The Solar Investment
What are your solar energy system's sources of income?
A solar energy system will generate income for you from three sources:
- Savings on your energy bills
- The government introduced Feed-in Tariffs
- The export tariffs
During the day, when your solar energy system is producing electricity, instead of having to buy electricity from your electricity provider, you will be using your very own generated electricity from your solar panel. However, this is not the main financial benefit at all!
In April 2010, the UK government introduced the Feed-in Tariff scheme. Under the scheme, your utility company is obligated to pay you a guaranteed income for every unit of electricity that your solar energy system produces, regardless of whether or not you use that electricity or not! Even if you are using 100% of your generated electricity you will still earn the Feed-in Tariffs on all that electricity.
There is more! You might be thinking to yourself that during the daytime you will not be using much electricity, and that therefore much of the electricity your system generates will go to waste. Wrong! The Feed-in Tariff scheme also obligates your utility company to buy from you any excess electricity you generated from your solar energy system.
Does a 10% annual return on investment sound too good to be true? With Solar energy it can even be more.
In addition to the benefits to our world and country, a solar energy system should be considered as any other investment, in terms of your return on investment (ROI). Not only will this allow you to gauge the pay-back time of your solar energy system, but you can also compare the return on investment from solar energy, to the return on investment from any other type of investment in the UK or elsewhere. With a possible 10% annual return on your investment for small solar systems (up to 4 kilo-watt systems) and a much greater possible annual return on investment for larger systems, the solar investment is probably one of the most lucrative investments anywhere today.
What is the risk of the investment?
As with any investment, you should be asking yourself "what is the risk?". In this case, you may be asking yourself, "but what happens if the government changes their mind about the Feed-in Tariff scheme? "or you may be asking yourself "what happens if you decide you want to sell your house?" or "what if I change my utility company?". All of these good questions and more have simple answers that anyone can understand. We answer a few of them here, and address others on our FAQ page.
The bottom line is that the risk of investing in a solar energy system is probably not greater than the risk of simply keeping your money in the bank. But instead of earning a minimal interest rate from your bank, your solar energy system will earn you 10% or more!
Can the government change its mind about the Feed-in Tariff scheme?
Even if parliament approves changes to, or halts the Feed-in Tariffs scheme this has no affect on you or anyone who installs a solar energy system at present. The reason for this is that when you commission your solar energy system, the Feed-in Tariff agreement that you sign is not between you and the government, it is between you and your electricity provider, and it is for 25 years!
The next question would then be "so what happens if my utility company changes, or if they stop trading?", to which we answer, that will not impact your receipt of Feed-in Tariff payments either. The reason here is a bit more elaborate (but still simple to understand), and we invite you to read more about it on our Understanding Feed-in Tariffs page.
To find out what your annual return on investment on your solar energy system could be click here.
The see the results of the case-study of our costumers' satisfaction with their solar energy installations which was done by a third party, click here.
If you would like to have one of our contract directors meet you at your house for a no-fee, no-obligation survey of your roof send us an email from the Contact page, or call us on 020 8517 6610 .
