‘I’m £10,000 richer – and it’s all thanks to my solar panels’

For nine years my wife has watched in bewilderment as I’ve juggled washing, dishwashing, cooking and ironing to the rhythms of the weather.

Sun out? Turn on the dishwasher. Overcast? Keep it shut and hope we haven’t cooked fish lately.

Yes – I’m a solar panel addict. We had a four kilowatt system installed in October 2014 and since then our housework has marched to the rhythm of the sun.

The washing machine is even attached to a smart plug so I can load it and then use my mobile phone to start it later when the sun is out.

Our Dyson vacuum cleaner is plugged into a timer so it charges in the daylight hours.

We paid just over £5,000 to have our panels installed. My obsessive behaviour means that over a turbulent period for energy prices this solid investment has made us £10,000 from payments for the electricity we’ve generated and energy we’ve saved.

We receive 22p per kilowatt hour for electricity we generate, a tariff which increases with the retail prices index. This year we will be paid around £850. Payments will continue until 2034.

What I didn’t anticipate back in 2014 was how sharply energy prices would increase. Every kilowatt hour of energy we generate and use ourselves saves us around 30p.

Even our water is heated by the sun. We have a handy little device that diverts energy we don’t use to our water tank immersion heater.

It’s so efficient that from May to October we use no gas at all (we cook on electric with an induction hob).

But in 2019 the Government inexplicably scrapped the incentives for UK households to generate electricity at a time when it was offering huge incentives to Chinese and French firms to produce nuclear energy.

Now the payback time is estimated to be closer to 15 years as householders rely on savings from using their own electricity and payments for unused electricity made by energy suppliers.

Would I take the plunge today? Well, several friends have, partly because of the huge increase in the cost of electricity and partly for environmental reasons.

From January you would save an average 28.62p for every kilowatt hour you generated and used yourself. To make the most of this you would need to follow my method and aim to use your heavy energy consumers when the sun is out.

Under the Smart Export Guarantee, larger energy suppliers must pay for your unused electricity with rates offered varying from as little as 1p per kilowatt hour to around 20p.

You don’t have to sell your excess electricity to the company which supplies you but many firms give better rates to their energy supply customers.

Currently Octopus, Ovo, British Gas, Scottish Power and E.on Next have some of the better rates while EDF, Utility Warehouse, Shell Energy SSE, and Utilita sit near the bottom of the table.

With a rate of 5.5p per kWh, the Energy Saving Trust estimates a typical home might make £100 to £145 per year. Based on my own experience I reckon that’s a tad conservative.

The other big question for solar owners is whether to buy a battery to store excess power.

I’ve done the sums and can’t see how these make financial sense.

When I looked, estimates of the benefits often assumed you would fill up the entire battery (typically 3kW) and use all of the power every day of the year.

My experience in the south of England is that on a gloomy winter day you may struggle to produce 250 watts at any time which may power your light bulbs but won’t leave a lot left over.

In summer the battery may be filled with power but will you actually use it on the same evening? If not you’ll start the next day with a partially full battery.

One point to consider is that batteries bought with panels are free of VAT but if you buy one later there’s 20pc VAT to pay – another daft detail.

If you are sold on panels, make sure your home is suitable – you need a medium to large, roughly south-facing, sloping roof in good condition which catches the sun for most of the day.

You need to be planning to live in your home for long enough to make it pay. Don’t borrow to pay for them as the interest will eat up your savings.

Check whether you are entitled to a grant or can become part of a group-buying scheme operated by your local council. Your fitter should sort out connection to the National Grid.

But with bigger systems – capable of outputting more than 3.68kW – your installer will need permission from the District Network Operator, which will check if the grid can cope with the power you are supplying and may charge for this. I know people who have waited months for permission to connect a 6kW system.

One last point: don’t fall for scam maintenance contracts. Our window cleaner washes our panels once a year for £20 – usually just before a freak southerly wind dumps about a ton of Saharan sand on them.