Previously the idea was to sell electricity back to the grid, now the object is to power all of a household’s needs
When solar panels were first sold in large numbers and heavily subsidised by the UK government using feed-in tariffs, which paid householders generously for every kilowatt they produced, prospective installers were obliged to tell customers how much electricity they were expected to generate each month, based on the average hours of sunshine. This was a guide to how many years it would take to recoup their investment in the expensive pioneering system.
We got our panels installed in July 2010, and I began keeping a close record of their output. Fourteen years later, the average amount of electricity produced each month has exceeded original estimates, usually by a considerable margin. Our original outlay has been more than repaid.
