Solar panels - what do I need to know?

[janewilliams20]

We've had a few leaflets, and now a phone call, suggesting that solar power might be a Very Good Idea, and while it's quite a big investment, it does look like an ecologically good idea, quite apart from the financial side. We will have a surveyor visiting us on Thursday to see what's what and what could be done.
The firm in question are these people, and they tell me their panels are made in the UK, and designed for UK weather.

I'm sure my eco-minded friends have already done the necessary research and can tell me all the traps, pitfalls, and questions to ask - right?

Comments

[pbristow]

For individual home-owners, it's definitely a better option than getting a domestic wind turbine (unless you can get planning permission for a *huge* turbine on a *very tall* mounting. Ground-level and roof-top-level wind has only a tiny fraction of the power of what's available 60 feet up, where *proper* wind farms get to work).

Apart from that, although I'm eco-minded, I'm also impoverished and living in rented accomodation that's a listed building, so I haven't investigated the pros and cons in detail. I know that the standard solar cell technology that was commonly avilable 5 years ago was practically useless serious domestic power use, but that better technology was on the way... I don't know how widely that better technology is available, or what it's called so that you can check whether what your chosen company is offering is "The good stuff".

I would suggest talking to fleetfootmike, though as someone who has done both serious research and some practical installation of solar heating stuff, though he/they went for the system that directly heats water rather than PV cells.

Since heating (either of water, or of rooms) is by far the biggest component of most UK people's energy usage, a highly efficient solution for tackling that one component often works out a better option than a more general, but less efficient, source of solar power.

Hope that helps. =:o}