Dragons Breath ©

PV systems are very complex – which is why we always ensure we fully understand each individual’s needs.
The design characteristics involved require mathematical calculations to identify the maximum potential solar gain possible, but you don’t need to worry about the technical aspects of the products – only the benefits. When using a PV system, it is important to realise that this is our future; this equipment will continue to power our homes and offices for the next 50-100 years.
The initial cost of a solar system may seem high, but when you consider that, an average 4-bedroom home often uses approximately 20 units of electricity every day. Multiply this by 365 and you have the annual cost of electricity to your home. If you take this one stage further, you can then understand the dependence that every one of us have on electricity. Now multiply the yearly figure by 25 years.
7,300 units x 25y = 182,500 units of electricity over the next 25 years based on today’s rate of 14p = £25,550.
This figure will obviously increase as oil prices continue to rise – this figure may increase by 15-25%. So now, we have the true worth of providing power.
How much would it cost for us to provide our own supply of electricity, without any increases over the next 25 years, using solar PV systems. Typically, we can use the 4-bedroom house as our benchmark. This would then give us a comparison to work with.
We could use the £5,000 per kWh tariff; multiply this by the daily output of a typically south-facing static solar panel collection, which would then give us a daily average of 6kwh of electricity generated per day. Again if we use multiplication to expand this we then could achieve a figure of around 1500kwh per annum, multiply this by 25 years = 37,500 units of electricity from a 1kwh solar PV system. This shows that an average 4-bedroom household would require a 4kwp solar PV system to generate this amount of electricity.
To get back to the figure of £5,000 per kWh this would then necessitate an expenditure of around £20,000 for a 4kwp solar PV system. The new initiative launched in December 2012 by the UK government Feed in Tariff of 21p per kW of solar electricity generated would provide an annual income to every household, thus reducing the cost of generating your own electricity dramatically, ensuring that you will almost certainly double your original investment over the next 25 years.

This is strong evidence that, by investing in solar energy now, we will not only safeguard our energy costs for the future, but we will be less dependent on the fossil fuels, which are in rapid decline.