E
essexrs
Well they went live on 1 March 2012 and despite the fact we have had the worse spring/summer/autumn I can remember in my lifetime, so far they have cut my direct debit in half and for the first 2 qtrs I have received approx £285 for March-May, £655 for Jun-August and with November being the end of the 3rd quarter, I am expecting around £300 based on my daily readings. I would expect a similar £285-£300 for the period Jan-Mar 2012 so expecting roughly of £1,500 or thereabouts this first year. This would mean with no improvement in weather this would produce FIT to cover the costs of £13,500 within 9yrs.
Of course I have to take into account my Electric Bills have dropped between £40-50pm on my Direct Debit, so that is another £480 - £600 pa making a total of £1,980 per annum income/savings reducing 'pay-back' time to 6-7 yrs. As the panels should be good for 15-20yrs, even allowing for 'drop-off', if I say they are useless by year 15, I will have 6yrs of around £2,000pa tax free, that is making £10-£12K overall profit over the life of the panels or £18-20K if they last the full 20yrs. You have to try and calculate 'drop-off' against increased FIT rates in line with inflation so not an exact 'science' but it does give a good indication.
I have devised a spreadsheet that carries the tarrifs and then calculates income based on the daily readings inserted. It then calculates the 'average' daily generation, that was until October around 10.5kW hrs per day, this has dropped now to about 9.2 kW hrs per day. Once I have the full 12 months, it will give me a good daily 'average' over the year with a total FIT income...
