jemanson

Allez Morgan ... to the tune of Allez Les Bleus

Brilliant.

Any good?

It's always best to use as much of the electricity you generate as you can - you get paid for generating it at 43.3p per unit and might save 15p per unit on electricity from the grid. Also, in almost all cases there's no import/export meter installed and the payments you receive for exporting electricity to the grid are based on an estimated amount (typically 50% of what you generate, so £30 for a system generating 2000 units per year). So, you get paid the same for 'exported' electricity whether you actually export 0% or 100% of what you generate. We've had brief discussions about using PV to heat water through immersion heaters and I'll look into it a bit more. In theory it's a good idea if you can get close to matching production from your PV system with the requirements of the immersion heater (which may be possible with larger systems in summer months), but generally (as you probably know) it's cheaper and better in carbon emission terms to use gas and a condensing boiler to heat water than an immersion heater fed by grid electricity. The economics may change too for people off the gas network using other fuels to heat water. Will do some research.

Not yet, but would do a good deal if you want to be the first! Your tenants would need to be around for a quick survey of your property, put up with a couple of days of installation and supply meter readings to ensure you received feed-in-tariff payments, but would benefit from cheaper bills (assuming they pay them). You would receive the feed-in-tariff payment and the export payment.

100% correct. Feed-in-tariff rates for very large installations (more than 50 kW, as seen on 'solar farms') will reduce from August and there's speculation that the feed-in-tariff rates will reduce for smaller installations from March next year (with anyone who has already installed unaffected), but nothing has yet been confirmed. There are some good online calculators (see https://www.solarjuice.com/ and http://www.energysavingtrust.org.uk/Generate-your-own-energy/Cashback-Calculator) if you want to see what income and savings you can expect to achieve. If you're not sure what size system will fit on your roof, typical domestic installations are 1.5 - 3.5 kWp (currently costing around £6K to £12K).

Happy to provide anyone who is interested and who lives within 50 miles of Soton with a free Solar Energy Audit that will tell you how much you could earn from a properly designed and installed system. I work for a solar PV company based near Winchester (http://www.sunsmartenergy.co.uk) - we're MCS accredited (which means systems we install qualify for the feed-in tariff, described above as the special tariff), members of the REAL assurance scheme (http://www.realassurance.org.uk) and offer top quality systems at good prices! To request an Audit use the property locator on our website. Sales pitch over, with apologies if this isn't the right place for it.

It probably wouldn't add thousands to the attendance, but adding more info about the match to the official website might generate a few more ticket sales (and I have emailed the ticket office to suggest this). At the mo there's no information under 'next match' or 'tickets' and even the 'match launch' news item (at http://www.saintsfc.co.uk/news/?page_id=11753) fails to mention ticket prices, ticket office opening hours and whether you can pay on the day.

Wilde thing, You're just Lowe's plaything, You made everything gloomy, Wilde thing, We thought we loved you, But we don't anymore