Residential Solar Panels in Northwest London

Installing solar panels can be beneficial in many ways. From providing you with free electricity for large parts of the year and greatly reducing your household bills as a result to increasing your property’s value and lowering your carbon footprint, solar panels are absolutely a great investment. Moreover, the price of installing solar panels (and battery storage system) has reduced dramatically since they gained popularity, due to more competition in the marketplace and mass production. The UK is actually a good place to install solar PV panels, particularly in the south, but still effective anywhere throughout the British Isles. Solar panels generate electricity using light, not heat and they don’t need direct sunshine in order to generate electricity. For more information have a look at this here to see how effective they are

We will survey all roofs and run the data through our software to ascertain that your pitched roof is able to withstand the additional weight loading that solar panels will add to the structure. For flat roofs, it’s a little more complicated, but we will design the mounting system and provide all the additional weight bearing data to a structural engineer who will then advise as to whether or not the roof is adequate and if not, what could be done to ensure that it is. Nothing is left to chance and all surveys are backed up with full installation data and calculations.

Depending on your electrical use and the size of your roof. As a general rule for most residential properties, we would always advise to get as much solar on the roof as possible, but we think that as little as 1.5kW of generation (as few as 4 panels), if orientated correctly would be enough to make a big dent in your electricity bills.

Yes and no. Domestic solar panels will essentially self-clean in the rain and with no moving parts there’s very little that can go wrong with them. On the other hand, the cables and other parts of the installation such as bird blockers are subjected to the elements and can be susceptible to damage over the year, so it is worth keeping an eye on them. One of the arrays we have has been operating for over 13 years and has literally never been looked at since it was installed…and it’s still generating electricity every day… keep an eye on the panels to make sure that no debris is building up on them and no cables are waving in the wind, but if you are in any doubt or you have an older installation that you are not too sure about, just give us a call and we’ll be happy to give the installation a once over.

Yes, all our installations are MCS approved, and you will be able to qualify to receive what are known as SEG (Smart Export Guarantee) payments from your electricity provider. The amount paid has recently improved greatly due to market competition and you can now get paid in excess of 15p per kWh of exported electricity. We think that you are still better off storing the energy that you generate in a battery storage system because you still don’t get paid as much for exporting power to the grid as you do to buy electricity back again when you need it.

For most pitched roof installations where the property is not listed or within the confines of a conservation area and where the solar panels do not protrude above the ridge, no planning permission is required. Flat roof installations currently require planning permission as technically the entire solar installation would be above the ridge, but we have never had planning permission denied. Where you are in a conservation area or the property is listed, planning permission should be applied for and approved before installation can take place.