Solar PV Industry??

[vardymr2]

Hi Gents,

I worked in the Solar industry from 2010-2013 in the UK which had its ups and downs especially after the first tariff change. Since early 2013 I've been working in Australia still doing Solar, which seems to ahead of the UK market. I've had the chance to work on some great projects over here such as large scale, off-grid and hybrid systems.

My question is, what's the UK solar market like at the moment? I'm debating whether to move back to the UK, but id like to know how much the industry has changed in the last 4 years.

TIA

 

[mhar]

We had about an hour of sun the day before yesterday

 

[LeeH]

I'm producing 0.5kWh on some days from a 5+ kW array.

 

[snowhead]

They seem to be springing up by the acre in fields nowadays.

 

[dansk]

@Gavin A will give you an honest overview - ive been out of the game for a while - i suspect the commercial installations are still going strong.

 

[solarsavings]

What solar industry.

 

[Worcester]

We're still installing solar though it represents about 20% of our turnover now - the rest is Renewable Heat and associated works.

 

[vardymr2]

I'm producing 0.5kWh on some days from a 5+ kW array.

We sometimes see 40kwh a day on a 5kw system, but the average is 20kwh per day over the year.

I originally started out in renewable heating but soon realised the profits in PV were too hard to ignore. I take it the good old days of clearing 3k profit from a 2kw system has long gone?

Who are the big players in the UK market?

 

[solarsavings]

Best taken with a pinch of salt.

Benchmark have now pulled out of mcs and cps registration due to a significant drop in members. We have had our registrations moved to napit as of the 10th Feb.

 

[Gavin A]

I take it the good old days of clearing 3k profit from a 2kw system has long gone?

ahahahaha - ay, long gone. We're lucky to make that from a 20kW these days.

Need to be efficient and have a good pipeline of work from multiple sources to survive, but the market is picking up.