After 20 years, that’ll still be around 82-96%, depending on their drop-off rate.

The ideal roof will be south-facing and have a pitch of 30 to 35 degrees. The chances of most homeowners knowing whether or not their roof is suitable for a solar panel array is slim, but our installers will be able to let you know.

Of course, the above conditions are based on your roof being optimal for your new panels, but homes are rarely set up perfectly for solar panels because when most UK homes were being built nobody had even considered harnessing solar energy to power households. So, there are other conditions in which your roof may still be suitable, just not optimal.

East or west-facing roofs can still prove useful, but north-facing roofs are completely unsuitable because they won’t get enough daylight hours throughout the day. The pitch is also less important. 30 to 35 degrees is optimal, but solar panels will work just fine at 15 to 50 degrees if necessary.

The main factor affecting your roof’s suitability then, is its condition. You may need to pay for repair work to a damaged roof if you’re set on installing solar panels because a complete system can add a significant load to your roof.

Our team of experts will be able to guide you further when they complete a survey on your property.

Solar panels won’t typically affect your home insurance, but we would always recommend contacting your insurance provider to inform them of your new solar panels before installing them to ensure they’ll be covered by your current policy.

You’ll want to make sure they cover things like theft and damage too if possible. So it’s certainly worth contacting them to discuss your options.

Installed by a team of experts like those at Effective Home, damage is far less likely, and if, for whatever reason, damage should occur, we’ll always set it right.

Solar panels are mounted to your roof safely and securely in a way that is designed to protect your roof at the same time.

Of course not. Just because you’re with an energy supplier at the time of your installation doesn’t mean you can’t change energy suppliers again.

If you can find a better deal elsewhere, either as part of the SEG for selling surplus electricity, or as part of buying energy from the Grid when your energy consumption is greater than the energy your solar panels generate – then you’re completely free to switch as you see fit.