Drawbacks of PV panels on livestock buildings.

[Yale]

What are the main drawbacks?

Dust from vents dirtying them?Snow loadings on frame?

Would they get stolen?

 

[sleepy]

The cost!

One of my friends had them installed, makes me laugh when I go over there and he tells me excited how he has made £1.63 today and didn't even have to get out of bed! He forgets he will still be paying for them when he is dead at that rate!

 

[Getnthair]

Really lucky that all my buildings are built west-east. Therefore half of every roof is south-facing.
I expect I'll make a fortune from solar panels. BUT - they are all old asbestos roofs and I'm scared that I'll have to include a cost for reroofing.

 

[JNP]

What are the main drawbacks?

Dust from vents dirtying them?Snow loadings on frame?

Would they get stolen?

I would imagine you will need to clean them quite often to keep them running at 100%?

Only real issue I see is if you are adding them to an existing shed you need to make a load of new fixing points through your roof sheeting. Never ideal and could lead to issues further down the line. As for being stolen, I know of a few cases where field mounted ones have been half-inched but never heard of ones on a roof going?!

Phil

 

[matthew]

We zapped that idea due to insurance loading.
We couldn't get any structural engineer (even the ones who erected the building) to produce a sheet of paper saying the original stress ratings for the fibre cement + an extra 4 tonnes of panels would be enough.
Some people have reroofed buildings to get round this: FIT must have made it worthwhile.

I believe that there are new panels now, much lighter and even flexible. Technology moves on.

 

[Glass half full]

mine are on poultry sheds are south east facing so not perfect, in a year they have not needed cleaning (and i have got up and looked) and produced 118% of predicted generation. at that rate should repay in 5 years.

i got a email from british eco saying that last year we only had 82% of the average year sunlight, so i am looking forward to next year!

 

[outofthefryingpan]

maybe a daft question but are solar panels now worth putting up?? has the inital cost of them dropped enough to counteract the drop in the FIT?

 

[Chris Sowerbutts]

Yes, outofthefryingpan, panel prices have now come down to the point where the returns are, in some cases (where energy consumption is high), even better than when the Feed-in Frenzy was in full swing. A PV array installed where half of the generated electricity can be used on site (eg poultry, cold storage, dairy etc) is likely to pay for itself in around 8 years. I do know of a couple of cases where 'socket parity' would be achieved, even without the subsidy (both are new-build cold storage units where they have steel-insulated roof panels). This is a major step for solar in the UK as solar power being cheaper than grid-supplied power is a turning point for decentralised generation.