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Thursday, 13 July 2023

A year with panels

On the morning of 13 July 2022, an electrician from PGE Obrót turned up at my działka to connect the solar panels, installed in June, to the grid. Since then, I have been benefiting from electricity from a renewable source. This post is about the practicalities of panels.

At the end of 12 months' operations, my eight panels covered just 72% of my electricity usage. This includes bleak mid-winter during which the heating was on 24 hours a day. As an experiment, during those 12 months, I have made no effort to conserve electricity. I was interested to see how the numbers would look on maximum load. In midwinter, I had heat inside turned up to a constant - and comfortable 21C. Comfortable for year-round living in the countryside.

The investment was 27,500 złotys (£5,300); I received a cash subsidy from the Polish government of 6,000 złotys (£1,150) which reduced the capital expenditure to 21,500 złotys (£4,150). My annual electricity bill for April 2022-April 2023 was 401 złotys (£77). This could be reduced (as I wrote above) by taking greater care to switch off radiators, lights, immersion heater, laptops etc when not in use.

So: over a 12-month period, I have consumed 3,477 kilowatt hours (kWh) while my eight panels have generated 2,496 kWh, which have been exported to the grid. Without the panels, my consumption would have cost me around 2,700 złotys for the year (£515). So - a saving of 2,300 złotys (£443). A payback time of around nine years - at current prices (0.77zł/kWh). Should electricity prices rise (which they will), the payback time will shorten.

By the way UK readers... UK electricity price  costs 52p per kWh, but with the Energy Price Guarantee, it averages 34p per kWh. Polish households pay around 15p/kWh. Less than half. Me? I'm paying (effectively) 4p/kWh.

How will this look next year? I have no control over hours of sunshine, but I could take a lot more care about using less electricity - learning to live with 19C in the house in winter, for example.

However, there have been are times when the grid is overloaded; I first noticed this on Monday 15 August - a public holiday in Poland; with factories and offices closed and a sunny summer's day, the grid couldn't swallow the load. Too many panels producing too much energy that users were not taking up. There have been more such days since - days when the Solis app on my phone alerts me the grid isn't taking power from my panels. [Solis is the company that manufacturers the inverter.]

Would I make this investment again? Yes indeed - and remember this is already my second investment in panels, the first being in Jeziorki. 

There is an "if not now, when?" argument. Will the price of panels fall - or rise? Will Poland's inadequate grid mean that new solar panels will be discouraged?

This time last year:
Powered by the Sun

This time three years ago:
Poland's town/country divide explored

This time seven years ago:

This time nine years ago:
Half a mile under central Warsaw, on foot

This time ten years ago:
Dzienniki Kołymskie reviewed

This time 11 years ago
Russia-Poland in Warsaw: the worst day of Euro 2012

This time 13 years ago:
Thirty-one and sixty-three - a short story

This time 14 years ago:
Warsaw rail circumnavigation

This time 15 years ago:
Classic Polish vehicles

This time 16 years ago:
South Warsaw sunsets
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2 comments:

  1. Tony Szulc29 July 2023 at 13:48

    Good to see some real world figures for a solar installation. Here in the UK, where you would think solar take up would be much higher given the price of electricity, the system is not helped by the numerous different schemes that have been introduced over the years regarding the amount of money you can earn from your installation [which is now very low]
    In our case, we made the decision some twelve years back to have a system installed, to coincide with our house extension being built and at the same time, much to the consternation of our builders, have the gas-central heating system replaced with an all electric system in the house, as I had previously read that gas boilers were some of the largest polluters in our cities, so we have no gas in the house at all. We also switched our electricity to a green energy provider.
    Being one of the early adopters of solar in the UK, we got on the generous original tariff of energy produced, that guarantees a decent amount per kWh which rises with RPI every year and is for a twenty-five year term. Note that this is for green energy produced, not exported, so we get paid for energy produced even if we actually use it. The thinking behind that was that even if you do use the electricity, the green energy you have produced means less having to be produced by the grid and less fossil fuels burnt. Our solar installation is still working well after twelve years apart from one problem earlier this year when a couple of connectors burnt out resulting in the need to replace two [out of our sixteen] panels. At the same time as that work was carried out, we had a storage battery installed, as prices for those have fallen in recent years, so now that gets charged up before anything gets exported to the grid.
    Our system has already paid for itself over the years and is now helping to keep our electricity at a more reasonable level. This is especially important to us, as we have five adults in the household, with at least two working from home part of the time.
    With regard to renewables in general, it seems that governments have not thought about the storage of energy properly. The same happens in the UK as you mention in Poland, in that on extremely sunny or windy days, so much renewable energy is produced, that the grid cannot use/store it and the green energy is taken off-line!
    I still cannot figure out why all new houses are not required to have a solar installation as standard, in the same way that they have to meet insulation standards?

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  2. Michael Dembinski2 August 2023 at 13:05

    @ Tony Szulc

    Many thanks for your detailed comment! You are right that it's all about incentives and tariffs right now; the grid urgently needs a massive upgrade and of course we'll still waiting for adequate storage technologies. Another major problem is China's stranglehold on PV. My panels are from China, the inverter is from China. Less of a problem a year ago than today. I heard a worrying podcast from a former UK diplomat with many years of service at the British Embassy in Beijing warning us about China's near-monopoly of Internet of Things command modules; these can remotely switch off tech such as inverters.

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